When we read a book, the first thing we require is to get hold of the character we arr reading about. It may be the protagonist or even any side character. For example take the case of Harry Potter, if you have read any of the books, you will remember he has green eyes. Did u see him? Of course not! It is the image we have built up in our mind and for this, the author is responsible. There may be other examples, have u ever read Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes? In the starting pages we get to know Holmes by Watson's description. It was an image created in his eyes that was transferred into our mind. The same thing happened with any client who came across Watson or Holmes. But the image of Watson was created in the reader's mind by his own thinking and assumptions. In any case my point is that before we proceed to read a book we must be acquainted with the main characters either by the author's description or by our own imaginations.
From books we come to real life. Does the same thing happen here? Yes, to some extent because when we claim we know a person, it simply means we can imagine the person in our mind. But there is a difference the image that is created in our mind may not be the same as created in someone else' mind because in this case there is no author who is transferring the image from his mind to ours. But does that mean somebody is wrong somewhere? May be not.
In a simple way, we can compare the whole thing to a cascaded if-then-else statement. Don't u think so? Depending on the situations, and reactions the end result varies. But may be this is the simplest analogy. Reality is much more complex. More so because sometimes the "conditions" remain same but the "statements" change giving altogether a new result.
