"Unaware of Social Construction of Reality—From Birth"

From birth we tend to think that the new baby comes into the world with a clean slate, one that has the capacity to draw upon it any story that can be imagined. But we as human beings are creatures of habit. The fact that these habits are so well ingrained in society that when a child is born—for the most part these ingrained habits are not recognized as habits. They are accepted as reality. Though each person possesses their own unique set of attitudes, beliefs, and opinions, these were formed on the basis of and drawn from a well that had already been filled by our ancestors, history, and media. One of the most powerful influencers in our social construction of reality that may be even more powerful than our family is the media. By media I do not just mean television, movies, music, the Internet, and radio. I am referring mainly to the historical interpretation of the bible and other important literature. The messages that are produced by the media, of all forms, interacts with the humans already existing knowledge and a socially agreed upon reality is formed.

This socialization process goes on in every society and culture. Socialization is important in the process of personality formation. This is done in order for successful socialization to occur. This then results in uniformity within a society. Which develops into what are called norms. These norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. These social facts come into existence through human construction.

One example of this is, Shiite Muslim men in Iran ritually beating themselves bloody with hands and chains as an act of religious faith commemorating the death of Imam Hussein in 680 a.d.