ABSTRACT
People are largely united in their pursuit to make their communities, nations, and the world a better place. They are, however, often sharply divided over which beliefs and actions are needed to achieve it. In this pursuit, people adopt a set of beliefs and ideas that represent their own reality in the most satisfying way. This perception of the world typically represents the values they have developed over time and helps them explain current affairs and predict the future. People construct their version of reality based on several selected facts and certain interpretations. They purposefully choose to stress some matters while completely undermining other values, and they prefer to adopt some explanations of current events rather than others. People make these constructed realities meaningful for themselves through interaction with others, helping to crystalize their own beliefs into the facts and norms they use in their everyday social communication. These created realities then function as a framework defining people’s behavior. As a result, people follow particular authority figures while entirely mistrusting others.1
