Thomas theorem
This means that how a situation is seen will cause the future actions, not the actual truth. In Erving Goffman's 1956 sociological book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he talks a lot about what he calls the definition of the situation, and how it is important that all people see a situation the same. This was based on W. I. Thomas saying, in 1923, that how a person saw situations ("the definition of the situation") would later become part of their personality as they would change how they live their life to be similar to other people.