Social Schemas and Categories

A schema is a cognitive structure that allows us to understand and perceive a concept or type of stimulus with only a limited amount of information. It uses previous experience and knowledge to 'paint a picture' and is based on concepts and theory; a top-down approach of processing information.

There are many types of schema including person, role, events (generally called scripts), content-free and self-schemas.

• Person schema: individual knowledge about specific people.
• Role schema: the knowledge you have about the way certain people/roles such as doctors act or for example the questions they may ask.
• Scripts/events: the information you have about an event allows you to act accordingly such as to be quiet during a lecture or to be outgoing and social at a party.
• Content-free schema: based around rules or attributing a cause to an individual's behaviour.
• Self-schema: this is the in-depth and complex information individual's have about themselves.

Categorisation is the process of interpreting information to fit into that particular schema

• Family resemblance: the defining property of information which places it into a particular category.
• Prototype: the typical representation and attributes of what is expected for each category
• Fuzzy sets: as information will not be exactly the same as the prototype, categorises are compiled of features and attributes which revolve around the prototype.
• Exemplars: a specific member of a category used when it is new and unfamiliar.
• Associative network: when information stored in our memory are categorised by associative links such as traits, beliefs and behaviours.
• Accentuation principle: when the categorisation accentuates the perception of similarities and differences between groups that they believe (personally, relevant or of value) are correlated with the category. (This plays a major role in the production of discrimination and prejudice involving stereotyping)