1.4.1 Schemas (Co)

Question 1

What is a schema?

Answer 1

A packet of information about the world stored in our long term memory

Question 2

What are some types of schema?

Answer 2

Object schema
Role schema
Script schema

Question 3

Give an example of an object schema:

Answer 3

E.g. Dog

Linked to collar, bone, lead, walk

Question 4

Give an example of a role schema:

Answer 4

E.g nurse

Caring, helpful, clever

Question 5

Give an example of a script schema:

Answer 5

E.g restaurant

Decide, book, order, get food, pay the bill

Question 6

What do schema help us do? How?

Answer 6

Make sense of the world by providing short cuts to things we come across

Question 7

Where are schema developed from?

Answer 7

Experiences - personal, the media, friends

Question 8

Are schemas an accurate representation of reality?

Answer 8

No

Question 9

What can schemas result in? Why?

Answer 9

Stereotyping

Schemas are short cuts so people can easily jump to conclusions about a group of people

Question 10

What did Allport and Postmans 1940s reasearch involve?

Answer 10

Showing people a picture of black business man being threatened by scruffy white man on subway with a razor. Later the participants were asked to recall the image

Question 11

What did the participants in Allport and Postmans study say?

Answer 11

They recalled the image as a black man threatening a white man

Question 12

Why might the participants have had this response in the Allport and postman study?

Answer 12

Pre civil rights attitudes
• black people are criminals
• black people cant be successful businessmen

Question 13

What could schemas and stereotyping lead to?

Answer 13

Discriminatory behaviour such as racial profiling e.g. Young black men experiencing more unwarranted stops, searches, arrests and cop killing in the USA

Question 14

What do schemas act as

Answer 14

act as mental frameworks, providing us with ‘mental shortcuts’ so we can process large volumes of data quickly and efficiently, thus avoiding sensory overload.

Question 15

How did James Potter et al show that since schemas are ‘pre-conceived’, they may lead to perceptual distortions due to having an already established mental framework

Answer 15

showed that when watching TV, 1 “although viewers may share the same story schema, they appear to make different judgements on the schema elements, and hence their judgements about violence vary”.