Page 30 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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CANTRIL, HADLEY
master's degrees from Dartmouth and Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
respectively. Following his formal education, he assisted Bill Moyers with the
White House's press activities and continued his federal career with the U.S.
State Department as an assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs.
In 1969, he left the government and went to work for the Institute for Inter-
national Social Research, where he began the research for a book he coauthored
with Charles W. Roll, Jr., Hopes and Fears of the American People. The book,
although brief, received widespread recognition and acceptance for its insights
into the thinking of the American public.
In 1975, he became president of the National Council on Public Polls and
continued his work on polling as a social science until the present. In 1980, he
wrote the book Polls: Their Use and Misuse in Politics, a seminal work ana-
lyzing the effects polling has had on politics and journalism since its beginnings
in the early 1900s. He was especially critical of journalists using polls as proof
or the basis for stories, because he felt journalists rarely have the ability to
understand the complexities and procedures of social science theory and prac-
tices.
SOURCES: Contemporary Authors, Vol. Ill, 1984; Who's Who in America, 1997.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

CANTRIL, HADLEY (1906-1969) was one of several Princeton University
researchers whose work challenged the powerful effects model of media and
society and helped in the evolution of modern media theory. His panic research
on audience response to the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast by CBS
and the Mercury Theater provided the first challenge to the idea that media
could manipulate all people equally. His work ushered in the selective influence
model of mass media effects based on individual differences. His pioneering
research pointed out the importance of ' 'critical ability'' in determining whether
people could be manipulated by the media. Intervening forces such as opinion
leaders and psychological variables often were seen to have more influence on
people than the media. More important, Cantril refined the survey method and
collaborated with George Gallup in adding psychological dimensions to Gallup's
polling techniques. Cantril's self-anchoring striving scale illustrated the values
underlying the political orientations of the American people. He also influenced
the way researchers characterize the relationship between public opinion and
government policy. Based on his research, media were viewed as being less
politically oppressive and less propagandistic in intent, reinforcing a new view
of media as social change agents.

SOURCES: Stanley J. Baran and Dennis K. Davis, Mass Communication Theory, 1995;
Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans, 1967; Shearon Low-
ery and Melvin DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication Research, 1988.
LeAnne Daniels