Cultural schema theory is a cognitive theory that explains how people organize and process information about events and objects in their cultural environment. According to the theory, individuals rely on schemas, or mental frameworks, to understand and make sense of the world around them. These schemas are shaped by culture, and they help people to quickly and efficiently process information that is consistent with their cultural background. Cultural schemas can include knowledge about social roles, customs, and beliefs, as well as expectations about how people will behave in certain situations. The theory posits that cultural schemas are formed through repeated interactions and experiences within a particular cultural group, and that they guide behavior in familiar social situations. Cultural schemas are distinct from other schemas in that they are shared among members of a particular cultural group, as opposed to being unique to individuals.
History
The development of the Cultural Schema theory stems from the history of the concept of a Schema as highlighted in this timeline:
Ancient Greece: The idea of schemas existing as ideal types in the mind dates back all the way back to
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
.
19th century:
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
conceptualized the role of experiences in development of reason and developed the argument that reason is structured through forms of experience- coining the phrase
"Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." This statement argues that one should act only in ways that are deemed universally moral and reasonable, both of which are dependent on an individual's experiences and development of reason and morality.
1920s:
Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, ; ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.
...
's work on cognitive development in children furthered the research made toward cultural schemata theory. Piaget's theory proposed that children progress through four major stages of
cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...
: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. He argued that children actively construct their understanding of the world through their experiences and interactions with their environment.
1930s:
Frederic Bartlett
Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (20 October 1886 – 30 September 1969) was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners o ...
's research showed that memory is influenced by cultural and social factors. He found that people from different cultures and backgrounds often remember information differently based on their cultural norms and beliefs. Bartlett proposed that people use their
schema
Schema may refer to:
Science and technology
* SCHEMA (bioinformatics), an algorithm used in protein engineering
* Schema (genetic algorithms), a set of programs or bit strings that have some genotypic similarity
* Schema.org, a web markup vocab ...
, or mental frameworks, to organize and interpret new information based on their existing knowledge and expectations. He argued that people tend to remember information that is consistent with their schema, while distorting or forgetting information that is inconsistent with their schema.
Further research was done in the following years to develop what is now known as the Cultural Schema Theory.
How cultural schemas develop
Research reveals that schemas operate at many different levels. The experiences which are unique to individuals allow them to acquire personal schemas. Societal schemas may emerge from a group's collective knowledge and are represented across the minds in a society, enabling people to think as if they are one mind.
However, when one's cultural environment provides experiences to which every member of that culture is exposed, their experiences allow every member to acquire cultural schemas.
[Nishida, H. (1999). Cultural Schema Theory: In W.B. Gudykunst (Ed.), ''Theorizing About Intercultural Communication'', (pp. 401–418). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.] Cultural schemas are conceptual structures which enable individuals to store perceptual and conceptual information about their culture and interpret experiences and expressions through cultural lenses. If people are not equipped with the appropriate cultural schema, they may not be able to make sense of culturally unfamiliar situations.
When one interacts with members of the same
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
frequently, or talks about certain information with them many times, cultural schemas are created and stored in one's brain. Subsequent similar instances cause the cultural schema to become more organized, abstract, and compact. As this occurs, communication becomes much easier. It is explained that experience is the force which creates cultural schemas.
As people have more experiences their developing cultural schemas become more tightly organized. The information not only becomes more complex, but more useful among members of a culture, alike or different. Beyond the
cognitive
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
activity of cultural schemas is the complex pattern which occurs in the
brain
The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...
.
Not all schemas are uniformly important. High-level schemas are internalized and emotionally salient; likewise, when a schema is only weakly related to a person's self it becomes emotionally empty and irrelevant.
Types of cultural schemas for social interactions
Cultural schemas for social interactions are cognitive structures that contain knowledge for face-to-face interactions in one's cultural environment. There are eight primary types for generating human behavior for social interactions. These eight schemas are also referred to as Primary Social Interaction (PSI) schemas:
# ''Fact-and-concept schemas:'' These are pieces of general information about facts.
# ''Person schemas:'' These are knowledge about different types of people, specifically
personality traits
In psychology, trait theory (also called dispositional theory) is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of ''traits'', which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thou ...
.
# ''Self schemas:'' These contain people's knowledge of how they see themselves and knowledge of how others see them.
# ''Role schemas:'' These are knowledge about social roles that denote expected sets of behaviors of people in particular social positions.
# ''Context schemas:'' These contain information about the situations and appropriate settings of behavioral parameters. Information in context schemas includes predictions about appropriate actions to take in order to achieve goals in the respective context. Information also includes suggestions for reasonable problem-solving strategies.
# ''Procedure schemas:'' These are knowledge about the appropriate sequence of events in common situations. This includes the specific steps to take and the appropriate behavioral rules for the events. The use of procedure schemas causes people to take certain actions some way.
# ''Strategy schemas:'' These are knowledge about problem-solving strategies.
# ''Emotion schemas:'' These contain information about affect and evaluation stored in long-term
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
. This is accessed when other schemas are activated.
Emotion
Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...
schemas develop through social interactions throughout a person's life. Researchers believe it is an important additive because emotions play integral roles in human social interactions.
Application to cross-cultural adaptation
The term cross-cultural adaptation refers to the complex process through which an individual acquires an increasing level of the communication skills of the host culture and of relational development with host nationals. Simply put, cross-cultural adaptation is the transformation of a person's own PSI schemas into those of the host culture and acquisition of new PSI schemas in the host culture s/he is residing in. A number of different people may be subject to cross-cultural adaptation, including immigrants, refugees, business people, diplomats, foreign workers, and students.
However, this entry specifically applies cultural schema theory to
sojourner
A sojourner is a person who resides temporarily in a place.
Sojourner may also refer to:
People
* Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), abolitionist and women's rights activist
* Albert Sojourner (1872–1951), member of the Mississippi House of Rep ...
s' cross cultural adaptation. Sojourners generally spend a few years in another culture while intending to return to their home country. Business people, diplomats, students, and foreign workers can all be classified as sojourners. In order to better explain sojourners' cross-cultural adaptation,
axioms
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...
are used to express causal, correlational, or
teleological
Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Applet ...
relationships.
Axioms
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...
also help to explain the basic assumptions of the cultural schema theory.
The 10 sojourners' axioms are as follows:
# The more often a person repeats a schema-based
behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...
in his or her culture, the more likely the cultural schema will be stored in the person's memory.
# Sojourners' failure to recognize the actions and behaviors that are relevant to meaningful interactions in the host culture are mainly due to their lack of the PSI schemas of the culture.
# The acquisition of the PSI schemas of the host culture is a necessary condition for sojourners' cross-cultural adaptation to the culture.
# The PSI schemas of a person's own culture are interrelated with each other, forming a network of cultural schemas to generate behaviors that are appropriate in the culture. Experience in the host culture causes a change in one's cultural schema. This causes further changes in all other cultural schemas and results in a total change in behavior.
# The acquisition of information about interrelationships among the PSI schemas of the host culture is a necessary condition for sojourners' cross-cultural adaptation.
# People use both schema-driven and data-driven processing to perceive new information, depending on the situation and their motivations.
# If one has well-organized cultural schemas, schematically salient information is more likely to be processed through the schemas, whereas ambiguous information will either direct a search for the relevant data to complete the stimulus more fully, or it will be filled in with default options of the schemas.
# Sojourners who lack the PSI schemas of the host culture are more likely to employ data-driven processing, which requires effort and attention.
# In the host culture, sojourners encounter truly novel situations where they experience
cognitive
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
uncertainty
Uncertainty or incertitude refers to situations involving imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown, and is particularly relevant for decision ...
and
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...
because of the lack of the PSI schemas in the situations.
# In the host culture, sojourners experience the stages of self-regulation and self-direction. In the stage of self-regulation, they try to resolve ambiguities and to establish integration of information using their native-culture schemas by gradually modifying them. In the stage of self-direction, on the other hand, they actively try to reorganize their native
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
schemas or to generate host culture schemas in order to adapt to the host-culture environment.
Real-world example: a sojourner's experience
The term "sojourners" refers to individuals who reside in a culture that is not their own, with the intention of eventually returning home.
Gillian Gibbons Gillian may refer to:
Places
* Gillian Settlement, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
People
Gillian (variant Jillian) is an English feminine given name, frequently shortened to Gill.
It originates as a feminine form of the name Julian, Julio, ...
, a British teacher, traveled to Khartoum, Sudan in August 2007 to teach young students at Unity School. During a lesson on bears, a student brought in a teddy bear for the class to name. The majority of students voted to name the bear Muhammad, which led to Gibbons' arrest on November 25, 2007. She was charged under Article 125 of Sudanese criminal law for insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a serious offense in Islam. Gibbons faced a maximum penalty of 40 lashes and 6 months in jail, but was found guilty and sentenced to 15 days in jail and deportation from Sudan after her release. She was granted a pardon by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir following pressure from the British government, and returned to England after serving nine days in jail.
The incident involving Gibbons can be explained by the cultural schema theory, particularly with regard to her status as a sojourner in an unfamiliar culture. Axiom number three and axiom number nine of the theory apply to Gibbons' situation. As a sojourner, it is necessary to acquire the host culture's primary, secondary, and isolated (PSI) schemas in order to adapt cross-culturally. However, Gibbons lived within the walls of Unity School, which was vastly different from the rest of Sudan and did not require her to acquire the PSI schemas of the host culture. This lack of understanding of local PSI schemas likely led to her allowing the children to name the teddy bear Muhammad, which is unacceptable in Sudanese culture. This highlights the difficulties of cross-cultural adaptation for sojourners like Gibbons, who do not intend to stay and therefore may not fully adapt to the host culture.
Contrasting theory
Cultural schema theory is often compared and contrasted with the
cultural consensus theory
Cultural consensus theory is an approach to information pooling (aggregation, data fusion) which supports a framework for the measurement and evaluation of beliefs as cultural; shared to some extent by a group of individuals. Cultural consensus m ...
. Both theories present distinct perspectives about the nature of individual and cultural knowledge. However, unlike the cultural schema theory, the cultural consensus theory helps to describe and mathematically measure the extent to which cultural beliefs are shared. The central idea is the use of the pattern of agreement or consensus among members of the same culture. Essentially, the more knowledge people have, the more consensus is observed among them.
However, the cultural consensus theory does not help others to better understand intercultural variability or how cultural knowledge is interrelated at a cognitive level.
Cultural consensus theory
Cultural consensus theory is an approach to information pooling (aggregation, data fusion) which supports a framework for the measurement and evaluation of beliefs as cultural; shared to some extent by a group of individuals. Cultural consensus m ...
anticipates intercultural variation but views variation as analogous to performance on a cultural test, with certain individuals functioning as better guides than others to the cultural information pool.
Further use and development of the theory
Cultural schema theory refers to cultural-specific knowledge that individuals possess about the world. To advance the theory and establish its axioms, additional research and validation is needed.
The theory can be utilized in cross-cultural training to aid individuals in adapting to their host culture environments.
Efforts have been made towards this goal, such as using Cultural Schema Theory to argue that cross-cultural exposure stimulates entrepreneurial intentions by developing alertness, which improves one's capacity to identify novel business opportunities.
See also
*
Culture shock
Culture shock is an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one's own; it is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration ...
*
Framing (social sciences)
In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality. Framing can manifest in cognition, thought or interpersonal c ...
*
Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear w ...
*
Intercultural competence
Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioral, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultura ...
References
* Gettleman, Jeffrey (2007). Sudan accuses teacher of Islam insult. ''New York Times''. November 27, 2007. accessed March 25, 2008.
* Shaghasemi, E. & Heisey D. R. (2009). The cross-cultural schemata of Iranian-American people toward each other: A qualitative approach. Intercultural Communication Studies, XVIII(1), 143-160.
* Sharifian, F. (2008). Cultural schemas in L1 and L2 compliment responses: A study of Persian-speaking learners of English. Journal of Politeness Research. 4(1), 55-80.
* Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cultural Schema Theory
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