Social Schemas and Impression Formation

These flashcards cover key concepts about social schemas and the processes involved in impression formation.

Social Schemas

Patterns of thought that help us organize our experiences in our social world.

• We form scheme is about specific people types of people, situations and roles and relationships

• Purpose: Schemas facilitate the formation of attitudes towards people and things in our environment.

• Examples: Specific schemas can be formed for concepts like "extroversion," "police officers," or "women," each eliciting clear descriptive patterns of thought.

●We have a set pattern of thoughts that help us identify features about each of those examples

 

Purpose of Schemas

Facilitate the formation of attitudes towards people and things in our environment.

SOCIAL SCHEMAS

Schemas also guide information processing about people and relationships 

Encode information for later retrieval

• Cognitive system which helps us organize the information 

• Information Processing: Schemas guide how we process information about people and relationships. Cognitively, they direct our attention, and our brain then organizes how to encode this information for later retrieval.

  • First Date Example: If a date shares an opinion misaligned with personal values, a person might actively seek other behaviors or thoughts to assess compatibility. Later recall might prioritize this discordant conversation, demonstrating how schemas influence information encoding and retrieval.

SELF-SCHEMA

●This is the schema that we have for ourselves

●Is typically complex

 

 

 

●Think about how hard it is to describe yourself when asked to do so!

• Examples:

  • Simple: Being a lecturer and researcher in psychology, loving cats, being a Man United supporter.

  • Complex: Experiencing stress and anxiety about deadlines while simultaneously being highly conscientious, highlighting potential internal conflicts or nuanced self-perceptions.

  • Difficulty in Description: Describing one's self-schema can be challenging due to its intricate nature.

Self-Schema

The schema that we have for ourselves, typically complex and intricate.

Person-Schema

Knowledge structures about someone else, usually a friend or relative.

Knowledge structures about someone else – usually someone we know like a friend or relative

●E.g., appearance , likes, dislikes and personality

 

Example: Describing a friend as tall with short blonde hair, generous, enjoying chats but disliking parties, and being very organized.

Role-Schema

Knowledge structures about how people behave in certain roles.

knowledge structures about how people behave in certain roles

●E.g., firefighter

• Initial Assumptions: Meeting a firefighter might immediately trigger thoughts of bravery and community-mindedness.

• Caveat: Role schemas do not necessarily align with the individual's true motivations or personality.

  • Example: A firefighter might hold the role for secondary income, social recognition, or other personal reasons, rather than solely due to intrinsic bravery or enjoyment of the work.

  • Impact: Despite potential misalignment, these schemas still influence initial perceptions of a person's courage, typical attire, and expected actions within that role.

Event-Schema

Acts like a script informing how to act and what to say in a specific situation.

●Acts much like a script informing you of what you should do, how you should act, and what you should say in a particular situation

Eg.

 

Allows us to make shortcuts to infer information that is likely relate to what we are processing

 

We don't like when our schema are disrupted 

 

• Examples:

  • Restaurant Visit: A young person's first restaurant experience creates a schema for how to behave in future visits.

  • Doctor's Appointment: Includes expectations for examinations and discussion of symptoms.

  • First Football Match: Initially overwhelming, but repeated exposures allow event schemas to make future matches more manageable by understanding the game and spectator reactions.

  • Big Night Out: Activates schemas involving alcohol, food, and music.

Cognitive Shortcuts

Schemas are employed as cognitive shortcuts due to our limited attentional systems.

Function and Interruption of Schemas

• Cognitive Shortcuts: Humans employ schemas as cognitive shortcuts because we are not equipped to process every piece of information from our environment due to limited attentional systems. Schemas allow us to infer likely related information.

• Schema Interruption: Unexpected events that fall outside an established schema can be unsettling.

 

Responses to Interruption if schema

Ignore as Chance: Dismiss the event as an anomaly, maintaining the existing schema.

• Bus Example: If a person sits next to you on an otherwise empty bus, contradicting your event schema for public transport behavior, you might question the person or ignore the event as a one-off.

Update Schema: Modify the schema to incorporate the new information.

• Big Night Out Example: Having a highly enjoyable alcohol-free night out might lead to updating the schema that a good time doesn't necessarily require alcohol.

Schema Interruption

Unexpected events that fall outside an established schema can be unsettling.

HOW DO WE FORM SCHEMAS?

Impression formation

 

As with attitude formation we use:

●Mere exposure

●Classical Conditioning

●Operant conditioning

●Mere exposure

(form expressions merely because we are familiar with it )

➢E.g., liking strawberry milkshakes in childhood – preference for strawberry flavours later (self-schema)

Impression Formation

The process by which we form impressions about individuals based on information.

●Classical Conditioning

Associate stimuli with involuntary response 

• Involuntarily response= eg fear attraction, hunger

➢E.g., seeing or hearing a siren when driving – we immediately know to move to over (event schema), elicits the response of fear and siren indicates hat we need to be moving 

Primacy Effect

Occurs when information presented first disproportionately influences impression formation.

●Operant conditioning

Punishment and rewards

➢E.g., insurance companies rewarding or adding a benefit to those who drive their cars less often (event schema)

BIASES when form impressions

Order effects:

The order in which information about a person is presented influences impression formation.

 Primacy effect

Recency effect

Valence effect : positve and negativ

 

Order effects: Primacy effect

occurs when information presented first, disproportionately influences impression formation

• First impressions create a frame of reference with in which everything else that is learned about the person is interpreted

• You will interpret anything that they subsequently do in the light of the initial impression

• E.g., Attractive person is described as arrogant and friendly = less attractive than described the other way around

Recency Effect

information presented most recently has more impact than earlier information

• Happens we distracted, little motivation

> Primacy typically trumps recency

Halo Effect

The tendency to assume that positive traits cluster together in an individual.

• People are physically attractive or assume to process a number of other favourable qualities as well such as being warm friendly intelligent

Valence Effects

●positivity or negativity

●positivity or negativity of information can impact our impressions formation

 

●Positive impressions formed when no negative information available

●Positive impressions change easily if subsequent negative information is made known

➢Bias towards negativity

 

Negative information is  

 

●This is why reputation is important in many jobs of leadership

●Negative bias can prevent second chances

 

• When we learn negative information, its strange and novel and from an evolutionary perspective we also evolve to focus on the negative

• Eg signal of potential danger that is associated with certain person

Negative Bias

The tendency to focus more on negative information than positive, impacting impression formation.