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Harlow Gale's advertising questionnaires and trials
Harlow Gale sent an advertising questionnaire to about 200 firms in 1895 and ran laboratory trials with students. He reported both in a self-published paper in 1900 and linked repeated exposure to suggestion.
- Where it sits
- Academic psychologyResearch published for other researchers and students.
- Evidence level
- DocumentedThe event or practice is documented by primary or authoritative sources.
- Sources inspected
- 2 of 22 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 0 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
In autumn 1895 Harlow Gale sent a question blank to about 200 business firms, mostly in St Paul and Minneapolis, to study advertising. About twenty were answered and returned. He also ran laboratory trials with students. He published the results as On the Psychology of Advertising in Psychological Studies, number one, issued by himself in Minneapolis in 1900.
The psychological idea
Gale combined two methods. Question blanks collected replies from firms and from 72 men and 33 women, who chose advertisements and gave reasons. In the laboratory, observers viewed magazine advertisements and special sheets, and Gale scored their attention. Series A used 162 magazine pages, 8 observers and 3,155 trials. He read the results through ideas about attention and suggestion.
In practice
Relevant words gained the most attention overall, attention rose with type size, and the horizontal quarter above the middle of the page was on the whole the most effective. About 60 per cent of answers made the first choice from the age or reliability of the firm. Gale argued that repeated exposure to a name can lead to buying through a sensori-motor or idea-motor reaction, which he compared to suggestion within hypnotism. He favored a plain statement of the firm or name in a permanent trade mark form.
Why it mattered
The paper is a documented example of a psychologist testing advertising with questionnaires and laboratory trials. A Spanish-language editorial note says John Eighmey, a professor at the University of Minnesota, found Gale's writings by chance in 2004, and cites Eighmey and Sar's 2008 account in the Journal of Advertising.
Limits and qualifications
About 200 firms were asked and only about twenty replied, so the firm data are thin. The laboratory groups were small: series A used eight observers, students in Gale's advanced psychology course. Series C, with 13 observers, almost reversed the attention order of the earlier series, with irrelevant cuts highest. Gale reads informants' failed recall of brand details as evidence of unconscious mental life, which is his interpretation. The Eighmey and Sar article was not opened.
Evidence behind the claims
Gale's Question Blank No. 3, headed University of Minnesota, was sent in autumn 1895 to about 200 business firms, mostly in St Paul and Minneapolis, and only about twenty were answered and returned; the paper appeared in Psychological Studies, number one, published by the author in Minneapolis in 1900.
Series A of the laboratory trials used 162 magazine pages, 8 observers (students in Gale's advanced psychology course) and 3,155 trials; series C used 13 observers and almost reversed the attention order, with irrelevant cuts highest.
Gale's summary says relevant words gained most attention overall, attention rose with type size, and the horizontal quarter above the middle of the page was on the whole more effective than the other quarters.
Replies came from 72 males and 33 females, and Gale writes that about 60 per cent of the answers made their first choice from the age or reliability of the firm.
Gale describes the effect of finally buying an article that has been continually reiterated as a sensori-motor or idea-motor reaction compared to suggestion within hypnotism, says only about half the informants seemed consciously influenced by advertising, favours a plain statement of the firm or name in a permanent trade mark form, and reads informants' failed recall of brand details as showing unconscious mental life.
A Spanish-language editorial presentation says Gale wrote On the Psychology of Advertising in 1900, that John Eighmey of the University of Minnesota found Gale's writings in 2004, and cites Eighmey and Sar (2008), Journal of Advertising 36(4).
People involved
- Harlow Gale. Psychologist who ran the questionnaires and trials
- John Eighmey. Advertising scholar who found Gale's writings in 2004, per a Spanish-language note
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 13.1: What Is Industrial and Organizational Psychology?Chapter 13, Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Context. The section discusses this topic.The section covers early applied psychology and advertising, naming Scott and Munsterberg. Gale is not named.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
2 of 2 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]Psychological Studies, Number One (includes On the Psychology of Advertising)Gale, H.. Published by the author, Minneapolis; scan at Internet Archive, 1900. Book. Primary source.Relevant text checkedRead the OCR text as returned by the fetch tool, characters 0 to 200,000 of about 418,000: title page, methods, series A to C, question blank findings and summary. Table XX is garbled in the OCR, so per-sex counts were not read. Later pages were not read.
- [2]Psicología de la publicidad de productos alimenticios (Spanish translation of a Scott chapter, with editorial presentation)Scott, W. D.; presentation by Bermejo Berros, J.. Pensar la Publicidad, 2(2), 145-158, 2008. Journal article. Secondary account.Relevant text checkedRead pages 145 to 147 of the PDF as page images: the editorial presentation. The Scott chapter itself was not read. Used only for the Gale, Eighmey and 1908 Scott statements.
Access note: Eighmey and Sar (2008) was not opened. The title page of the scan gives the month in a garbled form, so only the year is stated.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.