Schematic Bases of Social Information Processing

Abstract

The term, schema, appears to have been first used by Bartlett in 1932 in his work on recall of perceptual experience. A minimal theory is not, however, necessarily a good theory, and so one may want to inquire of the schema’s literature not only if the minimum criterion of a theory has been met, but if it is a good theory. When a stimulus configuration is encountered in the environment, it is matched against a schema, and the ordering and relations among the elements of the schema are imposed on the elements of the stimulus configuration. Studies comparing the effects of memory set versus impression set on recall also point to the structuring function of schemas. Information is easier to recall, however, if it is structured in some way, and there is evidence that people will structure stimuli so as to facilitate recall. Default options may not only be inserted when a particular piece of data is missing.