2:SOCIAL COGNITION: HOW
WE THINK ABOUT THE
WORLD
SU 2.1. SCHEMAS: MENTAL FRAMEWORKS FOR
ORGANISING – AND USING – SOCIAL
INFORMATION
Schemas: Mental frameworks centering on a specific theme
that help us to organize social information.
THE IMPACT OF SCHEMAS ON SOCIAL COGNITION:
ATTENTION, ENCODING, RETRIEVAL
Schemas influence attention (the information we notice, for which
schemas act as filters), encoding (the process by which information
gets stored in memory), and retrieval.
Information inconsistent with schemas is more likely to be
noticed and to enter our consciousness.
We rely most on schemas when we are experiencing cognitive
load (a lot of information at once).
Information that is consistent with our schemas is encoded.
Information that is sharply
inconsistent with our schemas may be encoded into a separate
memory location and marked with a unique “tag”.
Regarding memory: In general, people report remembering more
information consistent with their schemas, but information
inconsistent with their schemas may be strongly present in
memory too.
PRIMING: WHICH SCHEMAS GUIDE OUR THOUGHT?
Priming: a situation that occurs when stimuli or events increase
the availability in memory or consciousness of specific types of
information held in memory. Schemas can be temporarily
activated by priming.
Unpriming: Refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas tend to
persist until they are somehow expressed in thought or behaviour
and only then do their effects decrease. If primed schemas are not
expressed, their effects may persist for long periods of time.
The stronger and better-developed our schemas are, the more
likely they are to influence our thinking, and especially our
memory for social information.
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