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	Social Psychology I > Social Thinking > Perceiving Other Persons > Forming Impressions

		Social schemas It is a quick step from Asch's work on impression formation, which seems to suggest that people carry trait information around in their heads, to the idea that we develop social schemas for the people around us. Social schemas <REF>(Fiske, 1993) are abstract mental representations of the social world. In plain English, they are theories that you carry around about how people and social situations work. For example, if we told you that there was a circus in town, and then asked you whether there were any elephants in town, your schematic understanding of circuses would likely lead you to say, "Yes, there are elephants in town." After all, what kind of circus doesn't have elephants? But notice that in answering the question, you relied upon your schema (i.e., your theory) of circuses, not on any particular information about this particular circus. Social schemas are important because they help solve two problems. First, as the circus example demonstrates, they help to fill in when information is missing. Even though you may not have seen an elephant in town, you can still infer their presence if you know a circus is in town. Similarly, you might infer that the cell-phone-wielding BMW driver is impatient based upon the schemas you have developed for different types of people. Second, schemas help to reduce the flow of information. If you think about it, you are constantly surrounded by more information than you could ever hope to process. As you read this text, for example, lots of things are happening that you probably are not aware of. Perhaps a clock is ticking in the background, or the heating and cooling system is cycling on and off, or someone is talking nearby. Despite all of this activity, your schemas for studying and reading help you focus your attention and filter out the irrelevant information. Similarly, when you meet someone for the first time, your social perception schemas are more likely to direct your attention to their facial characteristics and tone of voice than to their shoe size. Schemas are important because they shape perceptions. Imagine, for example, that you and a friend hear about a person who is crying. If you believe that she just won the lottery, while your friend believes that she just lost a loved one, then you will form very different impressions of her. Your schematic understanding of the situation will lead you to interpret her tears as tears of joy, while your friend's understanding will lead him to interpret her tears as tears of grief <REF> (D. T. Miller 19xx). Empirical demonstrations of the power that schemas have to shape perception range from the amusing to the profound. In <REF>1954, Hastorf and Cantril showed Princeton and Dartmouth students films of a particularly nasty football game between their two teams. Their task was simply to count the number of rule infractions committed by each team. Presumably, the schemas that the students held at the time would lead them to anticipate cheating on the part of their opponents, and honorable behavior on the part of their fellow classmates. Consistent with this analysis, students from the two schools saw their opponents commit more infractions than their classmates.
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	Click an activity to open it: • Conformity • Conformity Factors • Milgram Obedience Experiment • Why Obey • Bay of Pigs • Impression Formation • What's Going On? • In Your Face • Actors and Observers • Birds of a Feather • Ratings Game • Love Scale • Love Triangle • Attachment Style • Ad Categorization Activity • Dissonance Theater • Decision Model of Helping • Self-fulfilling Prophecy Movie • Impressions and Expressions • Reducing Prejudice • Prisoner's Dilemma • Faces of the Enemy