Schemas

Hello to all who are reading this blog entry,

This entry will highlight one of the funny/sad event of my life that happened just one week ago.

Last week, I brought my cousins to the playground under my block to have some fun. As usual, I played with them for awhile before I sat down and watched them play.

Next to me sat another middle age lady (around 30 – 35 years old) whose kids are playing at the playground too. She smiled to me when I sat down and out of politeness I smiled back. Trust me that was the WORSE mistake of the day. Let’s call this lady Mrs X

Mrs X proceeded on to carry out a conversation with me about her kids and so I asked how old her kids are. She replied 3 and 5 years old.

Then, she went on to ask how old MY kids are. I felt as if a pair of imaginary hands came out of no where and slapped my face hard. I was speechless for at least a few seconds before she proceeded on to ask again. So how old are YOUR kids? At this point of time my face was tomato red and I replied with a very stoned expression (-_-) that they are my cousins and not my kids. I am only 20 years old.

After my reply, it was the look on her face that was totally priceless. She managed to utter “Ooops…. I am sorry” before she went to the playground dragged her two kids out by their collar and literally ran home. When my cousins finally finished their playground session, I brought them home and shared the encounter with my family. And yes I became the joke of the day.

Trust me; Mrs X just "made" my day.

However looking back at the incident it actually made me realized that I should not have been so mad at Mrs X.

After all according to social cognition, human develop schemas that guide their attention and memory. Schemas are mental representations of objects or categories, which contain the central features of the objects or category as well as assumptions about how the object or category works. Schemas are found to be organized in an associative network, therefore when a particular type of schema is activated, related schemas will be activated too. This explains why some schemas are extremely accessible, and are at the top of your head(Breckler, Olson & Wiggins, 2006).

Therefore due to the accessibility of related schemas, interpretation beyond the amount of information given in a particular social situation may influence the person’s thinking and behavior, with no regards to whether interpretation are accurate or not. Due to the accessibility factor, many times a person might not be even aware of an activation of a schema. One of the processes that increase the accessibility of schemas is priming. Priming is the process by which the activation of a schema increases the likelihood that the schema will be activated again in the future(Breckler et al., 2006).

In the case of my encounter with Mrs X, it is a real life example of priming. Mrs X is a mother who frequently brings her kids to the playground, and the ladies that she has met there so far are all mothers too. For this reason, the likelihood of activating the schema that all women are mothers increases each time Mrs X meets a mother with her kids at the playground.

There is a variety of functions that are carried out by schemas. Schemas does not only impose meaning on our world, they also influence what is noticed about objects (Breckler et al., 2006).

Therefore the when I appeared at the playground with 2 kids in tow, she conveniently activated the schema on the top of her head that assume that I am a mother too. In fact she might not even take into consideration how old I look before assuming that my cousins were my kids, because she categorized me just on the fact that I brought 2 kids down to the playground. Her schema influenced her to notice the presence of the kids but not how old I look. The fact that she felt embarrassed after I corrected her on her wrong interpretations about me being my cousin’s mum shows that she was not aware that she is generalizing that every women who brings any kids down to the playground is just like her, a mum.

My encounter with Mrs X seems to be consistent with the idea that accessibility of schemas affect our thinking and social behavior. To be frank, after understanding the dynamics behind the occurrence of such an encounter, it seriously decreases the anger that I have inside me. I assume that Mrs X really did not do that to me in purpose and was unaware of the activation of her schema. However if she is able to be in total control of the activation of related schemas, it would not have put her in such an awkward social situation at all.

By acquiring the knowledge on how schemas work, I guess I gained more knowledge on why sometimes we tend to get ourselves into embarrassing situation. Everyone makes mistakes in social situation once in awhile, so I guess we just have to be more cautious when we speak during any social event (especially if you are speaking to someone important).

Question is: Since much of the time our schemas are activated unconsciously which in turn get us into embarrassing social situation like this. Is there a way to prevent such incident by being more conscious about the activation of our schemas?

Hope you enjoy this entry, and here's some pictures of my adorable cousins (Who sometimes really make me wanna scold them and laugh at the same time)