From a paper by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport and Janet Faden in the December, 1940 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly:

It is well known that waves of interest in governmental reform are notoriously short-lived for the population at large; yet they do constitute a lasting tide of concern for a handful of professional reformers.

So far as the average man is concerned, it appears that democracy will have to be content with brief periods of participation.

After his short surges of interest in the public welfare, he must be expected to turn back to his vocational and domestic routine.

In summary, the evidence reported in this study is interpreted as supporting five generalizations which are offered here as tentative laws in the new field of the psychology of newspapers:

(1) issues are skeletonized;
(2) any given newspaper’s field of influence is well-patterned;
(3) readers are more emotional than editors;
(4) public interest as reflected in newspapers is variable in time;
(5) public interest rapidly fatigues and presses for an early closure

Allport and Faden drew their conclusions from the debate over the Neutrality Act in the long run up to American participation in WW2…