Social schemas

Question 1

What was the first definition of a schema?

Answer 1

A conceptual frameworks through which people perceive and make sense of the world around them.

Question 2

What is the more contemporary definition of schemas?

Answer 2

A cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept including its attributes and the relations among these attributes.

Question 3

What is the function of schemas?

Answer 3

They help us make sense of the world and give us expectations about what is likely to happen in social contexts.

Question 4

What two cognitive processes do schemas help?

Answer 4

1. Information processing.
2. Memory.

Question 5

What are the four types of schemas studied?

Answer 5

1. Person schemas.
2. Role schemas.
3. Self-schemas.
4. Event schemas.

Question 6

What is a person schema?

Answer 6

A schema that represents knowledge about personality traits and is used to categorise people according to their personal traits .

Question 7

What is a role schema?

Answer 7

A schema that represents the knowledge people have of the norms of specific role positions in society.

Question 8

What is an event schema?

Answer 8

A schema that represents knowledge about the typical sequence of events on familiar social occasions.

Question 9

What is a self schema?

Answer 9

A schema that represents the knowledge of oneself. Used to guide processing of self-related information.

Question 10

What is used to categorise schemas?

Answer 10

Prototypes.

Question 11

What is a prototype?

Answer 11

Prototypes are a typical example of something that falls into the category.

Question 12

What must the stimuli share with the prototype to be categorised?

Answer 12

The stimuli must share some common features.

Question 13

Describe object and social categorisation.

Answer 13

Object categorisation is relatively simple. There are clear boundaries for categories.

Social categorisation is more complex. “Fuzzy” boundaries for categories.

Question 14

Describe category driven and data driven processing.

Answer 14

Category-driven (top-down) processing is said to be fast, efficient and automatic.

Data driven (bottom-up) processing is said to be slow, cognitively demanding and conscious.

Question 14

What is the effect of schema consistent information?

Answer 14

People are more likely to notice, encode and remember schema-consistent information.

Question 15

What does evidence suggest about the accuracy of schema recall?

Answer 15

Some researchers found people have more accurate recall of information when it is consistent with schema, however, opposing evidence suggests more accurate recall of information when it is inconsistent with schema.

Question 15

When does category driven processing occur?

Answer 15

When social information is unambiguous.

Question 16

When does data driven processing occur?

Answer 16

When social information is ambiguous.

Question 16

What are two advantages of social schemas?

Answer 16

1. Helps us to function.
2. Gives meaning to social information.

Question 16

What are two disadvantages of social schemas?

Answer 16

1. Can lead to biased judgements.
2. Can lead to poor recall of the social world.

Question 17

Can schemas change? and how?

Answer 17

Research suggests small gradual changes can occur due to minor inconsistencies, while considerable changes can occur due to many inconsistencies or extreme deviations.