Limited Effects Theory

In 1925, Lazarfeld obtained his doctorate’s degree in philosophy major in applied mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he founded a research institute for applied social psychology four years later. In 1933, he went to the United States and served as the Director of the Office of Radio Research at the Princeton University after receiving a research grant in psychology from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1940, his project was transferred at the Columbia University where his office was renamed the Bureau of Applied Social Research.

With Hadly Cantril and Frank Stanton, Lazarsfeld is remembered for his detailed investigation of the radio habits of the American listening public. This investigation led to the famous radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” in 1938. Orson Welles borrowed freely from H. G. Welles’s novel and created a radio drama that resemble to news stories. One out of six listeners believed that aliens had invaded the universe and eventually panicked. The invasion from Mars panic was seen by elite observers as a definitive proof of mass society theory, that is, if a radio program could induce such wide-spread panic, obvious and concerted propaganda messages could do much worse.

Lazarsfeld affirmed that many listeners acted hastily and that simulated news stories were trusted without question, especially the eyewitness reports and the interviews with phony experts. He also concluded that media audiences have one or more psychological traits that made them especially susceptible to media influence: fatalism, phobic personality, emotional insecurity, and lack of self-confidence.

At the Princeton University, Stanton, Cantril, and Lazarsfeld were part of a vanguard of social scientists who slowly formulated new views of how media influence society. They argued that media were no longer feared as instruments of political oppression and manipulation because the public itself was viewed as very resistant to persuasion and extremist manipulation. They believe that most people were influenced by others rather than by media; opinion leaders in every community, who, at every level of society, were responsible for guiding and stabilizing politics. Media were conceptualized as relatively powerless in shaping public opinion in the face of more potent intervening variables like people’s individual differences and group memberships.

Lazarsfeld pioneered the use of surveys and experiments to measure media influence, which, in turn, provided evidence that media rarely and indirectly influence individuals. He assumed that media effects were quite limited because in the more micro, or in the individual level, only a limited number of listeners were directly affected.