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Hollingworth's Advertising and Selling
Harry Hollingworth's 1913 book, which grew from lectures to New York advertising men, set out four tasks for an advertisement and tested appeals by ranking them in the laboratory and comparing the ranks with inquiry returns.
- 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
Harry Hollingworth published Advertising and Selling: Principles of Appeal and Response in 1913 with D. Appleton and Company of New York. It was published for the Advertising Men's League of New York City, which held the copyright. Hollingworth was an instructor in psychology at Columbia University and a lecturer in business psychology at New York University. The preface says the book began as lectures given over several years under the League.
The psychological idea
The book divides the work of an advertisement into four tasks: catching attention, holding it, fixing the impression and provoking the response. The preface states four aims: to organize psychological principles of appeal and response, to examine methods and media that succeeded or failed, to run new experiments, and to test appeals beforehand and compare laboratory results with business results keyed to each advertisement.
In practice
In the first chapter, ten engineering seniors ranked five machinery advertisements, and their order matched the order of actual inquiries. The best drew about forty times as many inquiries as the weakest, which cost about six times as much to prepare and run. Eight soap appeals ranked by 25 and then 100 people agreed closely with the manufacturer's ranking and three agency experts. In chapter VII, advertisements relying on interest devices were remembered over 14 times as often as those relying on mechanical devices.
Why it mattered
The book ties laboratory testing to a business question: which advertisement to run before paying for it. In chapter III it also cites two of Scott's readership studies. Hollingworth later co-wrote the 1915 textbook Advertising: Its Principles and Practice with three other authors, and its preface does not say who wrote which chapter.
Limits and qualifications
The tests are small: ten students ranked the machinery advertisements. The chapter VII result is a comparison between two groups of advertisements sorted by six advertising men and three psychologists, using a recognition test on 137 women, and it measures memory, not buying. Tables in the scan are partly garbled, so only figures stated in the prose were used. The book was read only as far as about chapter XII, so its later chapters are not assessed.
Evidence behind the claims
Advertising and Selling was published in 1913 by D. Appleton and Company for the Advertising Men's League of New York City, which held the copyright; Hollingworth is named as instructor in psychology at Columbia University and lecturer in business psychology at New York University; the preface says it began as lectures given over several years under the League.
The book names four tasks of an advertisement (catching attention, holding attention, fixing the impression, provoking the response), and the preface states four aims including new experiments and testing appeals beforehand against keyed business results.
Ten engineering seniors ranked five machinery advertisements, and actual inquiries matched that order; appeal C drew about forty times as many inquiries as appeal D, which cost about six times as much to prepare and run.
Eight soap appeals were ranked in two laboratory tests with 25 and 100 people, and the text says the orders agree closely with the manufacturer's ranking and with the ranking of an agency's three experts, with one swap per column.
In chapter VII, six advertising men and three psychologists classified the 77 full-page advertisements in one issue of Everybody's Magazine, 137 women were tested on recognizing them, and advertisements relying on interest devices were remembered over 14 times as often as those relying on mechanical devices.
Hollingworth's chapter III cites Scott's survey of 2,000 Chicago men's newspaper reading and his observation of 600 men in the Chicago public library.
Advertising: Its Principles and Practice (Ronald Press, 1915) lists four authors: Tipper, Hollingworth, Hotchkiss and Parsons; its preface does not say who wrote which chapter.
People involved
- Harry L. Hollingworth. Author, instructor in psychology at Columbia University and lecturer in business psychology at New York University
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. Hollingworth 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]Advertising and Selling: Principles of Appeal and ResponseHollingworth, H. L.. D. Appleton and Company; scan at Internet Archive, 1913. Book. Primary source.Relevant text checkedRead the OCR text as returned by the fetch tool, characters 0 to 300,000 of about 432,000: title page, preface, and chapters through about XII, searched for the passages used. Tables I to III and VIII are partly garbled, so only figures stated in the prose were relied on. Later chapters were not read.
- [2]Advertising: Its Principles and PracticeTipper, H.; Hollingworth, H. L.; Hotchkiss, G. B.; Parsons, F. A.. The Ronald Press Co.; scan at Internet Archive, 1915. Book. Primary source.Archive page readRead the first 100,000 characters (of about 870,000) of the OCR text: title page and preface only. No chapter attribution to Hollingworth could be confirmed.
Access note: Tables in the scan are partly garbled; figures come from the running text. No other Hollingworth advertising work was checked beyond the 1915 co-authored textbook.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.