Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Self-schemas and motivation

Self-schemas and motivation:
How are self-schemas formed and how do they influence motivation?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. Self-schemas are cognitive frameworks which assist in understanding the world.

Motivation can be described as the process of starting, guiding and maintenance of goal-orientated behaviours. This can be something as simple as getting out of bed to drink a glass when you are thirsty to studying 12 hours per week to gain a good mark on a test. Numerous factors can increase the motivation of an individual, such as self-schemas. Self-schemas have been identified to be an important determinant of motivational behavioural. For instance, self-schemas have been concluded to have important casual effects on a student’s motivation and learning (Ng & Renshaw,2002).

Focus questions What are schemas? What are self-schemas? What impact do self-schemas have on motivation?

What are schemas?

A schema is a cognitive framework, a structure of knowledge, that assists in the interpretation of information, such as events that occur, and the actions undertaken by an individual in relation to that information. In addition, they act as templates that influence the coding, storing and retrieval of new information. (Gilboa & Marlatte, 2017) They are the building blocks for the management of three main cognitive dimensions of human beings. They are the matching of patterns, modelling, and manipulation of their environment. One of the most vital components of the three being the matching of patterns. It is essential to. Human beings as interpretation of patterns are a vital component of cognition. By being able to match different patterns, humans can interpret information quickly as they are exposed to them. It is vital to information comprehension and remembrance and is done through the activation of already stored schemas and instantiation of them. (Ifenthaler & Seel, 2013) Schemas begin as simple networks and then later develop into intricate structures through new experiences and memories (Gilboa & Marlatte, 2017; Seel,2012)

The formation of schemas and their prevalence have been the centre of numerous theories by researchers.

Bartlett's schema theory

Figure 2. War of ghosts was a famous Native American folklore that was used by Bartlett in his study on schemas.

The concept of schemas was introduced by British psychologist Frederic Bartlett in 1932. (Carbon & Albrecht, 2012) Bartlett’s emphasised the interaction between humans and the environment and took the concept of the mind from inside the head to transactions between individuals and their environment. (Wagoner, 2013) His research was initially based on the idea to develop the idea of memory which evolved to lay the foundation of schema theory. (Carbon & Albrecht, 2012; Wagoner, 2013) This was done through a series of studies conducted on the recall of Native American fables in his experiment known as ‘War of the Ghosts” (Brewer, 2021) Bartlett conducted the study on his British students by reading them a folktale from the Chinook tribe called the war of the ghosts which involved ghosts, hunting seals, going to war, and canoeing. The students were asked to recall the story numerous times over a period. They were repeatedly asked by Bartlett to recall the parts of the story they remembered on varying time intervals. Although the initial recollections of the story were quite accurate, as the period of recall time extended, Bartlett reported observed that the recollections became less detailed, with retainment of key aspects and omission of unfamiliar or unimportant information. (Psychologist World, 2021) Bartlett also reported the cultural assimilation of certain aspects of the story to suit the cultural background of the participants, British. For instance, when recalling the men going seal hunting, they remembered it as the men going fishing. (Koblin, 2020) Through these findings, Bartlett proposed the idea of schemata and how they influence our perception and memory. He described them as unconscious mental structures within an individual that contain their knowledge about the world around them and assist in understanding the world. He concluded that the recollection error in the students was due to the schemas that are already existent within the and that information assimilation came because of attempting to reconstruct the new information to be consistent with an already existing schema. (Brewer, 2021)

Piaget's stages of cognitive development

Figure 3. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a revolutionary Swiss psychologist known for his work on the development of children and his theory on cognitive development.

Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist from Switzerland who made major contributions to the study of cognitive development in children. He described development in a series of four stages as a continuous mental process which involves reorganisation of information due to biological development and environmental experiences. Piaget placed schemas at the centre of his theory as the building block of intelligence. (Cherry, 2020) Piaget states that when infants are born, they have certain innate schemas, category of knowledge, such as crying. But they will develop additional and more complex schemas through experiences in their environment. This can include learning to crawl and speak, thus creating new cognitive frameworks, schemas. (Kibler, 2011) Piaget argued that in the process of this development, human beings are continuously going through a course of assimilation and accommodation to adapt to their changing environments. (Burman, 2008; Netti et al., 2016) Assimilation refers to the interpretation of events using existing schemas while accommodation involves the modification of current schemas to increase knowledge of new events and experiences. (Kaasila et al., 2010) During assimilation, stimulus provided to the individual is integrated to an already existing schema in the mind as it is a familiar stimulus that they have already experienced. (Subanji & Nusantara, 2016) Accommodation occurs when the stimulus presented to the individual is new and not previously experienced, which causes cognitive dissonance, an internal state of discomfort that comes a result of conflict between new information and already existent information. For instance, believing that the sun revolves around Earth and being presented with new information that the Earth revolves around the sun. (Adcock, 2012) Piaget identified cognitive dissonance as a facilitator of knowledge development and it allows for the reformation of existing schema to integrate the new stimulus that has been presented. It can also lead to the development of a new schema if there is no already existing schema. (Adcock, 2012; Subanji & Nusantara, 2016)

Brewer and Treyens (1981)

A study was conducted by William F. Brewer and James C. Treyens in 1981 attempted to test schemata and its affect an individual’s the memory of a place. They did this by asking participants to wait in a room that they thought was a graduate students office for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, they were tested for their memory by using various methods. They were asked to recall their memory of the room by using either drawing or written recall or by verbal recognition. (Brewer & Treyens, 1981) The study found that schemata do have an influence on the participants’ memories. For instance, participants reported to seeing books in the office, but there were no books in the office. This was concluded to be due to the schema that participants had of an “office”, which would include books. (Pankin, 2013) Therefore, schemas do have an effect on memory.

Different types of schemas

Although an individual possesses numerous types of schemata, there are four basic types of schemas which assist in the interpretation of the world.(Radhakrishnan, 2021)

• Role schema
• Object schema
• Event schema
• Self-schema

What are self-schemas?

Hazel Markus in 1977 wrote that the influence of schemas on our interpretation of the world is most noticeable when we process information about ourselves. (Markus, 1977)

Example Imagine you are a student who must give a speech in front of his/her class in school. You are feeling scared. You are a shy person who is quite reserved and quite in class. You have also done oral presentations in the past and in every single one of them you have been afraid and shy before and after it. You got scared and you stuttered on your words. Because of these past experiences and your own understanding of your personality, you have an idea of yourself in this situation and how you will behave. This is a self-schema. (Cherry,2020)

Self-schemas are cognitive generalisations that individuals hold about themselves that have been acquired as a result of past experiences. (Markus,1977) These schemas are a representation of the information that one has stored in his/her long-term memory regarding themselves. Information can be stored either in the form of episodic memories or as abstractions from events or stimuli an individual has experienced. For instance, in relation to the example presented above, an episodic memory could be the memory of when the individual was shy and scared, and stuttered during their previous presentation. And an example of abstraction from an experience for an individual could be the belief that they are not good at presentations. (Ng & Renshaw, 2002)

Self-schemas encompass knowledge about the self, such as physical, social, cultural characteristics. (Alexander, 1997) They are representations of behaviour which has repeatedly occurred, thus leading to one’s development of a framework to understand one’s intentions and feelings, and patterns of behaviour. In addition, self-schemas will act as an individual’s reference for future judgments, decisions, and predictions. (Markus, 1977) As a result, self-schemas have important effects on a human being’s behaviour. For instance, studies have concluded that encompassing a self-schema as a drinker of alcohol was a high predictor of alcohol usage in adolescents and young adults. (Lee et al., 2018; Lindgren et al., 2016) Self-schema has also been concluded to be an integral component of motivation (Roeser et al., 2006)

Self-schemas and motivation

Self-schemas, the definition that one has of themselves, has been identified to be an important source of motivation. (Clarence Ng, 2013) Self-schemas effect motivation in two ways. Firstly, motivation to maintain a consistency in the view of self or, need to maintain a consistency in the self-schema that one has on themselves. Secondly, self-schemas motivate an individual to move towards an ideal self of what they want themselves to be in the future. (Reeve, 2017)

Consistent self

Self-schemas develop through interaction with the social world around us. As children, social interaction becomes the build blocks of developing a concept of self. This can be done through how others perceptive them and the need to see themselves as those in society perceive them. As humans develop, there is an increased fixation on the belief that others must perceive them in consistency with their own self-conceptions, their self-schemas. Individuals will become more motivated to make sure that appraisals from others and their self-schema does not change in anyway. This is due to the inborn concept that human beings are most comfortable in predictable, familiar, and stable in things that are familiar whilst avoiding anything that evokes uncomfortableness. (Swann, 1983) Although humans do try to maintain their self-schemas and interact in ways that will preserve their self-schema, there will be instances when they are met with contradictions. (Reeve, 2017) A study conducted by Swann and Read in 1981 found that participants sought self-confirmatory social feedback when presented with information inconsistent to their self-schema by another individual. (Swann, 1983) When individuals are presented with this sort of uncomfortableness, their need for maintaining their self-schema will motivate them to work towards maintaining it, this includes engaging in adoptive behaviours to achieve congruence between affirmation from others and self-schema. This could include increasing one’s effort to changing the perception of others. (Psychology,2020) For instance, if a student who identifies with the self-schema that they are a high academic achiever receives a bad mark on an assessment piece. Because there is discrepancy between their self-schema and the feedback they have gotten, they will work harder to achieve a better mark on the next assessment to resolve this comfort.

Possible self

Self-schema does not only focus on the present self but also includes conceptualisations of future self and is referred to as the possible self. It encapsulates specific visions of the future self such as expectations, fears, wishes, desires, and ideal self. (Stein, 1995) They are the personalised conceptions of what an individual might become, what they are striving to become and what an individual hopes to avoid becoming due to fear. (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Stein, 1995) This can include visions for wanting to be successful, creative, risk or to avoid being unemployed or rejected. (Reeve, 2017) As a result have been shown to have a powerful effect on motivation and the regulation of goal-directed behaviour to achieve the possible self. (Stein, 1995) The possible self serves as a motivator for the behaviour of an individual in the present and acts as a template for comparison and evaluation of the current self against the possible future self. (Freeman et al., 2001)

Importance of studying the impact of self-schema on motivation

Figure 4. Students who identified as having an academic self-schema was found to have greater academic success.

Self-schema has also been concluded to be an integral component of motivation (Roeser et al., 2006) and has been proven to influence multiple components of one’s life, such as health and academic success. For instance, a study conducted by Kendzierski and Whitaker in 1997 conducted an experiment to describe the effect of self-schema on dieting intensions in female undergraduate students. Participants who identified themselves as having a self-schema as a dieter were found to have a significant relationship between intensions of dieting and dieting behaviour. They were also shown to have a more stable in their dieting. On the contrary, those who were aschematics, those who did not identify as dieters, were found to not be stable in their dieting behaviours. Through this study, it was concluded that one’s self-schema effects one’s dieting behaviour. (Kendzierski & Whitaker, 1997) A study was conducted by Ng and Renshaw in 2002 on Chinese and Australian year 10 mathematics students. They found that having and identifying with an academic self-schema was an important motivational determinant of learning achievement. (Ng & Renshaw, 2002)

Conclusion

Self-schemas are the cognitive frameworks within an individual which contains generalisations and beliefs about themselves. They are acquired through past experiences and act as a reference to determine one’s behaviour. Self-schemas are a vital component of motivational behavioural and influence it by the need for human beings to maintain a consistent self-schema and to work towards a possible self in the future. The impact of self-schema on motivation has been prove to highly relevant in research of numerous behaviours such as dieting and academic success as examples.

See also

• Motivation (Wikipedia)
• Jean Piaget (Wikipedia)
• Self-schemas (Wikipedia)
• Self-efficacy and achievement (Book chapter, 2021)
• Self-perception theory and motivation for positive change (Book chapter, 2018)
• Self-concept clarity (Book chapter, 2019)

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External Links

• Schemata (The Living Handbook of Narratology)
• What is Schema Theory in Psychology? (YouTube)
• Role schema (Psychological Resources)
• Object schema (IBM)
• Event schema (VeryWellMind)
• Self-schema (Webspace)