Schema in the park

Schemas are mental representation of objects or categories of objects. It contains the obvious features of the object or category and assumption on how it would work. To decide how to behave in a situation, we go through an automatic process of categorization of things to establish meanings and predicting how they will work using schemas.

When we go through this process of categorizing something, we assume that it owns the characteristics of the schema although the characteristics cannot be perceived directly. This simplifying act of assumption allows us to make decisions quickly and it is essential in order for us to cope in this complex environment. It would be impossible and extremely time consuming if we had to deliberate over every detail to ensure accuracy in all situations and objects that we should encounter.

When making sense of an object, the schema we use to categorize it can influence what would be noticed. Schemas also have an impact on how we interpret ambiguous information. Ambiguous information are interpreted according to the schemas. Ambiguous actions may may lead us to have the assumption that the object has certain characteristics, and anything that suggest those characteristics may be interpreted that our assumptions are correct.

Last Saturday, my friend and I, who did not know that a park could exist in Chinatown, got curious and went for a stroll in Pearl’s hill city park. It was a quiet park with many trees and very few people. Near the top of the park, was a fitness corner for people to exercise. We saw a man. When my friend noticed and informed me that he was behaving oddly and smiling at me, we started walking away quickly. Nearing the exit of the park, we saw him again. He was ahead of us and seemed to be leaving the park. Suddenly, he turned and started walking towards us. We got frightened and were wondering what to do when he said “How are you?” in chinese. It got us really scared and we started walking quickly to get out. As we walked past him quickly, he seemed to approach us. But we were mistaken. He was greeting a man behind us.

The situation was not clear. He did not have a label on his clothes that said pervert or robber but we assumed it to be. This could be due to information from the media and from hearsay about perverts or robbers lurking about quiet parks, and with that being the most available information at that time, we formed a schema of a pervert or robber of the man.

The environment of the park being quiet, him walking towards us, and greeting, further increased the information we had to categorize and impose the idea that he wasn’t a good person and would do something bad. His simple act of smiling and greeting matched the schema of how some perverts (as we have seen in the news) behave, made us assume that it was evidence that we are correct and should run away quickly.

However, we were wrong, and this showed that the assumptions we made were inaccurate and we do not always categorize objects accurately. The schema we had caused us to form a stereotype of men who behave friendly in a quiet park as a bad person. If an incident were to happen in the park on the similar day, we would have assumed it was the man we saw was the perpetrator and he might be wrongly caught as a suspect due to the schema we had of him.

Although errors can be made, schemas can also be useful. As it was a situation where we were unsure of the circumstances, we formed the schema using the most available information of the situation (what we have seen in the media). It was automatic. We did not control our thoughts and think carefully if we should walk away quickly or not. This categorization allowed us to decide to move away quickly and if we were correct, this schema that we invoked would have saved us.

I would like to think that if such a friendly act was to be done at a party, we would react in a completely different way. As a party would provide us with a completely different schema of the man.