ABSTRACT
The application of science to social questions is even more recent than its application to individual psychology. There are, it is true, a few directions in which a scientific attitude is to be found as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Malthus's theory of population, whether true or false, is certainly scientific. There is, however, a large amount of genuine experimental science in social affairs. Perhaps the most important set of experiments in this realm is that which we owe to advertisers. This material, valuable as it is, has not been utilized by experimental psychologists, because it belongs to a region remote from the Universities, and they would feel themselves vulgarized by contact with anything so gross. From the technique of advertising it seems to follow that in the great majority of mankind any proposition will win acceptance if it is reiterated in such a way as to remain in the memory.
