I took a class taught by Lee Ross. The main real-world topic used in that class to illustrate a lot of this stuff was "peace in the middle east." For example,

I took a class taught by Lee Ross. The main real-world topic used in that class to illustrate a lot of this stuff was "peace in the middle east." For example, no matter what was printed in the NY Times it was perceived as obviously skewed as being either wildly pro-israel or wildly pro-palestinian... depending on the affiliations of the people reading it. Literally the same article. The idea that everyone deeply believes that media (or other people/organizations etc) are deeply skewed/biased, yet the nature of the perceived bias varies in _opposite_ ways depending on their personal beliefs, is kind of depressing. The meta-theme I sort of got from that class was that social psychologists like Dr. Ross genuinely got into the field wanting to change the world and help people to end wars etc. through applied social science. However, the more research they did, and the more they really understood the deep, deep psychological factors driving things like conflict in the middle east, the more they realized that this is a lot harder than they could have ever imagined. (fwiw, that is purely my personal take on the class, but there was definitely a tone underlying the whole thing.)