Suggestion theory

Suggestion theory is a theory used in the early part of the 20th century to describe how persuasion worked as a phenomenon of human collective behavior. Because a distinctive function of public communication is to advance social consensus, many scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries sought to understand the role of human communication in the process of social influence. Writing in 1904, Roy Park recognized suggestion theory as the "suggestive influence exerted by people on each other." To understand suggestion, Park focused on studies of collective behavior like rallies and crowds, noting that "when two or more people come in contact... a 'circular process' of mutual suggestibility gets triggered"^[1] However, scholars used different terms, including imitation, sympathy, reciprocal suggestion and prestige suggestion to describe the role of human communication in consensus formation.^[2] During the 1920s and 1930s, rising interest in the nature of propaganda accelerated interest in suggestion theory, which drew upon ideas from the emerging field of psychoanalysis.^[3] Yet, by the 1960s, suggestion theory had become a "lost doctrine"^[2] as it was effectively marginalized by scholars aiming to establish communication scholarship as a new discipline. Instead of emphasizing how humans engage in reciprocal suggestion to influence each other's attitudes and behavior, communication scholars critiqued studies of propaganda and persuasion, and emphasized the idea that media had only limited effects on individuals in society. A focus on rational argumentation replaced examination of popular suggestibility, propaganda, and persuasion.^{[citation needed]}