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Course Documents/PSY 540 Transcript for What Is Schema Theory in Psychology.docx

PSY 540 Transcript for What Is Schema Theory in Psychology?

From the moment that we are born, we are given a ton of information. Our parents speak to us in a language that we have no preprogrammed understanding of, but eventually we are taught the rules that we eventually follow and we witness memories that soon become subconscious lessons. So as we grow up, the language becomes a way of communicating with people around us. We apply the rules that we have learned to similar situations, usually without question, and our memories shape the way we perceive the world around us. But how does our brain organize all of this information? How can we easily find the rules for behaving at a country club and then apply them to how we behave in similar situations?

For the answer, we turn to schema theory. Now this video is all about schema theory, how it helps our mind function, and how something called schema shape the way that we see the world. The more you know about this thing called a schema, the easier it will be to understand your mind and make the best judgments around you.

So let’s start off with what are schema or what is a schema. It’s not the easiest concept to grasp without using a metaphor. So think of your mind as a filing cabinet. Inside of that filing cabinet is everything that you’ve ever learned, ever experienced, or witnessed. Every piece of information is a schema or a framework that we can use whenever we take in new information and seek to make sense of it. So think of a schema as little index cards that represent a concept. One index card schema could encompass everything you know about Alex Trebek. Another schema could encompass everything you know about Oxford commas or how to behave at a restaurant. Schema help us organize our thoughts and make it easier to pull from them whenever we process new information or memories. I’ll go into a little bit more about how it works later, but right now you just need to know that schema help organize the mind.

So what about the history of schema theory? Well, schema is an abstract concept, so there’s not exactly one exact psychologist responsible for creating schema theory or one part of the brain that you can remove that destroys your schema creating ability. Psychologists like Friedrich Bartlett introduced the concept of abstract frameworks in the mind that organize information. But at the time no psychologists really had a name for them.

The term schema is actually credited to Jean Piaget. Piaget was crucial for developing theories on how the mind works and the process of something called cognitive development. He is famous for his work with children, and I’ve actually read some of his work. He was obsessed with understanding the child’s mind and how it grew. I think something that’s interesting is that children grow the most. Whenever we become adults, we usually stop growing. So if we can understand how that growth process happens, we can then apply it later in our adult lives to continue growing just as quickly. Now, Piaget observed, as children develop schema and use them like building blocks, what starts out as very simple schema eventually become more complex and begin to explain a longer list of concepts in the world. Schema are comparable to beginning beliefs you have about life. The first time a child attends a birthday party, for example, they may not really have a solid schema for what happens at a birthday party, and through their experience of the party and maybe by listening to their parents explaining what is happening, they start to build the schema or the idea or belief about what a birthday party is. And the next time they hear about a birthday party or they get an invitation as an adult, they’ll have more of an abstract idea of what a birthday party is and how they should behave.

Now, birthday parties actually fall under the category of something called a script schema or a type of schema that comes with a script. Other types of script schema include the concept of ordering at a restaurant, behaving at a sports game, or experiencing a breakup. And there’s many different types of schema like object schema, which is information about things; social schema, which is information about groups of people; person schema, which is specific information about a single person; role schema, which is how to behave—it’s kind of like you can put on a mask in different situations—and trait schema, which is information about what one trait means.

So I think it’s important to understand that we as humans are meaning-making creatures, but our mind wants to make that meaning, that purpose without a lot of work and effort. That’s why the mind pulls from schema. They allow us to fill in the blanks and paint a picture of an event or a person. We don’t exactly have to repaint that picture every time we meet a new person or go to a birthday party. It’s kind of like autofill, but for ideas. This saves us time and energy, but it can also produce inaccurate judgments. Now this is both a positive and a negative trait of schema because we’ve all heard of some version of this riddle. See if you can guess it.

A father and a son were in an accident. Very sadly, the father was killed immediately, and the son was brought to the hospital for surgery. In the operating room, a doctor came in, looked at the boy, and said, “I can’t operate on him. He’s my son.” Now I’m going to give you a few seconds to think about that. Most people, if they’ve never heard this riddle before, they cannot answer it correctly. And it goes to show how deep biases are in our brains whenever we process information. So have you figured out who the doctor is yet? The answer is that the doctor is the boy’s mother. Unfortunately, due to your typical picture or a schema of what a doctor or a surgeon is, most people do not attribute the title to a woman or a mother. The picture of a doctor you have in your mind is actually the schema that you have built for a doctor. And for most people, the picture of a doctor is a man wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope. That is the picture that we bring to mind whenever we hear the word doctor.

Now, this is where schema can become problematic. By pulling from past schema, we may close ourselves off to information or thoughts that contradict what is in our index card of a concept. So in short, a schema can actually limit us. Stereotypes, limiting beliefs, and old ways may be formed by the schema that we have built in the past. So you may be asking, “Hmm, can you change your schema?” Because we all know someone who’s stuck in their old ways. For some people, it seems impossible to change the schema they have created for different groups of people, how the world works, and how to behave.

Well, the answer is yes and no. It’s definitely possible to change the way that you look at someone that you might have judged before. And as you gain more experience and learn more about the world, your schema may start to change, and you might start to have a more open mind about the people that you meet and the places that you go. But this comes with one caveat. You have to be open to change. You cannot just read a book and alter the way that you see the world. Adjusting your thinking and opening your mind is a constant process that requires rewriting the story of the world and trying to unlearn harmful stereotypes. And it’s definitely not easy. Challenging set beliefs is notoriously difficult and uncomfortable, but it is possible. And with the right intention, you can actually help yourself create a more accurate and unbiased judgment of the world whenever you receive new information.

So as a review, a schema is like an index card of what you know about something. Schema theory is how your brain organizes information kind of like a filing cabinet, and because of this, schemas influence your stereotypes and prejudices. Lastly, you can change your schema, but first impressions usually stick around. I hope you guys enjoy this video on schemas, and I encourage you to watch all of the other videos in my social psychology series to get a full grasp of how the human brain works in conjunction with other people. Thank you so much for watching.