Editing Edward Bernays (section)

==Techniques==
===Third parties===
Bernays argued that the covert use of third parties was morally legitimate because those parties were morally autonomous actors.<ref>{{harvnb|Marks|1957|p=82}}: "Bernays once spoke directly to the question of the ethics of a propagandist's speaking through a 'front.' There is no evidence that, at the time, he convinced anyone; but his position is worth considering as contrast to the prevailing judgment. While he readily admitted that a propagandist may not ethically <u>buy</u> the cooperation of a third party, he argued that it is perfectly legitimate for him to enlist the aid of a third party and conceal the relationship. The third party becomes a new advocate, not a subsidiary of the first. He continued:

{{blockquote|That individual or organization may then propagandize it [the original client's point of view] through its own channels because it is interested in it. In such a case, the point of origin then becomes that individual or organization. The public relations counsel, having made the link between the interest of his client and the interest of the third party, no longer need figure in the resulting expression to the public. [Bernays, 'This Business of Propaganda,' p. 199.]}}</ref>

{{blockquote|"If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice. He went to his physician and found that a heavy breakfast was sounder from the standpoint of health than a light breakfast because the body loses energy during the night and needs it during the day. He asked the physician if he would be willing, at no cost, to write to 5,000 physicians and ask them whether their judgment was the same as his—confirming his judgment. About 4,500 answered back, all concurring that a more significant breakfast was better for the health of the American people than a light breakfast. He arranged for this finding to be published in newspapers throughout the country with headlines like '4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast' while other articles stated that bacon and eggs should be a central part of breakfast and, as a result of these actions, the sale of bacon went up.<ref name="Edward L. Bernays tells the story of making bacon & eggs all-American Breakfast">{{cite AV media| url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vFz_FgGvJI | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211118/6vFz_FgGvJI| archive-date=November 18, 2021| url-status=live| title=Edward L. Bernays tells the story of making bacon & eggs all-American Breakfast | via=[[YouTube]]|publication-date=September 12, 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref>}}

Describing the response to his campaign for Ivory Soap, Bernays wrote: "As if actuated by the pressure of a button, people began working for the client instead of the client begging people to buy."{{sfn|Marks|1957|p=73}}

Businesses found these covert methods irresistible. Strother Walker and Paul Sklar wrote in ''Business Finds Its Voice'' (1938) that Bernays had offered a solution to popular skepticism of business which arose in the depression: better "to implant an idea in a group leader's mind and let him spread it than to write up an idea and send it to the papers as a release, in the old-fashioned way&nbsp;...".<ref>Quoted in {{harvnb|Olasky|1984|p=10}}</ref>

===Scientific approach===
{{See also|Social engineering (political science)}}

Bernays pioneered the public relations industry's use of [[mass psychology]] and other [[social sciences]] to design its public persuasion campaigns: "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of [[propaganda]] has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."<ref name="Bernays Propaganda 2005">{{cite book
|last=Bernays |first=Edward
|title=Propaganda
|publisher=Ig Pub |location=Brooklyn, N.Y.
|date=2005
|isbn=0-9703125-9-8
|page=47
|orig-year=1928}}</ref><!-- stated as ''"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it."'' at http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=30405 and referenced as 1928 page 70 in Wikiquotes; needs fact checking --> He later called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the [[The Engineering of Consent|''engineering of consent'']].<ref name="Bernays Engineering 1947">{{cite journal
|last=Bernays|first=Edward L.
|title=The Engineering of Consent
|journal=[[Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science]]
|volume=250|issue=1|date=March 1947
|pages=113–20 at p. 114
|issn=0002-7162
|doi=10.1177/000271624725000116
|s2cid=167534969
|url=http://gromitinc.com/lego/Library/Engineering_of_consent.pdf
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120813014102/http://gromitinc.com/lego/Library/Engineering_of_consent.pdf
|archive-date=August 13, 2012
|access-date=February 24, 2016
|url-status=dead
|quote=Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.}}</ref>

Bernays expanded on [[Walter Lippmann]]'s concept of [[stereotype]], arguing that predictable elements could be manipulated for mass effects:

{{blockquote|But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamp is the twin of millions of others, so that when these millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. [...]

The amazing readiness with which large masses accept this process is probably accounted for by the fact that no attempt is made to convince them that black is white. Instead, their preconceived hazy ideas that a certain gray is almost black or almost white are brought into sharper focus. Their prejudices, notions, and convictions are used as a starting point, with the result that they are drawn by a thread into passionate adherence to a given mental picture.<ref>Bernays, "The Minority Rules" (1927), pp. 150, 151; cited in {{harvnb|Marks|1957|p=116}}</ref>}}

Not only psychology but sociology played an important role for the public relations counsel, according to Bernays. The individual is "a cell organized into the social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic response from certain specific members of the organism."<ref>Bernays, ''[[Propaganda (book)|Propaganda]]'' (1928), p. 28; quoted in {{harvnb|Olasky|1985|p=20}}.</ref>