[photonemitter]

this reminds me of a book "monsters and magical sticks, there's no such thing as hypnosis?".

Which to my memory seemed to suggest hypnosis, and the states of altered consciousness associated with it, as people being affected by good storytelling. (don't think this was explicitly stated as such, but it the biggest takeaway I recall)

I suspect the social persuasion take here can be interpreted in a similar way; We are telling a story in concert with the people around us, and in that exploration of a narrative we assume roles that affect our perception. Or at least our own telling of this perception, which in turn may have effect on our retelling of it (both in terms of the rationalization we're doing internally, and in how we anchor the memories of what happened)

Going by that also, the knock-on is that regardless of whether it was "real" we will live our lives after based on our recollection of it, and assume in a sense that it was "real". Meaning that the results are more or less equivalent of it being real.