The
Rockefeller Foundation was the principle source for funding public
opinion and psychological warfare research between the late 1930s and
the end of World War Two. With limited government and corporate interest
or support of propaganda-related studies, most of the money for such
research came from this powerful organization that recognized the
importance of ascertaining and steering public opinion in the immediate
prewar years.
Rockefeller
philanthropic attention toward public opinion was twofold: 1) to review
and establish the psychological environment in the United States for
anticipated US involvement in the coming world war and 2) to wage
psychological warfare and suppress popular dissent in foreign countries,
particularly Latin America. Recognizing how the Franklin Roosevelt
Administration was bogged down politically and less capable of planning
for war in terms of domestic and foreign propaganda efforts, Rockefeller
Foundation-funded projects and research institutes were established at
Princeton University, Stanford University, and the New School for Social
Research to monitor and analyze shortwave radio transmissions from
abroad.
The
“founding fathers” of mass communication research could not have
established their field without Rockefeller largesse. Alongside World
War One propagandist and University of Chicago political scientist
Harold Lasswell, psychologist Hadley Cantril was a principal contributor
to the knowledge and information that helped propel
Rockefeller-controlled enterprises and American empire in the postwar
era. Throughout this period Cantril provided the Rockefeller combine
with important information and new techniques in public opinion
measurement and management in Europe, Latin American, and the United
States.
A
roommate of Nelson Rockefeller’s at Dartmouth College in the late
1920s, Cantril took a doctorate in psychology at Harvard, coauthoring The Psychology of Radio
with his doctoral mentor Gordon Allport in 1935. “Radio is an
altogether novel medium of communication,” Cantril and Allport observed,
“preeminent as a means of social control and epochal in its influence
upon the mental horizons of men.” - [Full Article]
