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Schema The tendency to perceive or think about people, propositions, or situations in terms of the ideas we have already formed about them – a cognitive structure or representation which organizes actors' knowledge, beliefs, and past experiences, providing a framework for understanding new events and experiences; a general expectation or preconception about a wide range of phenomena.
Our various conceptions about the world are not held as isolated facts, rather the information is gathered into meaningful, functional units. For example, knowledge about offices is stored such that should someone mention visiting a professor’s office we are readily able to interpret the comments in relation to our prior knowledge of the features and purpose of “offices” (desks, bookshelves, room(s) used for conducting professional or business activities, etc.). We have schemata for almost everything encountered (accountants, wine, books, etc.) and everything previously done (playing cricket, attending concerts, washing clothes, etc.).
The schematic information about “chairs” is an amalgam of all the chairs to which we have been exposed (and remember). Schema for coins involves the abstracted information that for American coins a U. S. president’s picture must appear on the “heads” side, whereas for those in Great Britain (and selected other countries, for example, New Zealand or Australia) a profile bust of the head of state graces the obverse, that is, the reigning monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. Likewise, coins of the Roman Empire (from about the 1st century B.C. to the 5th century A.D.) were stamped with portraits of the emperors. If we are shown the “tails” side of a coin from a series we are familiar with, say, our home country’s coinage of the twentieth century, even if we are unfamiliar with the particular coin we are likely to be able to make an accurate inference about what specifically appears on the other side. Comprehension of arguments or events is an analogous situation: we have only partial information and use schematic knowledge to make accurate inferences about what is left unstated or has not been presented.
There is a tendency for actors to distort their perceptions to make them fit into existing schema, or to take particular notice of those aspects of a situation or circumstance which are consistent with current ideas, and this may be especially so in relation to the social world of notions about the behaviour or attributes of others. People are somewhat reluctant to change their perceptions and ideas to accommodate different facts: existing schema can make it difficult to retain new information which does not conform to established ideas and beliefs, and actors may instead find it less troublesome to fit their observations and thinking to what is already believed.
For example, if we have formed a view from our prior experience with a manager that he or she is “a selfish person” we are likely to see any subsequent actions in terms of this perceived selfishness. If this person then proposes a new policy to improve morale and productivity we may wonder what self-centred motives have prompted this ploy – for ‘clearly’ an interest in the well-being of others would not be driving them.
(see also: cognitive load theory, mental models, Observer effect»Observer bias, priming, demand characteristics, Stereotype, expectations, expectancy, Fundamental attribution error, placebo, double-blind, experimenter bias, belief bias, myside bias)
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