Carl Iver Hovland was a psychologist working primarily at Yale University and for the US Army during World War II who studied attitude change and persuasion.
12 Facts About Carl Hovland
1.
2.
Carl Hovland first reported the sleeper effect after studying the effects of the Frank Capra propaganda film Why We Fight on soldiers in the Army.
3.
In later studies on this subject, Hovland collaborated with Irving Janis who would later become famous for his theory of groupthink.
4.
Carl Hovland thought that the ability of someone to resist persuasion by a certain group depended on your degree of belonging to the group.
5.
Carl Hovland originally intended to pursue a career in music until college, when he discovered psychology.
6.
Carl Hovland was recruited by Samuel Stouffer, a sociologist on leave from the University of Chicago, to contribute to their collaborative research efforts.
7.
Carl Hovland had the responsibility of leading a team of fifteen researchers.
8.
Carl Hovland was involved in a study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages.
9.
Carl Hovland began to emphasize micro-level analysis of propaganda and its effects.
10.
Carl Hovland believed that if he was able to recognize the attitude an individual has towards a trigger, he would be able to predict the behavior and actions of an individual over time.
11.
Specifically, Carl Hovland was responsible for carrying out a series of studies that contributed to the "cumulative understanding of persuasion behavior that has never since been matched or even rivaled".
12.
When Carl Hovland learned that he had cancer, he continued to work with his Yale doctoral students and conduct persuasion experiments.