Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 829–831 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review Research in Brief Smart friendly liars: Public perception of public relations practitioners over time Coy Callison a,* , Patrick F. Merle b , Trent Seltzer a a College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, United States b School of Communication, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 28 February 2014 Received in revised form 10 September 2014 Accepted 13 September 2014 Keywords: Public relations Survey Perception a b s t r a c t Two national surveys of the U.S. public in 2003 and 2012 asked participants to list words describing public relations practitioners. Analyses reveal that the majority of the words related to practitioner personality and intellectual traits were positive, while the ethical terms used to portray practitioners remained predominately negative over the last decade. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In 2013, Gallup conducted a nationwide survey that found 82% of respondents rated nurses as having high or very high honesty and ethical standards (lobbyist brought up the rear by earning the same evaluation form only 6%) (Gallup, 2013). Little light was shed on perceptions of public relations practitioners, however, as the field was not among the 22 professions evaluated. Nonetheless, PR scholars and practitioners have long wrestled with questions regarding public relations and how those working in the field are perceived. Prior works have shown that educators, practitioners, and students believed that public relations suffers from a negative image (Newsom et al., 1993). Additionally, studies of PR students revealed that they thought that being “good with people” was the most important skill for a practitioner, and that the field was equated with “spin” (Bowen, 2003, 2009). And while image of practitioners is an important facet of the profession, perhaps more important is how these perceptions of practitioners influence their ability to do their jobs. While public relations practitioners, academics, and students have provided valuable insight into the field, limited empir- ical research examined how the public considers public relations and its practitioners. Results from a national telephone survey indicated that public relations was perceived more positively than expected given the negative frames predominant in the media. However, the profession was still associated primarily with publicity and media relations activities (White & Park, 2010), and experimental research has indicated that public relations practitioners are often perceived as less credible than non-practitioner sources (Callison, 2004). To extend this line of research, the current study surveys the general U.S. public at two time points to determine how practitioners are generally perceived. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 8068345344. E-mail addresses: coy.callison@ttu.edu (C. Callison), pmerle@fsu.edu (P.F. Merle), trent.seltzer@ttu.edu (T. Seltzer). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.09.003 0363-8111/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.