Fighting With Family Over Politics? Schema Theory Can Help

According to <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-a-schema.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">schema theory</a>, our minds construct “organized conceptual frameworks” that pull together many different details into unified wholes. We form schema about virtually everything, from physical objects like “car” or “motorcycle” to abstract concepts like “truth” and “justice.” We also develop self-schema, or schema about ourselves. Our various identities — husband, father, teacher, Swiftie — combine into an overall sense of self. I stumbled upon the power of schema while researching the <a href="https://www.stc.org/techcomm/2016/05/12/making-memories-writing-and-designing-more-memorable-documents/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">memorableness</a> of written documents. I asked ten teachers and ten students to walk down a high school hallway and report back what they remembered and why. The teachers remembered posters and flyers that were personally relevant to them as teachers, while the students recalled the posters and flyers that connected with their personal interests. Most of the teachers recalled a flyer about the upcoming ACT exam, for instance. Why? They weren’t going to take it. These teachers said they wanted to know the dates of the exam in case a student asked about it. They gave the same explanation for remembering other information from their walk down the hall. In theory, all of the teachers and students could have noticed a paper cross hanging from one teacher’s door or the flyer advertising a raffle for a deer rifle. Yet only a single student noticed the cross, and a second student noticed the raffle flyer. One was a religious studies student, and the other described herself as a hunter. My study confirmed a finding in the psychological research on human memory, schema, and self-schema. Our self-schema filter our attention, color our interpretations, and influence our memories — all without our conscious awareness. <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/fighting-with-family-over-politics-schema-theory-can-help-9925b615c193">Read More</a>