Information Avoidance Study shows how people build their own reality.

[ContraBardus]

This seems relevant to our interests...

 

Carnegie Mellon University Article

 

Link to American Economic Association Study

[LogicalFallacy]

"And evidence that meets the rigorous demands of science is often discounted if it goes against what people want to believe, as illustrated by widespread dismissal of scientific evidence of climate change."

 

Yep. Same goes for Christian creationists dismissing astronomy, and geology for age of universe/earth.

 

Now I find archaeology can be an area where people are very selective. So lets take Biblical archaeology - someone finds something, it conforms with some biblical narrative (Jericho and Joshua is a good example). This is then used as proof the whole bible is true. But hang on, all we know is that there seems to have been an earth quake, and a fire. It's quite possible some early Israelites then came across a ruined city and proceeded to write a big conquer story out of it. Also if you want to shift you dates you have to deal with other stuff that lines up... and evidence shows the city has been inhabited going back 8,000 years.... how does that fit in with 6,000 earth.

 

So yes, people build the reality they want to see.