[Review of the book The psychology of the audience

Abstract

Reviews the book, The psychology of the audience by H. L. Hollingworth (1935). The book is an attempt to gather up the scattered bits of experimental evidence which have some bearing on problems of the audience and to supplement them with some generalizations that are plausible on the basis of fundamental psychological theory. The discussion includes both the problems of influencing the audience and the effect of the audience on the speaker. The book is interesting, well-written and has a lot of helpful suggestions for those who are concerned with the subject under consideration. The reviewer's only adverse criticism is a tendency to be a little too categorical in some of the summary statements which are based on comparatively few and sometimes contradictory experiments. These experiments are not always evaluated critically. The book is an interesting attempt to explore a field which has not hitherto been systematically attempted by the psychologist. It should prove stimulating to one looking for experimental problems in this field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)