The reference card

Classic7

The seven techniques named by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1937.

• Bandwagon Urging the audience to adopt a belief or a product because everyone else already has, so that the fear of being left out replaces a judgment of the thing itself. Numbers of adopters offered as the reason to adopt: "millions have switched," "the fastest-growing." The threat of exclusion: "don't be the last," "everyone's t...
• Card stacking Presenting only the facts, figures, and quotations that favor one side, and leaving out everything that doesn't, so that a true selection produces a false impression. A one-sided case with no acknowledged drawback, from a source that had access to the drawbacks. Numbers without denominators, comparisons without baselines, quo...
• Glittering generalities Attaching an idea to words that sound like values, such as freedom, progress, or family, so that the audience approves of it without asking what it actually proposes. Abstract nouns doing the persuading: freedom, security, fairness, the future, real change. No mechanism. The passage says what the proposal is *for* and never *...
• Name-calling Attaching a hostile label to a person, group, or idea so that the audience rejects it without examining the evidence. A charged word is used in place of a description: *regime* for government, *scheme* for plan, so-called* before a title. The label is repeated but never defined...
• Plain folks Presenting a speaker or a product as ordinary, humble, and "of the people," so that the audience trusts it as one of their own rather than judging it on its merits. Emphasis on the speaker's ordinariness rather than on the proposal: childhood, hometown, hobbies, meals. Folksy register in a context that is not folksy: a hedg...
• Testimonial Having a respected or admired person endorse an idea, product, or candidate, so that the audience's regard for the person stands in for a judgment of the thing endorsed. A named person's approval is offered where evidence would be expected. The endorser's expertise is in something else, or their expertise is exactly what's being...
• Transfer Carrying the authority, prestige, or emotional charge of one thing over to another by placing them together, so that a flag, a cross, or a uniform lends its standing to a product or a policy. A symbol is present that has nothing to do with the claim: a flag on a mortgage ad, a lab coat on someone selling supplements, a church in the background of a s...