Herta Herzog

Herta Herzog (born August 14, 1910 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † February 25, 2010 in Leutasch ) was an Austrian - American social psychologist and communication scientist . She is still regarded as a pioneer in market research and is a co-founder of qualitative audience , entertainment and genre research .

Life

Herta Herzog grew up in Vienna, Austria. Her father was a lawyer . Her mother suffered from tuberculosis from which she died early. After emigrating to the USA, Duke married Paul Lazarsfeld . In the "Office of Radio Research" (ORR), Herzog also met her future second husband Paul Wilhelm Massing . When he was diagnosed with Parkinson's , she retired in 1970 and returned to Europe with him.

Educational path

After Herzog had finished primary school and high school, she began to study Greek , Latin , archeology and German at the University of Vienna in 1928 . She then continued her academic career at the Institute for Psychology in Vienna. It was there that Duke Paul met Lazarsfeld for the first time, who was one of her professors. Herzog completed her dissertation on voice and personality in 1932. Here she proved for the first time an existing connection between the tone of voice and the assumed qualities of speakers.

Professional positions after completing his dissertation in 1932

After completing her doctorate, Herzog became an assistant at the business psychology research center. In 1935 she decided to follow Paul Lazarsfeld to the USA. Initially, Herzog was the assistant to the sociologist Robert Lynd . In 1937 she began to work in the newly founded Office of Radio Research (ORR), of which Paul Lazarsfeld was director. Hadley Cantril and Frank Stanton as well as, from the 1960s onwards, Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer were also part of the ORR . During Herzog's time at ORR, she worked with Adorno on a research project on radio listeners. In 1939, Herzog became deputy director of the ORR.

From 1943 Herzog began working for the McCann Erickson advertising agency. She became a pioneer in motivational research. While advertising research asked "Who was buying what?", Herzog asked "Why do people buy what they do?" In their motivational research. She made her greatest contribution in the systematic development and in the combination of various methods in order to gain new knowledge in the research area. Herzog became head of research at the agency's New York headquarters in 1948. Eventually McCann Erickson founded his own company, Marplan, for market and PR research, with Herzog as chairman. In 1964 she joined the "think tank" Jack Tinker & Partners as a researcher, whose main task was to develop creative solutions to problems facing McCann Erickson's major customers.

After Paul Wilhelm Massing's death, Herzog began teaching and researching in the field of cultural and communication studies in Austria and Germany. She also occupied herself with bridging the research fields of political sociology and communication research , as her late husband Massing was very interested in these disciplines. This is where Herzog's most recent study, "The Jews As Others", came about in 1994.

Scientific work

Herzog worked in both radio research at ORR and marketing research at McCann Erickson advertising agency. Her studies relate to early recipient research, market and motivational research as well as social-psychological topics such as xenophobia and anti-Semitism .

In her publications she primarily used her maiden name Herta Herzog with the exception of the two fonts "Decoding Dallas" from 1986 and "The Sting in Evil: Dallas and Denver Clan: Guaranteed Different from Everyday Life." From 1990, which she under published under the name Herta Herzog Massing. In principle, your career can be divided into three main research areas. Her first focus was on studies of gratuities from radio listeners, which she carried out primarily during her work at ORR. Herzog's second core area was studies on the advertising audience, which she carried out for private companies during her time as a marketing researcher. After her retirement, Herzog saw her third research focus in social psychology and in studies of the television audience. These were primarily about deciphering messages from television viewers.

Communication research

Herzog's empirical research in the field of communication research made her a founder of qualitative audience, entertainment and genre research. Herzog's studies provided important methodological approaches and enabled various theoretical reorientations. In the field of communication research, her most famous studies are "Invasion from Mars", "Professor Quiz" and "Daytime Serial Listeners".

The communication science study on Daytime Serial Listeners

Herzog was a major influence on studies of soap opera listeners. In her research project, she was not concerned with the effect of soap operas on female recipients, but instead specifically asked which psychological and social needs are met by women when listening to soap operas. Herzog's study was the beginning of the "Uses and Gratification Approach" established in media research in communication studies . Her study began in 1942. She conducted a large audience survey and conducted a total of one hundred focus interviews with recipients of soap operas. The mix of a large number of surveys and a small number of interviews was a typical form of "bureau methodology". Through the analysis of the hundred interviews and the surveys, Herzog wanted to find out the motivations for listening to radio soaps and the satisfaction of the needs of the recipients.

In her study in the 1940s, Herzog came to the conclusion that soap operas were primarily used as advice for women with lower educational levels. She found that soap operas had a therapeutic effect on the audience and that they had an emotional relief on the audience. Furthermore, Herzog came to the realization that women who wanted to flee from their oppressive everyday life were increasingly receiving soap operas. While listening to the soap operas, they fell into a form of wishful thinking. The fact that soap operas act as counselors for listeners on personal and family problems was very unexpected for most people. The result was a considerable wave of outrage between broadcasters and social critics.

Herzog's study on "What do We Really Know About Daytime Serial Listeners" is considered a pioneering work for gratification research and thus for the cognitive turnaround in the media sector. The question was no longer just what the media do with people, but what people do with the media. Herzog's research was the start of a paradigm shift. From this point onwards, recipients of mass media statements were highlighted as factors relevant to the effect.

Market research

Herzog developed into a recognized personality in American market research, primarily through her steep career at the McCann Erickson advertising agency. She was offered a position in 1943 by Marion Harper, who was head of the research department of McCann Erickson at the time, as person responsible for motivational and qualitative radio and advertising research, which she also accepted. In 1948 she first became deputy director and later head of the research department at the company's headquarters in New York. Harper believed that an advertising agency should not only design advertisements for customers, but should do a lot more looking after them. So he founded Marplan as a subsidiary of McCann Erickson, which was responsible for market research. Herzog was delegated as chairman of the supervisory board.

She had a particular impact in market research, especially in two commercials for Alka-Seltzer , the well-known remedy for heartburn and indigestion, where she suggested showing a hand in a photo that drops two tablets into a glass instead of one. This idea doubled the company's profits. Herzog was called "the gray eminence" of the industry and in 1986 was inducted into the "Hall of Fame" of the "Market Research Council". As one of the central figures in motivational research in marketing and advertising, Herzog helped achieve a breakthrough in the 1950s. In a highly acclaimed lecture from 1958, she advocated the inclusion of psychological concepts in consumer research. She advocated qualitative research that would be able to connect the different rational and symbolic meanings of a product with the “needs” of consumers. At the end of her lecture, she defined a “good” advertisement as one that was able to give the observer meaningful information about the communication content.

In motivation research, she used methods that were developed in the radio project, but she continued to improve them. Structured surveys, in-depth interviews and psychological personality tests became more important. Their method consisted of four consecutive steps: First, a conventional target group and market analysis was created , the second was the implementation of in-depth interviews and projective personality tests with 300 to 400 consumers, the third step was a structured survey of 1,200 to 3,000 recipients, and finally The last thing that was carried out was an exploratory consumer survey to examine ad drafts. With this approach, Herzog differed from the other two schools of motivation research, which preferred a purely psychoanalytic approach or relied on statistical knowledge, whereby the first approach in particular was not without criticism. In the end, Herzog chose a kind of middle ground to combine both methods, with which she was extremely successful. During her time as a market researcher, she published mainly in the 1940s and 1950s. However, the performance of their publications is rather low in relation to their importance in the development of market research.

Herzog wrote in the winter edition of "The Public Opinion Research" from 1952/53, which appeared as a special issue on the topic of "International Communications Research", a contribution to the potential and the limits of a content analysis of audience letters. Although she had prejudices against fan mail, she considered the analysis to be a suitable method for observing changes over time and for establishing culture-specific differences in an international comparison.

During the Cold War, the "US Department of State" commissioned extensive accompanying research, including from McCann Erickson, in order to sharpen the profile of "Voice of America" ​​(VoA) and expand its broadcast area. For this, Herzog tested the reactions of audience panels in different countries to the pronunciation and expression of VoA speakers.

The social psychological study of The Jews As Others

In the last phase of her work, Herzog dealt with issues such as xenophobia and anti-Semitism. In 1994 the socio-psychological study “The Jews As Others” was created. This is about the image of the Jews , the perception of Jewish “otherness” by the Austrian population and the spread of old and new anti-Semitic stereotypes. The study is based on 80 intensive interviews that were carried out in three areas of Austria. These locations were chosen to create a wide geographic area and to include areas that would make a significant difference in the number of Jews living there. The sample was evenly distributed between women and men, which was then differentiated again according to age groups. A total of two age groups were interviewed: older people aged 60 or over and a younger group aged 17-35 who were born after the Holocaust . Respondents were selected from the lower and middle socio-economic groups to represent the majority of the population. The aim of the study was to carefully analyze the data to obtain a qualitative insight into the “grass-roots” communication about Jews through the interviews.

The study was driven by two considerations. One of these considerations was the time pressure, because 50 years after the Holocaust there were still people old enough to remember the events before and after National Socialism . It seemed important to Herzog to have "grass-roots" communication with these people before the information could only be passed on as hearsay. The study was carried out in Austria because the residents were the "first victims" of Hitler and German National Socialism. The second essential reason for carrying out this empirical inventory arose from the theoretical concern: During this time, specific questions about anti-Jewish sentiments were often distorted in order to understand the phenomenon of xenophobia in general.

Herzog came to the realization that there was no general xenophobia towards Jews and Judaism, but that people were viewed "differently" by the Austrian population. Herzog presented this “being different” with a discussion rich in quotations. Furthermore, the results indicated that the image of the Jews was passed on to the younger generation by older Austrians.

Publications

• Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet, Herta Herzog (Eds.): "The Invasion from Mars. A Study in the Psychology of Panic. With the Complete Script of the Famous Orson Welles Broadcast." Princeton: Princeton University Press, Princeton 1940.
• Herta Herzog: "Professor Quiz - A Gratification Study." In: Paul F. Lazarsfeld (Ed.): "Radio and the Printed Page. An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas." Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1940, pp. 64-93.
• Herta Herzog: "Children and their Leisure Time Listening to the Radio. A Survey of the Literature in the Field." Bureau of Applied Social Research, New York 1941.
• Herta Herzog: "What Do We Really Know About Daytime Serial Listeners?" In: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Frank N. Stanton (eds.): "Radio Research 1942-1943." Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1944, p. 33.
• Herta Herzog: "Radio - The First Post-War Year." In: "The Public Opinion Quarterly.", Vol. 10, No. 3, 1946, pp. 297-313.
• Herta Herzog: "Listener Mail to the Voice of America." In: "The Public Opinion Quarterly.", Vol. 16, No. 4, 1952, pp. 607-611.
• Herta Herzog: "Why Did People Believe in the 'Invasion from Mars'?" In: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Morris Rosenberg (Eds.): "The Language of Social Research." The Free Press, Collier-Macmillan Limited, New York, London 1955, pp. 420-428.
• Herta Herzog: "Voice and Personality." In: "Zeitschrift für Psychologie.", Vol. 130, No. 3-5, 1993, pp. 300-369.
• Herta Herzog: "The Jews as" Others ": On Communicative Aspects of Antisemitism. A Pilot Study in Austria." The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem 1994.
• Herta Herzog Massing: "Decoding 'Dallas'." In: "Society.", Vol. 24, No. 1, 1986, pp. 74-77.
• Herta Herzog Massing: "The stab of evil. Dallas and Denver Clan. Guaranteed different from everyday life." In: "Medien Journal.", Vol. 14, No. 4, 1990, pp. 191-208.
• Rowena Wyant, Herta Herzog: "Voting Via the Senate Mailbag - Part II." In: "The Public Opinion Quarterly", Vol. 5, No. 4, 1941, pp. 590-624.

literature

• Barbara Schulze: Communication in old age: theories - studies - research perspectives. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 978-3-531-13283-9 .
• Daniela Wiegard: The "Soap Opera" in the mirror of scientific debate . Tectum Verlag Marburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-8288-8029-0 .
• Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog? - A search for clues. In: M&K. Volume 56, No. 2, 2008.
• Elisabeth Klaus / Josef Seethaler (eds.): What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog. PL Academic Research, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / Bruxelles et al. 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-67361-4 .
• Herta Herzog: The Jews as 'Others': On Communicative Aspects of Antisemitism. ( Online ( Memento from January 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive )).
• Martina Thiele: "What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog?" Symposium for a pioneer in empirical communication research. Vienna December 2012 ( online ).
• Wilbur Schramm, Steven H. Chaffee, Everett M. Rogers: The Beginnings of Communication Study in America: A Personal Memoir. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA 1997, ISBN 978-0-7619-0716-9 .

Web links

Literature by and about Herta Herzog in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog . Ed .: Elisabeth Klaus / Josef Seethaler. 2016th edition. PL Academic Research, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / Bruxelles et al. 2016, p. 26-37 .
2. ^ ^{A b} Martina Thiele: "What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog?" Symposium for a pioneer in empirical communication research. December 1, 2012, accessed December 19, 2016 . 
3. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog . Ed .: Elisabeth Klaus / Josef Seethaler. 2016th edition. PL Academic Research, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / Bruxelles et al. 2016, p. 15 .
4. ^ ^{A b} Daniela Wiegard: The "Soap Opera" in the mirror of academic debate . Tectum Verlag Marburg, 1999, p. 23 .
5. ^ ^{A b} Wilbur Schramm, Steven H. Chaffee, Everett M. Rogers: The Beginnings of Communication Study in America: A Personal Memoir . Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA 1997, pp. 55 .
6. ↑ Barbara Schulze: Communication in old age: Theories - studies - research perspectives . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 1998, p. 83 .
7. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog? - A search for clues . 2008, p. 241 f .
8. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog . Ed .: Elisabeth Klaus / Josef Seethaler. 2016th edition. PL Academic Research, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / Bruxelles et al. 2016, p. 35 .
9. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog? - A search for clues . 2008, p. 242-245 .
10. ↑ Herta Herzog: The Jews as 'Others': On Communicative Aspects of Antisemitism. (No longer available online.) 1994, archived from the original on March 15, 2016 ; Retrieved December 19, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ^ Elisabeth Klaus: What Do We Really Know About Herta Herzog? - A search for clues . 2008, p. 248 f .