People act on media-formed images of reality more than on 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

• XREF: Explains mechanically how mediated caricatures of out-groups drive real-world policy support absent direct contact — core to the Islamophobia-rationalization vault claims. — connects to: Cultural products shape perception so that reality seems to continue the medium’s world. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 98; Media act as a genetic code mutating the real into the hyperreal. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 112; US society’s speed and image-saturation have displaced causal depth by surface effects. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1840 (+6 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 714