Schema psychology: Encyclopedia II - Schema psychology - Thought using schemas

Schema psychology - Thought using schemas

Schemas are an extremely effective (but flawed) tool for understanding the world. Through the use of schemas, most everyday situations do not require effortful thought — automatic thought is all that is required. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemas and act effectively without effort. For example, most people have a stairway schema, and can apply it to climb staircases they've never seen before.

However, schemas can influence and hamper the uptake of new information (proactive interference), such as when existing stereotypes,giving rise to limited or biased discourses and expectations (prejudices)may lead an individual to 'see'/'remember' something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of his/her schema: For example: If a well-dressed businessman draws a knife on a Rastafarian, the schemas of onlookers may (and often do) lead them to 'remember' the Rastafarian pulling the knife. Such distortion of memory has been demonstrated (See Background research).

Schemas are often related to one another, and multiple conflicting schemas can be applied to the same information. Schemas are generally thought to have a level of activation, which can spread among related schemas. Which schema is selected can depend on factors such as current activation, accessibility, and priming.

Accessibility is how easily a schema comes to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut; it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information. See availability heuristic.

With priming, a brief imperceptible stimulus temporarily provides enough activation to a schema so that it is used for subsequent ambiguous information. Although this may suggest the possibility of subliminal messages, the effect of priming is so fleeting that it is difficult to detect outside laboratory conditions. Furthermore, the mere exposure effect — which requires consciousness of the stimuli — is far more effective than priming.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Thought using schemas", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki