Cantril, Hadley, 1906-1969

Albert Hadley Cantril, Jr. (16 June 1906 – 28 May 1969) was an American psychologist from Princeton University, who expanded the scope of the field. Cantril made "major contributions in psychology of propaganda; public opinion research; applications of psychology and psychological research to national policy, international understanding, and communication; developmental psychology; psychology of social movements; measurement and scaling; humanistic psychology; the psychology of perception; and, basic to all of them, the analysis of human behavior from the transactional point of view." His influence is felt in education, law, philosophy, politics and psychiatry. "Hadley Cantril, Princeton psychologist, is representative of most quantitative scholars of social influence who, while holding their political commitments close to the vest, nevertheless saw themselves clearly in the ranks of reformers loosely attached to the progressive movement…. Focus on social process and a psychological view of people put the academic scientists of society in a frame of mind to assume the polis languished chiefly because of inaction on the part of enlightened administrators."