In one famous football matchup between academic powerhouses Ivy League schools Dartmouth and Princeton in 1951, both starting quarterbacks were knocked out of the game with broken body parts. After Princeton won the highly physical contest, students from both schools were shown game film and asked to make an objective study of which players started the rough housing. Which team initiated post-play shoving, or cheap hits from the blind side?
The answers: 64 percent of Dartmouth students said it was Princeton, and 86 percent of Princeton students said it was Dartmouth.
"A universal truth we've all experienced: people interpret the same objective events around them based on their own personal values, biases, selective attention, and sense of identity." - Ed Diener
Said another way, people instinctively form answers in their head to most every question, whether it's as broad-based as religion or politics, or as objective as who pushed first in a shoving match. Consensus (which is different from unanimity) builds by drawing those answers out, paying them respect, supplementing them with information, and empowering each person to make a final choice.
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