The 1939 definition
Transfer comes from the same list as name calling, glittering generality, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking and band wagon. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, a US group that existed from 1937 to 1941, published the seven devices to help ordinary people recognize persuasion techniques in newspapers and on the radio.
The fullest wording is in The Fine Art of Propaganda, a 1939 study of Father Coughlin's radio speeches edited by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. It says transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable. It then adds the reverse case: transfer can also carry authority, sanction, and disapproval to cause us to reject something the propagandist would have us reject.
So the device works in both directions. A cause can be dressed in a symbol people love, or an opponent can be placed next to something people already distrust. In each case nothing new is argued about the cause or the opponent. The feeling attached to one thing is simply moved onto another.
The physics department page at Southern Methodist University (SMU) that reproduces the seven devices gives a shorter version of the definition and then a plain gloss: transfer is an effort to move your approval of something you respect onto something else the propagandist wants you to approve of. Its one practical example is that using a flag as a background for photographs helps.
Symbols do most of the work
The 1939 book is specific about the raw material. It says symbols are constantly used in transfer. With the Cross, it writes, the propagandist lends the sanctity of the Christian religion to his program. The flag, standing for the nation and for patriotism, performs a similar service, and cartoonists use Uncle Sam to portray an aged consensus of public opinion.
The authors explain why this is effective: these symbols stir emotions, and at their very sight the whole complex of feelings people hold about church or nation is aroused, in the book's phrase, with the speed of light. That speed is the point. A symbol reaches the reader before any argument has been made, so the approval is already in place by the time the claim arrives.
The book also warns that propagandists seldom let a transfer depend on one symbol. Music, pageantry, uniforms, ritual and scenery, it says, are all studied and used when appropriate. A rally, a broadcast or an advertisement can stack several of these at once, so that no single element looks like the argument, yet together they set the mood the propaganda needs.
Transfer in images and advertising
Wikipedia's entry on transfer (checked 20 October 2026) gives association as another name for it and describes it as projecting the positive or negative qualities of a person, entity, object or value onto another, in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It says the technique is often highly visual and often uses symbols superimposed over other images.
The Wikipedia entry (checked 20 October 2026) offers two common uses. One is a US president being filmed or photographed in front of the national flag, which matches the SMU page's note about flags in photographs. The other is celebrity endorsement, which the entry lists as another form of transfer. The Institute itself treated a named person speaking for a cause as a separate device, testimonial, so the boundary between the two is a matter of emphasis rather than a fixed rule.
A useful way to keep them apart: testimonial puts words in a respected person's mouth, while transfer relies on placement and atmosphere. A product shown beside a flag says nothing at all, yet the viewer may come away with a feeling about it. With no explicit claim on the page, there is nothing obvious to fact-check, which is why the Institute's questions focus on the connection instead.
The four questions to ask
The Institute did not claim that every use of a symbol is dishonest. The 1939 text asks how we can distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate, the fair from the unfair, application of the device. Its answer is a set of questions, and it says we must teach ourselves to suspend judgment until we have answered them.
| The 1939 question | What it separates | Example answer for a flag-backed product ad (hypothetical) |
|---|---|---|
| What is the proposal, stated as simply and concretely as possible? | The actual request from the mood around it | Buy this brand of pickup truck |
| What is the meaning of the thing whose prestige is being borrowed? | The symbol from the feelings it stirs | The flag stands for the nation and for patriotism |
| Is there any legitimate connection between the two? | Real links from staged ones | Only if the claim is specific, such as where the truck is built, and can be checked |
| Leaving the trick out, what are the merits of the proposal alone? | The case from its packaging | Price, reliability and safety record, judged without the flag |
The left column quotes the book's four questions in condensed form. The example column is our own illustration of how they might be applied to an imagined advertisement, not a case from the Institute. The pattern it shows is the one the book cares about: once the symbol is set aside, a proposal either still stands on specific, checkable merits or it does not.
The third question does the most work. Sometimes there is a real link. A veterans' charity displaying a military emblem, or a church group using a cross, may be connected to the symbol in a way that can be stated and checked. The device becomes unfair when the connection exists only in the picture.
Why the Institute paired devices with self-examination
The book places the seven devices after what it calls the seven ABC's of propaganda analysis. Two of them bear directly on transfer. One asks readers to behold their own reaction to the conflict in a piece of propaganda, because knowing our own opinions on a situation we feel strongly about makes us more objective. Another asks us to doubt that our opinions are our very own, since, the authors argue, they have been largely shaped by inheritance and environment, including home, church, school and political party.
Our reading, not the book's: that second point is a reminder that careful readers are not immune. The book's examples of transfer symbols, the Cross and the flag, belong to the same church and nation it lists among those influences. A reader who reacts strongly to a flag, a religious image or a party emblem is exactly the reader a transfer is built for, and the ABC's ask that reader to notice the reaction before judging the claim.
Transfer often travels with other devices. For the written side of persuasion, our guide to loaded language looks at words that carry a built-in value judgment. A selective set of facts placed under a respected banner combines transfer with card stacking, another of the Institute's seven.
Is the 1939 list still useful?
The SMU page offers a caution of its own: the Institute's devices were useful in 1939 but would be considered simplistic now. It also notes that the Institute closed because, with war approaching, it could not maintain a dispassionate analysis of all propaganda. At the same time, the page observes that the devices still appear to be well known, including in an exhibit at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and Technology in Albuquerque.
The list's age is a fair warning against treating transfer as a full theory of persuasion. Its value is narrower. It names a move that is easy to miss because it makes no claim, and it gives four questions that still work when the symbol in front of you is a logo, a hashtag or a filter rather than a painted banner.
The 1939 authors put the larger goal plainly. They define propaganda as expression of opinion or action deliberately designed to influence others with reference to predetermined ends, and they contrast the propagandist, who seldom wants careful scrutiny, with the scientist, who wants it most. Applied to transfer, scrutiny means looking past the symbol to the proposal it surrounds.