Self schemas

1. Self-Schema: A self-schema is a belief or idea about oneself that leads to a bias that is self-
perpetuating. It could consist of a particular role in society or a generalization based on social
sterotypes. If a mother tells her daughter she looks like a tom boy, her daughter may react by choosing
activities that she imagines a tom boy would do. Conversely, if the mother tells her she looks like a
princess, her daughter might choose activities thought to be more feminine. The self-schema becomes
self-perpetuating when the individual chooses activities based on expectations instead of desires.

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The term schematic describes having a particular schema for a particular dimension. For instance, a
person in a rock band at night would have a "rocker" schema. However, during the day, if he works as
a salesperson, he would have a "salesperson" schema during that period of time. Schemas vary
according to cultural background and other environmental factors.
Once people have developed a schema about themselves, there is a strong tendency for that schema to
be maintained by a bias in what they attend to, in what they remember, and in what they are prepared to
accept as true about themselves. In other words, the self-schema becomes self-perpetuating. The self-
schema is then stored in long-term memory, and both facilitates and biases the processing of personally
relevant information.
The term aschematic means not having a schema for a particular dimension. This usually occurs when
people are not involved with or concerned about a certain attribute. For example, if a person plans on
being a musician, a self-schema in aeronautics will not attribute to him; he is aschematic on
aeronautics.
Self-schemas vary from person to person because each individual has very different social and cultural
life experiences. A few exampl es of self -schemas
are: exciting or dull; quiet orloud; healthy or sickly; athletic or nonathletic; lazy or active;
and geek or jock. If a person has a schema for "geek or jock," for example, he might think of himself as
a bit of a computer geek and would possess a lot of information about that trait. Because of this, he
would probably interpret many situations based on relevance to his being a computer geek.
Another person with the "healthy or sickly" schema might consider herself a very health conscious
person. His concern with being healthy would then affect everyday decisions such as what groceries he
buys, what restaurants he frequents, or how often he exercises. Women who are schematic on
appearance exhibited lower body image, lower self-esteem, and morenegative mood than did those who
are aschematic on appearance.


Self-Schema
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2. The term self-schema refers to the beliefs and ideas people have about themselves. These beliefs are
used to guide and organize information processing, especially when the information is significant to the
self. Self-schemas are important to a person's overall self-concept.
Once we have developed a schema about ourselves there is a strong tendency for that schema to be
maintained by a bias in what we attend to, a bias in what we remember, and a bias in what we are
prepared to accept as true about ourselves. In other words our self-schema becomes self-perpetuating.
The self-schema is then stored in long-term memory and both facilitates and biases the processing of
personally relevant information.
Self-schemas vary from person to person because each individual has very different social and cultural
life experiences. A few examples of self-schemas are; exciting/ dull, quiet/ loud, healthy/ sickly, athletic/
nonathletic, lazy/ active, and geek/ jock. If a person has a schema for geek/ jock, for example, he might
think of himself as a bit of a computer geek and so he would possess a lot of information about that trait.
Because of this he would probably interpret a lot of situations based on their relevance to being a geek.
For another example consider the healthy/ sickly schema. A person with this schema might consider
herself a very health conscious person. Her concern with being healthy would then affect every day
decisions like what to buy at the grocery store, what restaurant to eat out at, or how much exercise she
should get daily. Women who are schematic on appearance exhibited lower body image, lower self-
esteem, and more negative mood than did those who are aschematic on appearance.
Multiple Self-Schema
While every schema varies from cultural backgrounds, etc., there are different ways of defining the
schemas themselves. First, there is Schematic, which means having a particular schema for a
particular dimension. For instance, you could play in a rock band at night, and there you would have
your "rocker" schema. However, during the day, you work as a tire salesman, so you have your "tire
salesman" schema on during that period of time.
Another good example of this are super heroes, such as the ones in comic books. People like
Superman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, etc., all have their schema for when they are just doing their normal
job during the day. However, when duty calls, they adorn their superhero schema.
Second, there is Aschematic, which is not having a schema for a particular dimension. This usually
occurs when we are not involved with or concerned about a certain attribute. For instance, some of us
will never be tire salesmen, so some of us will never have to worry about it. This also includes
schoolwork to a particular level. If you plan on being a musician, then having a schema in aeronautics
will not attribute to you.

3. Since it has been defined that most people have multiple schemas does this mean that we all have
multiple personalities as well? The answer is no. At least not in the pathological sense. Indeed, for the
most part, multiple self-schemas are extremely useful to us in our daily lives. Without our conscious
awareness, they help us make rapid decisions and to behave efficiently and appropriately in different
situations and with different people. They guide what we attend to, and how we interpret and use
incoming information and they activate specific cognitive, verbal, and behavioral action sequences—
which in cognitive psychology are called scripts and action plans—that help us meet our goals more
efficiently.



Individual
Differences
Personality
Roles of Schemas in Personality
Last updated:
21 Oct 2003

Schemas
With regard to personality, the cognitive perspective focuses on organised mental structures
of experience, including memory, schemas, scripts, and attributions.

We are surrounded by a mass information, therefore in order to survive and be efficient in
progressing towards our goals, we must have ways of sorting through and selectively
attending to the mass of information. By using stored "information guides", we can simplify
and structure the world of information. These "guides" are sometimes called heuristics,
models, algorithims, schemas and scripts. Whilst technically these may be different terms, for
our purposes they are important because they are all "tools" for filtering and interpretation
information. By the way, information is meant here in a broad sense - information that arrives
externally through each of the senses on an almost constant basis, but also information that
may arise from within, from the unconscious, or memory, or newly created information.
You may not be aware of it, but you are surrounded by more information than you can use �
you can�t deal with it all, so you impose organisation and use just a few bits and you make
inferences about the rest. In this way, cognitive organisation is good because it saves mental
resources and allows us to understand events using selected pieces of information.

But cognitive organisation can also be bad in unusual situations and when we get stuck in
negative perceptions (e.g., depressive self-schemas) or when there are novel events.

Because of all this information coming in and the need to simplify things we tend to treat a
piece of information as a member of a category and we can then respond immediately in a

4. way established for other members of this category. We do not treat each tree (whether an
individual ash or elm, or prunus) as a completely unique category, but rather identify it as a
member of the category �TREE� and we can then respond accordingly.
Similarly, when we meet people and we tend to treat them as members of a category rather
than as a totally unique creature that we�ve never come across before. The category may
be race, gender, religion, nationality, dress style, whatever. In cognitive psychology these
categories are called schemas. A schema is a knowledge structure or a cognitive structure
that organises information and thereby influences how we perceive and respond to further
information about objects, people and events. In other words, we impose order on
experiences derived from recurrences of similar qualities across repeated events.

A helpful formulaic representation is
Perception = memory (i.e., stored guides) + incoming information

If I say �VEHICLE� do you know what I�m referring to? You probably have a generalised
idea of a motorised contraption that goes on the road and has 4 wheels. But you�d need
more information to know exactly what I�m referring to. So you know for example that your
�vehicle� schema is say different from your �plant� schema or your �person� schema
or your �clothing� schema but you don�t necessarily know what subcategory of the
schema I �m referring to.

It is generally agreed that for physical objects we arrange the schemas hierarchically. Now
you have a schema for vehicle for example, and you probably also have a schema for
�car� and one for �sports car� and so these can exist at different levels.

Younger children for example tend to use middle level schemas more frequently. Higher level
categories like �vehicle� are distinctive but more abstract and not as specific as the next
category level. Low level categories are specific but may not always be cognitively
economical to use.

EXEMPLARS: Schemas are usually assumed to include information about specific cases or
exemplars as well as information about the more generic sense of what the category is. That
is for any given category, say, vehicle, you can bring to mind specific examples of vehicles
and you can bring to mind a general sense of the category on the whole e.g. a �typical�
vehicle (something that is a motorised contraption on the road and has 4 wheels).

PROTOTYPES: Some researchers believe that some members of a category are the �best
members� that is they best exemplify the category. For example a Porsche might best

5. exemplify the category of sports car for you and a Maserati might best exemplify the category
for me. This is called a prototype. Some theories suggest that it is the best actual member
you have found so far and others that it�s an idealised member, an average of the members
you�ve found so far.

ATTRIBUTES: On the other hand some researchers say that no prototypes are stored at all.
Instead the category or schema is simply a collection of attributes or elements that help
define what the category is. In the case of a sports car those attributes may be sleek, low,
racy looking, expen sive looking etc.

It has also been suggested that many categories don�t have explicit definitions. The features
of a category or schema all contribute to its nature but aren�t necessary for category
membership. For example your schema for birds probably includes the idea that birds fly. But
there are birds that DON�T fly. So flying can�t actually be a defining feature if birds. But
hearing that a creature flies does make it more likely that it will fit the bird schema than say
the cow schema. So flying cou nts for something!

FUZZY SET: As with our bird example, some schemas are defined in a fuzzy way by a set of
criteria that are IMPORTANT but not necessary. e.g. flying

DEFAULT INFORMATION: Many events don �t contain complete information about what�s
going on. If there�s enough information available to bring up a schema then you get
additional information from memory. e.g. if I told you I did the washing this morning, you
would assume I was talking about clothes, that I used washing powder, that I used a washing
machine, etc. even though none of these thins was mentioned. Research shows that people
may even REMEMBER things that they haven�t explicitly been told if it fits their schema of
the event. (you may think I mentioned the washing powder even though I didn�t). You would
probably not assume that I was talking about washing the dog by hand using biocarbonate of
soda. Information you assume to be true (unless you�ve been told otherwise) is called
default information.

STEREOTYPES: When one aspect of a stereotype is brought to mind you tend to assume
other aspects as well. If you hear that a person is a Liberal Voter you may also assume that
they love John Howard, are conservative in thinking and dress style, are generally
warmongering and anti refugees (if that�s what your �Liberal Voter� schema is). People
automatically assume schema-consistent information even when it it�s not available. So
default information is brought from memory to fill in the gaps.
Role of Schemas

6. Any event is a collection of elements: people, movements, objects etc. These various
elements might just as well be random unless you have some sense of what the event is
ABOUT. In the same way the attributes of an object are just a collection of bits unless you
have an overriding sense of what he object IS. The schema is the glue that holds all the bits
of information together.
Schemas: are used to recognize new experiences (new events are identified by comparing
them to existing schemas). They affect perception, affect encoding, affect memory recall and
become self-perpetuating. You are more likely to remember information that CONFIRMS your
expectations than doesn�t.
Self-schemas
Hazel Rose Markus in 1977 suggested that the self is a concept or a category like any other
concept or category and that people form cognitive structures about the self just as they do
about other phenomena. These cognitive structures are called SELF -schemas.

Self-schemas are cognitive generalisations about oneself, derived from past experience. The
meaning is similar to the meaning of the term self-concept. Our self-schemas organise and
guide the processing of self-related information. Self-schemas, like other schemas influence
whether information is attended to and how easily it is recalled. Thus it is easier to encode
things that fit into it and to remember things that fit into it.

Once we have developed a schema about ourselves there is a strong tendency for that
schema to be maintained by a bias in what we attend to, a bias in what we remember, and a
bias in what we are prepared to accept as true about ourselves. In other words our self-
schema becomes self-perpetuating.
Self-schemas tend to be larger and more complex than other schemas and there are
individual differences in the complexity of self-schemas.
�Some people have many different self-aspects, which they keep distinct from each other.
Each role these people play in life, each goal they have, each activity they engage in, has its
own separate existence in their self-image. These people are high in self-complexity. Other
people�s self-aspects are less distinct from each other. These people are lower in self-
complexity.

For people who are low in self-complexity, feelings relating to a bad event in one aspect of life
tend to spill over into other aspects of the sense of self (Linville, 1987). This spill over
doesn�t happen as much for people high in self-complexity because the separations and
boundaries they�ve developed between self -aspects prevents it.

The way people acquire (or fail to acquire) complexity in the self-schema may be partly a

7. matter of how much you think about yourself. Nasby (1985) found that people who report
spending a lot of time thinking about themselves have self-schemas of greater complexity and
detail than people who think about themselves less. Apparently the very process of thinking
about yourself causes a continued growth and articulation of the self-schema.� Carver &
Scheier (2000, p. 445)

�Another way of thinking about self-complexity is that it involves a family of self-schemas,
rather than a single one. In a way, you�re a different person when you�re in different
contexts because you make different assumptions about yourself, and you attend to different
aspects of what�s going on. When you�re with one set of friends at a party to another set in
a study group to being at home with your parents, it�s as though you�re putting aside one
schema about yourself and taking up a new one.
Not only may people have distinct self-schemas in different contexts, but self-schemas may
vary in another way. Markus and her colleagues (e.g., Markus & Nurius, 1986), suggest that
people develop images of selves they�d like to become, selves they�re afraid of becoming
and selves they expect to become. Other selves that have been suggested include the
disliked self (Oglivie, 1987) and selves you think you ought to be (Higgins, 1987, 1990).
These various possible selves can be used as motivators, because they provide goals to
approach or to avoid.� Carver & Scheier (2000, p. 446).
Examples of self-schemas
Because the self=schema contains our ideas about what we are like and what we are capable
of doing it affects what we do.
If we think we�re reliable we�ll try to always live up to that image.
If we think we are sociable we are more likely to seek the company of others.
If we think we�re attractive we�ll be more confident in our romantic dealings with the
opposite sex.
If we think we�re shy we are more likely to avoid social situations.
We have an elaborate schema based on the way we�ve behaved awkwardly in social
situations in the past and we�ll therefore interpret new situations in the light of this
knowledge. We become an expert in shyness. We then become more ready to see our
social experiences in the light of our social deficiencies. This becomes a lens through
which we view the world.