Modernization and Social Change

Peter Berger

ANALYSIS OF DANIEL LERNER's THEORY

OF COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Mariana Barresi
I.D.800-53-2035
Fall 1989
 2

Introduction:

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically Lerner's view of

modernization and the active parts it assigns to mass communication in it. Since
1958, when Lerner's book The Passing of Traditional Society, was published, a
great deal of attention has been given to communication as an instrument to
accelerate development. Lerner's theory argues that in order to overcome
underdevelopment it is vital to substitute traditional ways of thinking held by a
society by more modern ones and that mass media can be very helpful in this
process. It also concentrates on individuals as the key factor in social change.
Behind this assumption there also is a conceptualization of modernization
or what the developmental process entails. Hedebro, in his book
Communication and Social Change in Developing Countries, points out the
following regarding these early views about development and communication:
"The first observation is that the task of the media should be to alter people's
psychological or mental set. People should think in other ways than before. This
particular view of how development is brought about has been a prominent
feature of this tradition ever since." 1
In the 1960's, the abilities of the mass media to stimulate development
were overestimated. Lessons can be drawn from critically examining Lerner
theory, which is taken as a standard on mass media and development, as well
avery influential in shaping programs of development.

Methodology

It will include the focal points and the key arguments of this theory. The
functions of communication will be examined in terms of how communication
can bring about change. Finally, strengths and flaws of the explanation will also
be analyzed and then some general conclusions will be drawn.

The theory
To understand Lerner's theory it is important to examine his view of the
process of modernization. He argues that the Western modernization process
is the basic model that any society might follow in order to achieve
modernization. He states "Western society still provides the most developed
model of societal attributes (power, wealth, skill, rationality)." The notion of
mobility is central to Western modernization. Among sociologists there is a tacit

1Goran Hedebro, Communication and Social Change in Developing Countries

p.14.
 3

agreement that since the industrial revolution large numbers of people have
shifted from rural to urban areas. For example, Peter Burger, in his book The
Capitalist Revolution, has suggested that "ongoing industrialization, regardless
of its sociopolitical organization, is the basic determinant of social mobility." He
further argues that "it is modernization, not capitalism that accounts for the
basic shape of social mobility in Western societies." 2 Regarding such massive
movements in the West due to people's search for a better life, Lerner stresses
that they "became intimate withthe idea of change by direct experience." 3 He
further argues that this physical mobility brings about social mobility and with it
"came into operation a 'system' of bourgeois values that embraced social change
as normal." 4
This perspective of social change is very much like that of Karl Deustch. From his
perspective, social mobilization makes people more available for change. It does
so by inducing them or teaching them to change their residence, their
occupations, their communications, and their associates among other factor.
Social mobilization gives rise to new needs, new aspirations and new demands.
Social mobilization implies increased political development of the population,
but also increased challenges to political development of the institutions. Lerner
depicts rationality as a distinct feature of Western societies and emphasizes that a
"mobile society has to
encourage rationality, for the calculus of choice shapes individual behavior and
conditions its rewards. People come to see their future as manipulable rather
than ordained and their personal prospects in terms of achievement rather than
heritage." 5
It follows that for individuals of modern societies,the world is manageable.
Their destiny is not subject to faith or heritage; rather they have control over it.
This line of thought seems to be closely related to Max Weber's thesis on the
interrelationship between the Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; in
The Achieving Society, David McClelland continues Weber's analysis. He argues
that "behind the Protestant ethic there was a more basic need, namely, a need for
achievement. 6"
According to Kunkczik "The modern personality is characterized by a phycho-
social complex of values. There is particular emphasis on a preparedness for new
experiences and an openness toward innovations; a democratic orientation that

2P.Burger,

The Capitalist Revolution,

p.60
3DanielLerner,
The Passing of Traditional Society,
p. 47.
4Lerner, p.48
5 Lerner, p.48.
6 M.Kunkczik, Communication and Social Change, p.108.
 4

implies a distributive justice based on achievement as well as on the dignity of

the human personality as value concepts. These along with a planning, forward-
looking way of acting, one that is guided by an attitude that the world is
basically manageable, that it runs according to the rules of science and
technology. 7"
When referring to the global relevance of the Western model Lerner
states: "Increasing urbanization has tended to increase media exposure;
increasing media exposure has 'gone with' wider economic participation (per
capita income) and political participation (voting) .8"Essential elements of the
Western modernization are both 1) mobile personalities, equated with empathy,
and 2) mobility multipliers, equated with mass media. In regard to the clash
between tradition and modernization in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and
Turkey, Lerner find that "these societies-in-a- hurry have little patience with the
historical pace of Western development; what happened in the West over
centuries, some Middle Easterners now seek to accomplish in years.9"
Lerner when explaining his theory contrast the Western and the LDC
situation."Populations that were as rural, agricultural, illiterate, and poor as
was Europe's five centuries ago suddenly were plunged into a world where
print, film, radio, television--and now satellites--were already in operation.
'Catching up' became their slogan. This required an instant 'mobilization of
the periphery' by the abrupt transformation of a single generation,
an'acceleration of history' indeed!10" Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society,
deals extensively with mass media and opinion formation in these traditional
societies.11"
Its importance stems, according to Stevenson, from the fact "it influenced a
generation of thinking about what was happening throughout the Third World
and how that change could be channeled toward rapid political and economic
growth.12" Lerner was a pioneer in the study of the impact the mass media on
the transition from traditional to modern societies. David Riesman in the
introduction of Lerner's book states "the pace of change has been immensely
accelerated by the coming of mass media --radio and movies-- which do not
require the arduous steps of literacy.13 " According to Lerner's view, the

7 Kunkczik, p 114
8 Lerner, p. 46.
9Lerner, p.47.

10
Schramm and Lerner (ed.)
Communication and Change...
p. 288.
11Robert Stevenson,
Communication Development and the Third World,
p. 17.
12Stevenson, p. 18.
13Lerner, p. 4.
 5

transition from traditional to modern society is linked at the individual level by a

change in the personality structure. Mobile personalities are deemed as an
essential trait in the modernization process. "The mobile person is distinguished
by a high capacity for identificationwith new aspect of his environment, he
comes equipped with the mechanism needed to incorporate new demands upon
himself that arise outside of his habitual experience.14"
Lerner used the word empathy when referring to the projection and
introjection psychological mechanisms that enlarge the identity of any human
being. This key concept of empathy is defined by Lerner as "the inner
mechanism which enables newly mobile persons to operate efficiently in a
changing world. Empathy is
the capacity to see oneself in the other fellow's situation. 15
Since the transition from traditional to modern society entails the capacity to
adopt new roles, his empathy capacity is crucial in the process of adjusting to a
new environment.
In brief, what creates empathy is the psychic mobility. So empathy is psychic
mobility; in the first stage, physical mobility creates it. In turn a mobile psyche
creates a psychologically mobile individual, which is a key element of modern
societies. The main hypothesis of Lerner's theory is that "high empathic
capacity is the predominant personal style only in modern society, which is
distinctively industrial, urban, literate and participant." 16
Lerner offers a careful definition of several key factors in the modernization
process and explains in what order they occur. 17
He takes into consideration four other variables, namely urbanization, literacy,
media participation and political participation. He also states that "the
relationship between these variables is systemic.18 The first phase is
urbanization, defined as "the proportion living in cities over 50,000." He regards
urbanization as the key variable of the system due to the fact that "it is with
urbanization that the modernization process historically has begun in Western
societies." 19
Once about 10 percent of the population was urbanized, Lerner argues,

14.footnote

Lerner, p. 49.
.fn end
15.footnote

Lerner, p. 49.
.fn end
16Lerner, p. 50.
17 Stevenson p. 20.

18 Lerner p. 63.
19Lerner, P. 58.
 6

urbanization and literacy 20 . Literacy is defined as the proportion of the

population able to read in one language. 21
increase together in a direct (monotonic) relationship until they reach 25
percent, which appears to be the "critical optimum of urbanization. Beyond this
literacy continues to rise independently of the growth of cities." 22
Concentration of people makes possible mass education which provides literacy
skills. It thereby helps to form a market for mass media. According to Lerner,
literacy was followed by a rapid increment of media consumption.
Lerner defines media participation "as the proportion buying newspapers,
owning radios, and attending cinemas." 23 In turn, this higher consumption of
media brings about political and economical participation. Lerner advances the
following argument: "rising media participation tends to raise participation in all
sectors of the social system. In accelerating the spread of empathy, it also
diffuses those other modern demands to which participant institutions have
responded: in the consumer's economy via cash (and credit), in the public
forum via opinion, in the representative polity via voting. 24
According to this line of thought, the result of this process is what he call the
"participant society". This is a society in which "most people go through school,
read newspapers, receive cash payments in jobs they are legally free to change,
buy goods for cash in an open market, vote in elections which actually decide
among competing candidates, and express opinions on many matters which are
not their personal business." 25
Lerner underscores not only that people have opinions but that they know their
opinion will matter. In the previous pages, the basic assumption of Lerner's
theory of modernization were outlined. Now it is important to ask
why did mass media become a crucial link in the modernization process ?
Lerner points out that the expansion of physical transport marked the
"initial phase in the modern expansion of human communication." He adds that
geographical mobility became, in this phase, the usual vehicle of social
mobilization. 26. However the expansion of physical mobility has been largely
superseded by the introduction of the mass media. The mediated experience
through the mass media fostered the expansion of psychic mobility. In Lerner's
terms this means "that more people now command greater skills in imagining
themselves as strange persons in strange situations, places and times than did
people in any previous historical epoch." 27 However the disadvantage of

20
21
22Lerner, p. 59.
23Lerner, p. 57.
24Lerner, p. 62.
25 Lerner, pp. 50-51.
26 Lerner, p. 52.
27Lerner, p. 53.
 7

direct experience over mediated experience is that the traveler "must take
responsive
action toward the stimuli presented by the new environment." 28 The mediated
experience did not allow the discharge of interior tension , "the response to new
stimuli remains confined to his own interior." 29 Lerner's key argument is that
mass media are favorable in nourishing empathy which is one of the
characteristics
of modern men. Empathy is a prerequisite for mentally taking over new roles
and for adapting to different and unknown situations. Lerner sees mass media
as vital to the fostering of empathy. Stevenson states that "thus, shaping of
empathic personalities is fostered in the traditional societies by the introduction
of mass communication." 30 Then empathy set into motion the modernization
process. "Modernization according to Lerner, involves a comprehensive
character alteration in direction of psychic mobility." 31 Peter Golding
comments "Psychic mobility, or'the ability to project oneself into the role of
another,' derives from
inference theory and Mead's role-taking theories. Personality structures in
traditional society are held to be inert and confined; therefore, 'comunication
strategy must create the appropriate attitudinal environment for constructive
activity.' This can also be done by expanding the imagination of transitional
man, giving him 'a high capacity for identification with new aspects of this
environment. A mobile psyche creates a mobile individual, and such are the key
requirements of modern industrial society."32 In brief, the mass media should
act as mobile multipliers. An expanding mass media system should in turn
develop attitudes more favorable to social change and thus promote
development.

Which are the theory's weaknesses?

It is possible to discredit a theory by different procedures. In the present case, it
would be enough to delegitimize it be examining the way concepts were defined
and operationalized as well as carefully examining the methodology used. In
regard to the definition of the key four variables. Education and mass media
were defined as number of pupils and number of radios respectively; whereas
political and economic participation were defined as number of votes and per
capita income, respectively. Is the measure of these indicators valid? In the
case of the mass media could any definition disregard factors such as exposure

28Lerner, p. 54.
29 Lerner, p. 54.

30Stevenson, p. 113.
31Kunczik, p. 113.
32Peter Golding , Media Role in National Development,

p. 47.
.
 8

to mass media or the quality content shown in it. When Golding critized Lerner's
indices, he stated "Education is the number of pupils in school, not a system of
cultural transmission; mass communication is the number of radios, with no
concern to their use." 33 Most important, this theory sustains that mass media
availability
could serve as "sufficient condition for individual learning and change." The
flaw of this reasoning was that it established a direct linear conclusion from mass
media content to effect. It overlooked the fact that people's perception,
interpretation and selection of information is conditioned to people's exposure
to a formal education system. 34 Then, the crucial variable is education not mass
media. Besides, it is also important to consider access problems: Who can
afford media and who has skills like literacy to decode content? Are the urban,
educated, affluent sectors of
society the ones to become developed? Accordingly, though individuals seems
to benefit from this perspective of development, the benefits cannot be extended
to the whole country. Equally unfortunate was to define economic
participation by per capita income without considering how income was
distributed. Per capita income as an economic indicator tells nothing about how
the wealth is distributed in a given society. In this respect Michael Kunczik
states "You can arrive at the same per-capita income if a very few individuals
have very high and very many individuals very low incomes; and again, if
nearly all have equal incomes. 35 Also, equating
political participation with voting could be misleading especially when not
specifying the political system; for instance, elections in totalitarian states were
voting is mandatory could be absolute misleading. Another problem regarding
using communication to achieve political participation is that increases in
communication can stimulate major aspirations that when only partially satisfied
can lead to growing discontent and then to a decline of government legitimacy.
How was empathy tested?
Lerner used a set of nine "projective questions" which were used to test each
respondent's empathic capacity. Lerner explains that the common denominator
of each question was that they asked the respondent "to imagine himself in a
situation other than his real one." For instance, what would you do if you where
the head of the government of the editor of a newspaper or a radio. A
characteristic answer among the Turkish peasant in regard to being the
President, read like this: "My God! How can you ask such a thing? How can I...I
cannot...president of Turkey... master of the whole world? " Vernon cast
some light on the problem of the use of Western parameters disregarding the
context. He points out that western researchers "'tend to evaluate the intelligence
of other ethnic groups on the same
criteria, though it would surely be more psychologically sound to recognize
that such groups required, and stimulate, the growth of different mental as well

33Golding, p. 46.
34Robert E.Simmons, "Mass Media Influence on Content Preference.
35Kunczik, p. 117.
 9

as physical skills for coping with their particular environments."36 Behind this
Western bias lies the assumption that the course taken by Western Europe and
the U.S. would foretell the future of the underdeveloped world, thus
overlooking
important aspects of the political, economical and social realities of any given
country. Besides, researchers also found that lack of empathy can be traced to
others causes than individual incapabilities. In this sense, Golding finds that
"lack of empathy ...is the result of frustrated experience, not the cause of
fatalism."37 Additionally, Stevenson offers some insightful comments about
Lerner's theory; he says, "Even if limited to the simple definition of economic
growth, development seemed to have more to do with factors unrelated to mass
media. Political development which was the outcome of development in the
original Lerner study, was even less clearly linked to media growth." He further
adds "Communication is at best a complement to development, not its core, with
power in only a few areas."38 But, despite the criticism that this theory arouse,
does it has any strength?, What can we learn from it? Daniel Lerner deals with
empathy as a key force in the process of individual modernity in developing
countries. He thinks that empathy is psychic mobility and that in the first stage
physical mobility creates it and that the mass media fostered its expansion.
Lerner, "suggested that the mass media of communication are particularly
effective in non-formal teaching, because they simplify reality, presenting
information in a context that facilitates perception and learning." 39 When
asking, "What would you do if you were...? he was measuring people's capacity
of dealing with an "as if" situation. This procedure by which someone has to
generalize knowledge from other situation is more linked to cognitive process
and theories of learning than to empathy. Simmons conceptualizes the problem
in the following way, "A person who encounters new information that might be
learned is confronted with a processing problem: He/she must recognize the
attributes
that can be used to classify the new information and then associate A cognitive
structure may be understood as a logically ordered information structure." 40
Then, taking information through mass media and its rearrangement will be
determine by the cognitive structure of each individual. It follows that the
relationship between mass media and empathy is explained by education. This
is so because mass media does not predictable correlate information. "Education
is the crucial variable to the interpretation of the mass media and development
content preference relationship." 41 Mass media can give information but could

36Kunczic, p. 115.
37Golding, p 47.
38Stevenson, p 116 and p 119
39Simmons, pp. 2-3.
40Simmons, p. 4.
41Simmons
 10

not provide correlation of information. In this sense, empathy is a limited

concept; more appropriate is to use the explanatory structure of human
information processing or the cognitive structuring. Cognitive structure is what
affects people'information processing and complexity in use. Higher psychic
mobility presumably is correlated with higher cognitive complexity or the
ability to rearrange information. Then education and literacy become more vital
to this process than mass media. Besides, people with greater psychic mobility
tend to value information more than those with less. This is why higher psychic
mobility can be connected with innovative persons. If you can put information
together to solve problems then you are more likely to be innovative. Frederick
Frey, who support the pattern of change advanced by Lerner argues that " an
elite, more open to change and more exposed to media, became the innovators of
new ideas and practices; at a certain point their examples diffused to a broader
segment of the population until finally all but a few laggards had changed." 42
But what is Lerner's Legacy?
Theories are models of reality--not reality itself. According to Jerald Hage,
"Theories are much like weddings, something old, something new, something
borrowed, and something blue. The latter represents results we would not like to
see, predictions that are disturbing to our values. Usually, good sociological
theories
have all this." 43 This analogy suggest that theories as approximations to truth
are a permanent construction and reconciliation of new and old theories.
Hage adds "Theories are never truth or false. They are partly true, part of the
time... it remains something that is never completely right or wrong. Thus we
must strive continuously to improve our theories." 44 Knowledge on a certain
issue comes in degrees. In this sense, Lerner's theory can be seen as a good
starting point in the knowledge about communication and development.
If considering that Lerner intends to explain this complex issue with the
knowledge available at that time, then we can come to the conclusion that his
efforts were not in vain, because other theorist's can build up new theories from
Lerner's own findings. Lerner in the preface to one of his books wrote "The
best service a model can render is to hasten its own obsolescence by leading to a
better one." 45
Perhaps this can be seen as Lerner's own legacy. Finally,
what about the conceptualization of change behind this theory?
Change is the by product of the adoption of modern attitudes by the individuals
in a given society. Individuals are the key factor in social change; how they
process information is vital to an understanding of development and change.
This view of how to advance social change has been largely contested by other
theories that assumed that change is not a consequence of changing the

42Stevenson, p. 116.
43Hage, H., Techniques and Problems of Theory Construction in Sociology
P. 185.
44Hage,H. p 186
45Wilbur Schramm and Daniel Lerner, Communication and Change The Last Ten

Years, p. 61
 11

individuals of a given society, but a result of changing the structure of the

relationship between the national society and the global context. Then the
elusive question is:
what makes societies change?
The controversial nature of this question remains as a challenge to
developmental theorists. However what could not be disregarded is the
importance of communication in the change process. Despite the degree of
importance that theorist assign to communication in the development process,
Hedebro states, "No change can occur without flows of information.
Communication is very much involved in the change process, and those who
have access to communication facilities are in a position to exert a strong
influence on the direction the change will take." 46.

Bibliography

Berger, Peter,
The Capitalist Revolution
New York, Basic Books Inc Publishers, 1986

46Hedebro, pp. 9-10.

 12

Berger, Peter,
Invitation to Sociology, A humanistique perspective
New York, ANchor Books, 1963

Deutsch, Karl W.,

"Social Mobilization and Political Development"
pp. 153-176

Golding, Peter, "Media Role in National Development, Critique of a

Theoretical Ortodoxy," Journal of Communication;
Summer 1974, 39-53

Goran, Hedebro;
Communication and Social Change in Developing Nations
A critical View, the Iowa University Press, Ames, IOWA, 1982 ,

Grunig, E.James; " A General System Theory of Communication, Poverty, and

Underdevelopment," from the Book, F.L Casmir, Intercultural and
International Communication, University Press of America, 1978

Hage Herald,
Techniques and Problems of Theory Construction in Sociology,
New York, John Wilkyc Sons, 1972

Kunczik,Michael,
Communication and Social Change, A summary of theories
policies and experiences for media practitioners in the Third World,
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung,

Lerner, Daniel
The Passing of Traditional Society
New York, Free Press, 1958

Simmons,Robert; "Mass Media Influence on Context Preference: Overstated

expectations in development projects, Paper presented International
Com.Div.Assn.for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1987,
Conference-San Antonio

Stevenson, Robert L,
Communication Development and the Third World,
Longman,
New York & London, l988

Schramm Wilbur and Lerner Daniel (ed.)

Communication and Change, the Last Ten Years and the Next
The University Press of Hawaii, 1978
 13

Valenzuela, J.Samuel and Valenzuela Arturo,; "Modernization and Dependecy,

Alternative perspectives in the study of Latin American Underdevelopment,"
Comparative Politics;
July 1978