Social psychologists who are interested in the way people understand and make sense of others and themselves have learned that individuals have highly developed schemas. Describe the concept of schemas.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The answer should contain the following points.

Schemas refer to sets of cognitions about people and social experiences. Those schemas organize information stored in memory; represent in people's minds the way the social world operates; and give them a framework to recognize, categorize, and recall information relating to social stimuli such as people and groups. Individuals typically hold schemas for specific types of people. Their schema for "teacher," for instance, generally consists of a number of characteristics: knowledge of the subject matter he or she is teaching, a desire to impart that knowledge, and an awareness of the student's need to understand what is being said. Or people may hold a schema for "mother" that includes the characteristics of warmth, nurturance, and caring. Regardless of their accuracy, schemas are important because they organize the way in which people recall, recognize, and categorize information about others. Moreover, they help people predict what others are like on the basis of relatively little information because individuals tend to fit people into schemas even when they do not have much concrete evidence to go on.

For instance, people may hold a "gregarious person" schema made up of the traits of friendliness, aggressiveness, and openness. The presence of just one or two of those traits may be sufficient to make them assign a person to a particular schema.

However, people's schemas are susceptible to error. For example, mood affects how they perceive others. Happy people form more favorable impressions and make more positive judgments than do people who are in a bad mood.

Even when schemas are not entirely accurate, they serve an important function. They allow individuals to develop expectations about how others will behave. Those expectations permit them to plan their interactions with others more easily and serve to simplify a complex social world.