Schema in psychology

 

In psychology, a schema is a mental structure that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas represent some aspect of the world and allow us to take shortcuts in processing vast amounts of information.

Schemas are built from our experiences and memories, and they help us understand and predict the world around us. For example, a child might have a schema for a cat that includes characteristics like having four legs, fur, and a tail. When they encounter a new animal that fits this schema, they might initially identify it as a cat until they learn more specific details.

An organized collection of schemas represent the components of a worldview.

Schemas can be beneficial because they help us quickly process and categorize information. However, they can also lead to biases and stereotypes, because we might ignore information that doesn’t fit our existing schemas.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, was instrumental in developing the concept of schemas in his theory of cognitive development. He believed that schemas are both the categories of knowledge and the processes of acquiring that knowledge, and they are constantly being adapted as we encounter new information.

A self-schema is a concept, which refers to our organization about ourselves, which is modified throughout our life. Depending on the author, the concept, self-schema may be the same as the concept, self-concept.

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Norbert M. Seel (2012) offers the following definition (pp. 2936-2939)

Schemas are acquired and constructed through experiences with specific instances. Physiologically speaking, they start as simple networks and develop into more complex structures. From the perspective of psychology, the development of schemas starts with the construction of simple behavioral action schemas, which are learned through organizational socialization and concrete experiences, and proceeds to cognitive schemas by means of the functional incorporation of the regular structure of actions into the memory.

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 References

Seel, N.M. (2012). Schema Development. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_365

 

 Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

See Geoffrey Sutton’s books on   AMAZON       or  GOOGLE STORE

Follow on    FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton    

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Dr. Sutton’s posts are for educational purposes only. See a licensed mental health provider for diagnoses, treatment, and consultation. 

Worldview in psychology

"A worldview (or “world view”) is a set of assumptions about physical and social reality that may have powerful effects on cognition and behavior." Koltko-Rivera, 2004, p. 3)

There are other names for the concept worldview such as philosophy of life, outlook, cultural themes and more. See Koltko-Rivera, 2004) for a review of worldview models and possible categories or dimensions that are components of a worldview..

Koltco-Rivera (2004)  notes that there are a variety of worldview models, which generally fall into two types: (1) categorical approaches and (b) dimensional approaches.

Worldview is a metaconstruct consisting of several subordinate constructs. 

As noted above, the subordinate constructs can include categories like belief in a deity or belief about the origins of the universe or dimensions that allow for a range of of values. In general, psychology, like other sciences, relies on the assumption that behavior may be understood by observation and that causes of behavior may be discovered by carrying out controlled experiments or careful analyses of the correlated of behavior and simultaneously excluding consideration of supernatural causes. Mainstream psychological science has been considered as relying on naturalism and materialism by Christian scholars (e.g., Knabb et al., 2022; Slife & Reber, 2009).

Some writers consider a religion to be a worldview (e.g., Juergensmeyer, 2010); however, there are so many religions and within each one there are variations of belief (e.g., different Christian views on the role of women in society, the church, and the home).

Thinkers have offered different possibilities for what categories or dimensions should be considered when studying worldviews. 

Koltco-Rivera (2004) offered a collated model of possible worldview dimensions as a starting point to modify based on the results of empirical studies. he organized these dimensions in a Table (2), by group and suggested options for those dimensions. For example, the group of dimensions labeled Human Nature has three dimensions of Moral Orientation, Mutability, and Complexity. The Moral Orientation dimension has two options of good and evil.

Christian Worldview

Many psychologists in the West who identify as Christian have suggested what might be included in a Christian worldview that includes the three main branches of contemporary Christian traditions (Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant). For example, Knabb et al. (2022) provided a definition of a Christian worldview in their article describing the Christian Worldview Scale. Following is their definition.

A comprehensive view of life, mindset, or narrative among Christians, revealed through the Bible as divine revelation and creation as general revelation, based on foundational beliefs and untestable assumptions about an infinitely powerful, knowing, and loving Triune God, who is at the center of a physical and spiritual reality, the creator and sustainer of all that exists, including humanity, and the ultimate source of all human knowledge, morals/values, and meaning/purpose. (Knabb et al., 2022, p. 3.)

Nonreligious Worldviews

Taves and her colleagues (2018) addressed the problem of examining the beliefs of people who identify as atheists or agnostics, which are concepts presented as negating the concept theism. Rather than conceptualizing the perspectives of atheists and agnostics as nonreligious, Taves et al. (2018) suggest the concept worldview would be a better term for the larger construct, which includes the study of meaning-making. Worldview is an alternative term to conceptualizing meaningful beliefs systems as theism, atheism, and agnosticism.

Measuring Worldviews

Knabb et al. (2022) found no measures of the major world religions in the literature review preceding the Christian Worldview Scale. The measure includes six dimensions.

Related posts

Naturalism

Materialism

Schema

Reference

Juergensmeyer, M. (2010). 2009 Presidential Address: Beyond war and words: The global future of religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78, 882–895. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfq048

Knabb, J. J., Wang, K. T., Hall, M. E. L., & Vazquez, V. E. (2022). The Christian Worldview Scale: An emic measure for assessing a comprehensive view of life within the Christian tradition. Spirituality in Clinical Practice. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000306

Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2004). The Psychology of Worldviews. Review of General Psychology, 8(1), 3–58. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.1.3

Slife, B. D., & Reber, J. S. (2009). Is there a pervasive implicit bias against theism in psychology? Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 29(2), 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016985

Taves, A., Asprem, E., & Ihm, E. (2018). Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 10(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000201

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

See Geoffrey Sutton’s books on   AMAZON       or  GOOGLE STORE

Follow on    FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton    

   X  @Geoff.W.Sutton    

You can read many published articles at no charge:

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton     ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton 

 

Dr. Sutton’s posts are for educational purposes only. See a licensed mental health provider for diagnoses, treatment, and consultation. 

Affordance in psychology

"An affordance is a possibility for action provided to an organism by things and creatures in its environmental niche, given the organism’s particular sensorimotor, perceptual, and cognitive abilities..."

(Taves et al., 2018, p. 208)

The general language is inclusive of human beings and other creatures. I use the word lifeform below. Affordances may be viewed as important to the development of worldviews.

An environmental niche refers to all of the affordances available to a population in a specific environmental setting. This has been called the landscape of affordances by Ramstead et al. (2016).

Two types of affordances

Natural affordances are those possibilities that a lifeform can act on given its abilities and environment. Example, nuts afford eating for squirrels.

Conventional affordances depend on possibilities to act according to one's cultural expectations. Cultural schemas include expectations about relating to people, places, object, and events.

References

Ramstead, M. J., Veissière, S. P., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Cultural affordances: Scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1090. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01090



Taves, A., Asprem, E., & Ihm, E. (2018). Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 10(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000201

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

See Geoffrey Sutton’s books on   AMAZON       or  GOOGLE STORE

Follow on    FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton    

   X  @Geoff.W.Sutton    

You can read many published articles at no charge:

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton     ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton 

 

Dr. Sutton’s posts are for educational purposes only. See a licensed mental health provider for diagnoses, treatment, and consultation.