Social Schema Research Articles

How I See It, How Everyone Else Sees It: Personal and Social Schemas of Career Success

Extant research on career success takes two broad approaches to understand the phenomenon--the objectivist approach involves pre- defined indicators often ascribed by the researcher; the subjectivist approach takes the perspective of the career actor and thus provides idiosyncratic views of career success. Yet, little is known about commonly-held social beliefs among career actors. To address this gap, we investigated how individuals perceive career success, when defining it from multiple perspectives, by asking participants what career success means to them personally (i.e., a subscribed view) and how they believe others view career success (i.e., an ascribed view). We discovered that the evaluation of success is derived from specific career attainments. The extent to which theses attainments are related to perceptions of success, however, depends on (and is distinct from) the criteria respondents internalize to evaluate success. Further, we found that the process of evaluating careers is both a personal and social phenomenon in which individuals use varied criteria for evaluating their own success, and use limited criteria for evaluating others’ success. We present a model and propositions based on interviews from a sample of 44 career actors that demonstrates both the personal and social processes of career success evaluations, along with the potential consequences of those evaluations.

Rethinking teaching and learning of science inference competencies of lower track students in Singapore: a Rasch investigation

ABSTRACTCompetency in making inferences is an important aspect of student learning in the twenty-first century, for making better-informed decisions. The purpose of our study is to investigate the type of science capital that can predict the science inference competencies of lower track students. Science capital comprises diverse social capital, cultural capital, and mental schema. A total of 1,397 Normal Academic (NA) and 637 Normal Technical (NT) Grade 7 students from 37 public secondary schools in Singapore participated in the study. Three separate science inference tests were administered to the students over one academic year, and test scores were calibrated and equated using Rasch analysis. The relationship between students’ perceptions of science capital and their development in science inference competencies was investigated using Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis. The results indicated that NA students’ self-views in science learning and their views about the nature of science were significant predictors of their scientific inference competencies. For NT students, their views about science teachers was the only significant predictors of their performance on making scientific inferences. Based on the research design and findings, we draw implications for local and international science curriculum policy. Additionally, we demonstrate the usefulness of Rasch analysis.

Testing a Social Schematic Model of Police Procedural Justice

Procedural justice theory increasingly guides policing reforms in the United States and abroad. Yet the primary sources of perceived police procedural justice are still unclear. Building on social schema research, we posit civilians’ perceptions of police procedural justice only partly reflect their personal and vicarious experiences with officers. We theorize perceptions of the police are anchored in a broader “relational justice schema,” composed of views about how respectful, fair, and unbiased most people are in their dealings with others. Individuals’ experiences with certain nonlegal actors and neighborhood environments should directly affect their relational justice schema and indirectly affect their evaluation of police. Nevertheless, experiences with police, especially mistreatment by officers, should also affect perceived police procedural justice and may moderate the effects of relational justice schema endorsement. We test our hypotheses in two studies with national samples. The findings strongly support a social schematic model of perceived police procedural justice.

On Oyèrónké Oyèwumí, colonial Afro-masculinities and the subjection of African cultural praxis in Inxeba

The understudied work of Oyeronkẹ Oyewumi has pointed to the incommensurability of the westernised phenomenon of gender with African conceptions of personhood and social identity. Oyewumi’s work has challenged the idea of gender as a universal identity and subject position, not by arguing for a distinct form of gender embodiment that is African in its phenomenology, but by historically and conceptually demonstrating that gender is a product of western social constructs not universally related or applicable to African social schemas. Oyewumi presents the argument that the presence of gender as a social signifier of African peoples’ identity (whom prior to colonialism inhabited a cultural order without gender as a primary organising principle) occurs at the co-instance of western cultural domination and colonialisation of Africa. Relying on such a view toward African society’s historically non-gendered social organisation schemas, this paper offers a critique of the film Inxeba (Trengove 2017), arguing that, contrary to the popular reception of the film as a gender progressive representation of African queer identity and its attendant liberation from a purportedly hetero-patriarchal African culture, the film in effect constitutes the inverse. In essence, the reception around Inxeba inadvertently re-inscribes colonial gender grammars into an African cultural praxis and in the process undercuts African cultural autonomy for self-progression on its own terms. I further argue that the film’s thematic treatment of both a purported “African hetero-patriarchal masculinity” and an “African Queer masculinity” could be read as merely mimicking western/colonial gender embodiment discourse.

Understanding AVATAR therapy: who, or what, is changing?

Understanding AVATAR therapy: who, or what, is changing?

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, RACIAL SOCIALIZATION, AND CRIME OVER TIME: A SOCIAL SCHEMATIC THEORY MODEL

AbstractRecent studies evince that interpersonal racial discrimination (IRD) increases the risk of crime among African Americans and familial racial socialization fosters resilience to discrimination's criminogenic effects. Yet, studies have focused on the short‐term effects of IRD and racial socialization largely among adolescents. In this study, we seek to advance knowledge by elucidating how racialized experiences—in interactions and socialization—influence crime for African Americans over time. Elaborating Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory, we trace the effects of childhood IRD and familial racial socialization on adult offending through cognitive and social pathways and their interplay. We test this life‐course SST model using data from the FACHS, a multisite study of Black youth and their families from ages 10 to 25. Consistent with the model, analyses reveal that the criminogenic consequences of childhood IRD are mediated cognitively by a criminogenic knowledge structure and socially through the nature of social relationships in concert with ongoing offending and discrimination experiences. Specifically, by increasing criminogenic cognitive schemas, IRD decreases embeddedness in supportive romantic, educational, and employment relations, which influence social schemas and later crime. Consonant with expectations, the findings also indicate that racial socialization provides enduring resilience by both compensating for and buffering discrimination's criminogenic effects.

Street Youth, Social Schemas, and Crime

Utilizing 400 youths living on the street, the article examines the social schematic theory of crime developed by Simons and Burt. It explores the role homelessness, physical abuse, emotional neglect, violent victimization, and peers play in the development of criminogenic knowledge structures (CKSs). It then examines the associations between adverse experiences, the CKS, and crime. Results show that deviant peers mediate the relationships between physical abuse, homelessness, violent victimization, and the CKS, while emotional neglect is directly associated with the CKS. The CKS in turn is directly linked to crime along with peers, homelessness, and violent victimization. The CKS also mediates the relationships between deviant peers and offending, and emotional neglect and offending. The relationships between physical abuse, homelessness, violent victimization, and crime are mediated by deviant peers. Furthermore, these relationships are also serially mediated through deviant peers and the CKS. Avenues for future research and policy implications are discussed.

The Matrix of S&M in Korean Cinema: Time, Space, Trauma, Power

Just as Jean Baudrillard predicted that a new era would arrive wherein sexual desire would emerge, the late ’90s in Korea were marked as the fin-de-siecle of sexual explosion in popular culture, in the transition of the culture from pre-modernism to modernism. Sex and nudity became prevalent properties in popular culture and film, as a window onto the world, also joined this parade by equipping its products with erotically provocative visuals and transgressive texts. This study aims to shed some light on the social meaning of sadomasochism (S&M) by viewing it as an expression of power relations (dominance/submission & discipline/punishment) within the larger social schema. This would involve the use of the body as the site where geopolitical conflicts are inscribed, in relation to the emergence of an authoritarian system that required masochistic acceptance of the concepts of dedication and self-sacrifice.

The Dominant Value System of Chinese Gay Males in Family, Couple, and Community Relationships: A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACTThe number of Chinese gay males in Asia and overseas is approximately 27 million; however, the study of family, couple, and community relationships regarding this population is lacking. This study aims to explore knowledge about the dominant values of Chinese gay males in three relationships. Based on the lens of social learning theory and symbolic interactionism, the research question is “What are the social schemas which Chinese gay males learned and contributed back to their family, couple, and community relationships?” This qualitative research includes data collection through semi-structured interviews 60–90 minutes in length with 14 Chinese gay male participants in Asian countries and data analysis through a phenomenological approach. In findings, the dominant value system of this group is composed of the following: (1) masculinism; (2) exam-oriented education; (3) status-oriented interaction; (4) indirect communication; and (5) enmeshed relationships. The results also included their cultural conflicts, the cognitive biases in their societies, and the interplay of family, couple, and community relationships. This study attempts to strengthen the cultural competence of therapists working with Chinese gay male clients.

Large cultural networks and smart specialization: What is new in regional policy diagnostic analytics?

Measuring the temporal centrality of concepts in a relevant information sphere (e.g., contemporary social media such as Instagram) combined with a firm-level analytical perspective can be applied to the analysis of social, cultural, and entrepreneurial schemas and mechanisms. In this context, regional policy and diagnostic analytics constitute an emerging and increasingly prominent research field which relies on trustworthy sources of big data to explore localized entrepreneurial discovery projects to improve the effectiveness of regional policy. In line with European Community regional policies and the recent focus on smart specialization strategies, we investigate the cultural and creative industry (C&Ci) and its participation in economic growth. The research adopts an inductive thinking process based on the logic of discovery as opposed to innovation, as suggested by Hirshleifer (Am Econ Rev 61(4):561–574, 1971). Examination of a localized entrepreneurial discovery project involves analysis of a transition path from an existing set of collective capabilities to the foundations of a new business. Our description of the localized entrepreneurial discovery project highlights the distinctiveness of community performative meanings in relation to the dynamic evolution and distribution of the ‘sharing hashtag’ network.

Childhood stress, life history, psychopathy, and sociosexuality

This paper explores how Early Life Stress (ELS) and Life History (LH) strategy impact personality and attitudes toward infidelity, mating effort, and casual sex. A sample of 300 participants reported biodemographic behavioral outcomes, such as their number of lifetime sex partners, which correlated with ELS, LH strategy, and unrestricted sociosexual attitudes (albeit not strongly). A structural equations model was specified and demonstrated that effects of ELS and LH on unrestricted sociosexual attitudes were partially mediated through psychopathy. ELS, LH, and an antagonistic social schema increased psychopathy, which then directly increased unrestricted sociosexual attitudes. These results support the theory that psychopathy is an adaptive trait meant to increase short-term mating opportunities.

Visual Attention to Dynamic Scenes of Ambiguous Provocation and Children’s Aggressive Behavior

Research on biases in attention related to children’s aggression has yielded mixed results. Some research suggests that inattention to social cues and reliance on maladaptive social schemas underlie aggression. Other research suggests that maladaptive social schemas lead aggressive individuals to attend to nonhostile cues. The primary objective of this study was to test the proposition that aggression is related to delayed attention to cues followed by selective attention to nonhostile cues after the provocation has occurred. A second objective was to test whether these biases are associated with aggression only when children hold negative social schemas. The eye fixations of 70 children (34 boys, 36 girls; Mage = 11.71 years) were monitored with an eye tracker as they watched video clips of child actors portraying scenes of ambiguous provocation. Aggression was measured using peer-, teacher-, and parent-reports, and children completed a measure of antisocial and prosocial peer beliefs. Aggressive behavior was associated with greater time until fixation on the provocateur among youth who held antisocial peer beliefs. Aggression was also associated with greater time until fixation on an actor displaying empathy for the victim among children reporting low levels of prosocial peer beliefs. After the provocation, aggression was associated with suppressed attention to an amused peer among children who held negative peer beliefs. Increasing attention to cues in a scene of ambiguous provocation, in conjunction with fostering more positive beliefs about peers, may be effective in reducing hostile responding among aggressive youth.

INCORPORATING ROUTINE ACTIVITIES, ACTIVITY SPACES, AND SITUATIONAL DEFINITIONS INTO THE SOCIAL SCHEMATIC THEORY OF CRIME.

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.

Phantoms in the brain

Use of mirrors with people with phantom limbs reveals that extraordinary and immediate changes in felt experience can occur when an internal schema in the brain is projected out and then perceived as external. This opens up a fascinating new area of work for group psychotherapy given the discovery of the neurologically embedded social self. Examination of a psychodramatic production of an individual’s internally held social self suggests similar mechanisms are in operation for the updating of the social self schema. It appears that the interpersonal field is a primary factor in the formation of the self and that the corresponding neurobiological structures can be further modified with mirroring of the cognitive, affective and relational aspects of the social self. Understanding these mechanisms will enhance the different techniques of interpersonal mirroring that already occur in most group modalities. Progress will be made as we reflect on the results of putting these new insights and ideas into practice.

Filling the Meso-Level Gap in Stratification Theory.

Filling the Meso-Level Gap in Stratification Theory.

Whether Social Schema Violations Help or Hurt Creativity Depends on Need for Structure.

Although people and events that disconfirm observers' expectancies can increase their creativity, sometimes such social schema violations increase observers' rigidity of thought and undermine creative cognition. Here we examined whether individual differences in the extent to which people prefer structure and predictability determine whether social schema violations facilitate or hamper creativity. Participants in Study 1 formed impressions of a schema-inconsistent female mechanic (vs. a schema-consistent male mechanic). Following schema-inconsistent rather than -consistent information, participants low (high) in need for structure showed better (impeded) creative performance. Participants in Study 2 memorized a series of images in which individuals were placed on a schema-inconsistent (vs. consistent) background (e.g., an Eskimo on the desert vs. on a snowy landscape). Following schema-inconsistent imagery, participants low (high) in need for structure increased (decreased) divergent thinking.

Poster #S79 EFFECTIVENESS OF INTEGRATED COGNITIVE REMEDIATION THERAPY FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA OUTPATIENTS: EARLY VERSUS LONG-TERM COURSE OF ILLNESS – RESULTS FROM AN INTERNATIONAL RCT

Background Nowadays there is extensive evidence available showing the efficacy of cognitive remediation therapies. Integrative approaches seem superior regarding the maintenance of proximal outcome at follow-up as well as generalization to other areas of functioning. To date, only limited evidence about the efficacy of CRT is available concerning elder schizophrenia patients. The Integrated Neurocognitive Therapy (INT) represents a new developed cognitive remediation approach. It is a manualized group therapy approach targeting all 11 NIMH-MATRICS dimensions within one therapy concept. In this study we compared the effects of INT on an early course group (duration of disease 15 years). Methods An international multicenter study carried out in Germany, Switzerland and Austria with a total of 90 outpatients diagnosed with Schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR) were randomly assigned either to an INT-Therapy or to Treatment-As-Usual (TAU). 50 of the 90 Patients were an Early-Course (EC) group, suffering from schizophrenia for less than 5 years (Mean age=29 years, Mean duration of illness=3.3 years). The other 40 were a Long-term Course (LC) group, suffering from schizophrenia longer than 15 years (Mean age= 45 years, Mean duration of illness=22 years). Treatment comprised of 15 biweekly sessions. An extensive assessment battery was conducted before and after treatment and at follow up (1 year). Multivariate General Linear Models (GLM) (duration of illness x treatment x time) examined our hypothesis, if an EC group of schizophrenia outpatients differ in proximal and distal outcome from a LC group. Results Irrespective of the duration of illness, both groups (EC & LC) were able to benefit from the INT. INT was superior compared to TAU in most of the assessed domains. Dropout rate of EC group was much higher (21.4%) than LC group (8%) during therapy phase. However, interaction effects show that the LC group revealed significantly higher effects in the neurocognitive domains of speed of processing (F>3.6) and vigilance (F>2.4). In social cognition the EC group showed significantly higher effects in social schema (F>2.5) and social attribution (blame; F>6.0) compared to the LC group. Regarding more distal outcome, patients treated with INT obtained reduced general symptoms unaffected by the duration of illness during therapy phase and at follow-up (F>4.3). Discussion Results suggest that INT is a valid goal-oriented treatment to improve cognitive functions in schizophrenia outpatients. Irrespective of the duration of illness significant treatment, effects were evident. Against common expectations, long-term, more chronic patients showed higher effects in basal cognitive functions compared to younger patients and patients without any active therapy (TAU). Consequently, more integrated therapy offers are also recommended for long-term course schizophrenia patients.

Cognitive behavioural therapy for the treatment of delusional systems

This article describes the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for treatment-resistant delusional systems in a cohort of three service users with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Key stages of CBT are outlined, including engagement, the use of scaffolding to reinitiate social functioning, improving coping styles and metacognitive techniques (such as rumination postponement). These were followed by the use of formulation, examination of the antecedents/timeline to identify core schema vulnerabilities and schema-focused techniques to deal with underlying unbearable affect. Systematization, conviction, overall symptomatology, clinically significant improvement, schema profile and social functioning are described pre and post-therapy. Following a 50-session course of CBT, all parameters including social functioning and schema vulnerability improved in two of the case examples; however, recovery was limited in the other. The authors recommend a synthesis between expert CBT and psychodynamic understanding, to improve engagement and schema change in the psychotherapy of delusional systems.

Phantoms in the brain

Use of mirrors with people with phantom limbs reveals that extraordinary and immediate changes in felt experience can occur when an internal schema in the brain is projected out and then perceived as external. This opens up a fascinating new area of work for group psychotherapy given the discovery of the neurologically embedded social self. Examination of a psychodramatic production of an individual’s internally held social self suggests similar mechanisms are in operation for the updating of the social self schema. It appears that the interpersonal fi eld is a primary factor in the formation of the self and that the corresponding neurobiological structures can be further modifi ed with mirroring of the cognitive, affective and relational aspects of the social self. Understanding these mechanisms will enhance the different techniques of interpersonal mirroring that already occur in most group modalities. Progress will be made as we refl ect on the results of putting these new insights and ideas into practice.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Ageist and Sexist Double Jeopardy Portrayals in Children's Picture Books

Bandura's Social Learning Theory purports that early exposure to this social information may have an impact on children's schema development (e.g., Bandura, 2001), which may influence how children and later adults think about what it means to age and get older (e.g., what it means to be an aging woman in society). By extension, if the portrayal of aging women characters in picture books contains both ageist and sexist attitudes, then the concern is that learned double jeopardy social schemas may influence both children's and the broader society's reactions to this aging sub-population (Chappell & Havens, 1980) and personal self-efficacy toward aging (Bandura, 2011). For the purpose of the current research, a possible double jeopardy portrayal was examined for older women characters in children's picture books. Using a stratified random sampling of 90 children's picture books, results found that older book characters were depicted in only about one-third of the sampled books, and older women portrayals were generally more negative (e.g., “hag”). The current study analyzed the biased aging portrayals in children's picture books, and found evidence for double jeopardy (e.g., both ageist and sexist attitudes combined) in how aging women characters were presented in both text and imagery. Implications toward future research and education interventions that convey more positive messages about aging and being a woman aging in society will be discussed.