“It is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd. It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture. One of the secrets of the large attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion—‘talking back’—is permitted and encouraged. The Evangelist Sunday undoubtedly owes the great attendance at his meetings in no small degree to the fact that he is regularly expected to abuse some one.
“Nothing so easily catches general attention and creates a crowd as a contest of any kind. The crowd unconsciously identifies its members with one or the other competitor. Success enables the winning crowd to ‘crow’ over the losers. Such an occasion becomes symbolic and is utilized by the ego to enhance its feeling of importance.”
The public relations counsel finds in the instinct of pugnacity a powerful weapon for enlisting public support for or public opposition to a point of view in which he is interested. On this principle, he will, whenever possible, state his case in the form of an issue and enlist, in support of his side, such forces as are available.
The dangers of the method must be recognized and borne in mind. Pugnacity can be enlisted on the side of decency and progress. He who looks at it from that point of view will agree with Mr. Pulitzer, the great publisher, that it seems neither extraordinary nor culpable that “people and press should be more interested in the polemical than in the platitudinous; in blame than in painting the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory coals to Newcastle.” On the other hand, the instinct of pugnacity can be utilized to suppress and to oppress. From the point of view of the public relations counsel, who is interested from day to day in accomplishing definite results on specific issues, the dangers of the method are only the ordinary dangers of every weapon, physical or psychological, which has been devised.