We are literally programmed to think down given pathways--many of them very early in our lives--and enduringly over the whole of our lives. That's part of what the OP is describing.
And, that's part of why it's so difficult to change someone's mind from liberal to conservative.
And it's getting worse. Now there's technology that allows the government to program our thinking more heavy-handedly and to more refined, detailed degrees.
And that doesn't even get into demonic influence.
There's reasons the Bible insists that we not be unfittingly judgmental in critical-judgment kinds of ways--because we have not walked in their shoes--with all the forces channeling their thoughts and actions toward certain specifics.
Yes, we still have a measure of "free-will." But that is diminishing all the time.
And RAD diminishes a huge chunk of it early on.
If you have never had a compulsive, habitual thought pattern, PTL. However, I'm 100% skeptical that you have not had such a thought pattern.
None of us are as totally free in our wills as we'd like to think.
Bertrand Russel bragged more than 70 years ago, IIRC, that eventually, the oligarchy would control individuals and the population as a whole through very sophisticated mass, group and media based psychological techniques. They are already almost fully there.
Just witness the sheeple's responses to the lies of the mass media.