31 Facts About Harold Lasswell

Harold Dwight Lasswell was an American political scientist and communications theorist.

Harold Lasswell earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics and his Ph.

Harold Lasswell was a professor of law at Yale University.

Harold Lasswell served as president of the American Political Science Association, American Society of International Law, and World Academy of Art and Science.

Areas of research in which Harold Lasswell worked included the importance of personality, social structure, and culture in the explanation of political phenomena.

Harold Lasswell was born on February 13,1902, in Donnellson, Illinois, to a clergyman and a school teacher.

In 1918, at the age of 16, Harold Lasswell began his studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics.

Harold Lasswell received a doctorate from the University of Chicago and penned his dissertation on Propaganda Technique in the World War.

Harold Lasswell studied at the Universities of London, Geneva, Paris, and Berlin in the 1920s.

From 1922 to 1938, Harold Lasswell served as an assistant professor and associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

Harold Lasswell spent a year teaching at the Washington School of Psychiatry from 1938 to 1939, before joining the US Library of Congress as director of war communications research from 1939 to 1945.

Harold Lasswell taught law and political science at Yale University from 1946 to 1970.

Harold Lasswell served as president of the American Political Science Association in 1956 and president of the American Society of International Law from 1966 to 1968.

Harold Lasswell was involved in the Association for the Advancement of Science, Commission on the Freedom of the Press, Committee for Economic Development, and Rand Corporation.

Harold Lasswell is considered to be a founding father of political psychology and policy sciences and an early proponent of mass communication as a field of scholarly research.

Harold Lasswell believed universities should become focal centers for the study of communications.

At the age of 25, Harold Lasswell completed his doctoral dissertation on Propaganda Technique in the World War.

Harold Lasswell defined propaganda as "the control of opinion by significant symbols" such as stories, rumors, reports, pictures, and other forms of social communication.

In 1935, Harold Lasswell published World Politics and Personal Insecurity, a study of international relations using quantitative content analysis.

Harold Lasswell pioneered such content analysis methods as standardizing the collection of information, developing categories of analysis, and using quantitative measurements to study communication messages.

Harold Lasswell believed, like John Dewey, that one should pay close attention to the contexts in which concepts were used.

Harold Lasswell's work was important in the post-World War II development of behavioralism.

Harold Lasswell is credited with being the founder of the field of political psychology, the intersection of psychology and political science, in the 1930s and 1940s.

Harold Lasswell was particularly influenced by Freud's ideas of the aimlessness of instinctual drives and the malleability of human perspectives.

Harold Lasswell built a laboratory in his social science office at the University of Chicago to conduct experiments on volunteers and students.

Harold Lasswell introduced the concept of a "garrison state" in a highly influential and often cited 1941 article originally published in the American Journal of Sociology.

Harold Lasswell was concerned with such questions as how to improve the concepts and procedures of those who study political problems professionally, and how to train policy scientists.

Harold Lasswell identified eight "goal values" of policy: wealth, power, respect, rectitude, skill, well being, enlightenment, and affection.

Harold Lasswell co-authored Jurisprudence for a Free Society in 1966 along with McDougal.

Political science, according to Harold Lasswell, needed to provide clear goals, "theoretical models of the political process," and develop policy alternatives to maximize democratic values.

Harold Lasswell believed political science should be practiced like law, as a free profession rather than an academic pursuit.