The human mind thrives on organization. Memories and thoughts are not store haphazardly; there is a system and self-awareness itself uses a particular scheme to store information in a way that will make sense to a person when he is engaged in reflective thought. This scheme is called the self-schema.
A self-schema can be defined in two ways:
- A self-schema shows you exactly how you intend to react to specific situations and events.
- A self-schema consists of our experiences and traits; specific traits are bound to different events. Our behavior is defined by the way we react to people and situations.
Here are examples of self-schemas:
Person A has always been an introvert (because he has always been a quiet person at school and he keeps to himself most of the time).
He is good at sports (he joined the basketball team in high school and earned an educational scholarship with his basketball prowess).
Person A has always loved Oriental cooking (as evidence by his preference for Chinese and Japanese cuisine).
Take note that we do not code all of traits, tendencies and behaviors in one large schema. We create many schemas in our memory and we use these schemas as needed.
As you can imagine, some self-schemas are more useful and important than other schemas. Some minor schemas are only used in rare occasions (i.e. when a person is required to dance in front of others with a partner; the response to this type of situation is dictated by the particular schema that a person already has about similar experiences).
It is very important to become aware of our self-schemas because these are the internal codes that we refer to when we need to something. Without self-schemas, reflective thought and meaningful interaction with others is simply not possible. When a person is faced with a situation, it is the self-schema that tells the person directly what to do.
Simply put – you cannot escape your own self-schemas any more than you can escape the fact that you have to wake up at one point during the day. It is unavoidable which is why we need to embrace it because you can actually use self-schemas to improve the way you behave or react in different situations.