People act largely on mediated images rather than direct experience
Evidence
During the course of their daily lives, people have direct contact with only a small sector of the physical and social environment. They work in the same setting, travel the same routes, visit the same places, and see the same set of friends and associates. Consequently, their conceptions of social reality are greatly influenced by observational experiences—by what they see, hear, and read—rather than through direct experience. To a large extent, people act on their images of reality. The more people’s view of reality depends on the mass media’s symbolic environment, the greater is its social impact (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 714
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: Article angle: how the ‘reality gap’ between direct contact and mediated reality explains why the same facts persuade different audiences differently - media literacy as a moral question.
Related
- People act on media-formed images of reality more than on direct experience. (similarity 0.93)
- Observational learning lets one model reach vast dispersed populations at once (similarity 0.80)
- Media’s lasting effect is an interpretive frame, not blurred perception (similarity 0.80)
- Media engagement scales up viewers’ self-efficacy and behavior change (similarity 0.79)
- Social science causality is established only through converging divergent methodologies (similarity 0.79)
- Social networks sustain behavior change once media has first motivated it (similarity 0.78)