Self-schemata and processing information about the self.

1977/02/01 by Hazel Rose Markus · 24 citations
Psychology · #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Cognition #Cognitive and psychological constructs research #Cognitive psychology #Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics #Information processing #Psychology #Self-disclosure #Social information processing #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.2.63

openalex publication_date 1977/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Attempts to organize, summarize, or explain one's own behavior in a particular domain result in the formation of cognitive structures about the self or selfschemata. Self-schemata are cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of the self-related information contained in an individual's social experience. The role of schemata in processing information about the self is examined by linking self-schemata to a number of specific empirical referents. Female students with schemata in a particular domain and those without schemata are selected and their performance on a variety of cognitive tasks is compared. The results indicate that self-schemata facilitate the processing of information about the self (judgments and decisions about the self), contain easily retrievable behavioral evidence, provide a basis for the confident self-prediction of behavior on schema-related dimensions, and make individuals resistant to counterschematic information. The relationship of self-schemata to cross-situational consistency in behavior and the implications of self-schemata for attribution theory are discussed.

Citations

• Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes
• Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena.

Cited by

• Strategies for preventing and reversing polarized online discourse
• Acquiring self-knowledge: The search for feedback that fits.
• Memory for expectancy-congruent and expectancy-incongruent information: A review of the social and social developmental literatures.
• Confirmatory bias in evaluating personality test information: Am I really that kind of person?
• Cross‐Cultural Comparisons of Appearance Self‐Schema, Body Image, Self‐Esteem, and Dieting Behavior Between Korean and U.S. Women
• Like Goes with Like: The Role of Representativeness in Erroneous and Pseudo-Scientific Beliefs
• Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.
• Establishing the theoretical components of alexithymia via factor analysis: Introduction and validation of the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia
• The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory
• Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others.
• Clinical Versus Actuarial Judgment
• Heuristics and Biases
• Finding The “Self” in Self-Regulation: The Identity-Value Model
• Guilty pleasures and grim necessities: Affective attitudes in dilemmas of self-control.
• The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system.
• Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment.
• On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review
• When Predictions Fail: The Dilemma of Unrealistic Optimism
• Not so above average after all: When people believe they are worse than average and its implications for theories of bias in social comparison
• Motivational and Emotional Aspects of the Self
• Depression and evaluative schemata
• Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences.
• Unconscious Unease and Self-Handicapping: Behavioral Consequences of Individual Differences in Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem
• Organizational culture [wikipedia]