文档介绍：AGE OF PROPAGANDA
The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion
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REVISED EDITION
ANTHONY R. PRATKANIS and ELLIOT ARONSON
University of California, Santa Cruz
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To the memory of my parents, Harry Aronson (1903-1950) and Dorothy Aronson (1901-1989)
They had a wonderfully innocent, childlike trust that, in this country, almost everything they read (especially if it
was between the covers of a book) was absolutely true.
E. A.
To my son, Tony T. Pratkanis (born 1991)
Chances are, he will grow up with a healthy skepticism but a regrettable cynicism about the truth of everything
he reads, hears, and sees.
A. R. P.
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WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK
We are of different generations. One of us (E. A.) was born in 1932 and grew up during World War II. "At that
time, I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I
knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white
Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair-minded, and trusting. Perhaps you had to be eleven years old to take
seriously the racial and national caricatures presented in the war movies of the early 1940s. But in those days,
most grown-ups—including my parents (to whom this book is dedicated)—certainly wanted to believe in the
basic message of the war movies and did, in fact, have a childlike trust in the media. They hung on every word
President Roosevelt said in his famous fireside chats and never dreamed of questioning the nobility of the
motives behind our national policy. They thought (and so did I) that the purpose mercial advertising was
to inform the consumer."
The world has taken a few turns since then. A. R. P. grew up during the Vietnam war and was witness to the
blatant lying by public officials of that era. "At the time, I sat riveted to my television screen, scared to death by
the images of death and destructi