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The Changing Concept of “Human Nature” in the Literature of American Advertising

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Merle Curti
Merle Curti
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University Of Wisconsin, Madison
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Abstract

In their debates over the functions of advertising (such as “tell versus sell” and “inform versus manipulate”), practitioners have employed various conceptualizations of the “nature” of man. Implicitly and explicitly, as Professor Curti reveals, these views also tell us much about the “nature” of American society in the twentieth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , Winter 1967 , pp. 335 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1967

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References

1 Although not directing his main attention to the idea of human nature, Otis Pease, in The Responsibilities of American Advertising: Private Control and Public Influence, 1920–1940 (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar, reports continuities and changes in advertising appeals in the 1930's by examining ads in selected issues of Woman's Home Companion and Saturday Evening Post. Such a direct analysis of themes by content and technique in actual ads is a promising way of investigating changing ideas about human nature.

2 Advertising and Selling, an important trade journal, seemed less suitable for study since it merged with several other advertising periodicals and since occasional breaks in publication occurred.

3 Rowell's formal education was limited to study at the Lancaster Academy in New Hampshire where he probably was introduced to a watered-down version of the Scottish common sense or realistic philosophy which dominated mid-nineteenth century textbooks on mental science. For a biographical portrait see Dictionary of American Biography, XVI, 197–98.Google Scholar From 1909 to his death in 1948, Richard Wesley Lawrence was a dominant figure in the Printers' Ink Company. A second-generation Irish-American and a graduate of New York Law School, Lawrence was prominent in the business community and in the civic affairs of New York City. See National Encyclopedia of American Biography, XXXVII, 196–97.

4 I am indebted to Sharon Smith MacPherson and to Dr. George P. Rawick who, as my research assistants, did a good deal of the spade work for this article. Initially, Mrs. MacPherson studied one volume for every fifth year; as a check on subjective judgment, Dr. Rawick studied alternate volumes; and as a further check, I made spot-checks of the volumes that had already been examined.

5 The first explicit definition of “human nature” I have found in the professional literature of advertising is that of Daniel Starch, a psychologist: “Human nature is composed fundamentally of a large number of inherent wants accompanied by capacities or abilities to carry out the necessary behavior to satisfy these wants.” Principles of Advertising (New York, 1923), 255.Google Scholar Also exceptional, even among professional psychologists who used the term, in defining it were Arthur Brewster, J. and Palmer, Herbert Hall, Introduction to Advertising (New York, 1931), 93Google Scholar: “The instincts, emotions, desires, needs, impulses, interests, and habits of people are many times referred to in popular speech as ‘human nature’.”

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