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Schema Theory: An Information Processing Model of Perception and Cognition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

The world is complex, and yet people are able to make some sense out of it. This paper offers an information-processing model to describe this aspect of perception and cognition. The model assumes that a person receives information which is less than perfect in terms of its completeness, its accuracy, and its reliability. The model provides a dynamic description of how a person evaluates this kind of information about a case, how he selects one of his pre-existing patterns (called schemata) with which to interpret the case, and how he uses the interpretation to modify and extend his beliefs about the case. It also describes how this process allows the person to make the internal adjustments which will serve as feedback for the interpretation of future information. A wide variety of evidence from experimental and social psychology is cited to support the decisions which went into constructing the separate parts of the schema theory, and further evidence is cited supporting the theory's system-level predictions. Since the schema theory allows for (but does not assume) the optimization of its parameters, it is also used as a framework for a normative analysis of the selection of schemata. Finally, a few illustrations from international relations and especially foreign-policy formation show that this model of how people make sense out of a complex world can be directly relevant to the study of important political processes.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 1248 - 1266
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1973

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Footnotes

*

For their help I wish to thank Helga Novotny of Cambridge University; A. K. Sen of the London School of Economics; Brian Barry of Oxford University; Barry R. Schlenker of the State University of New York at Albany; Ian Budge, Michael Bloxam, Norman Schofield and Michael Taylor of the University of Essex; Ole Holsti of the University of British Columbia; Ernst Haas and Jeffrey Hart of the University of California at Berkeley; Cedric Smith of the University of London; Zolton Domotor of the University of Pennsylvania; and my research assistants Jacob Bercovitch, Ditsa Kafry, and William Strawn. Parts of this paper have been presented at research seminars at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Technion (Haifa), the London School of Economics, and the University of Essex. I am grateful to the discussants at all these places. For their generous financial support I wish to thank the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkeley, the Fellowship Program of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the National Science Foundation. Of course the author is solely responsible for the views presented in this paper.

In reviewing the psychological literature I have relied heavily on Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, second edition (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968, 1969), especially the chapters by Berger and Lambert “Stimulus-Response Theory in Contemporary Social Psychology,” I, 81–178; Seymour Rosenberg, “Mathematical Models of Social Behavior,” I, 179–244; Robert B. Zajonc, “Cognitive Theories in Social Psychology,” I, 320–411; Leonard Berkowitz, “Social Motivation,” III, 50–135; Henri Tajfel, “Social and Cultural Factors in Perception,” III, 315–394; and George A. Miller and David McNeill, “Psycholinguistics,” III, 666–794.

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107 With the assumption that each instance of a schema has equal subjective probability, size determines redundancy. The assumption is based on the principle that if some instances have a higher subjective probability than others, they should be treated by the model as belonging to different schemata. For applications of redundancy to psychology see Garner, Uncertainty and Structure; and Garner, Wendell R. and Clement, David E., “Goodness of Pattern and Pattern Uncertainty,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 2 (December, 1963), 446–452 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent critical review see Corcoran, D. W. J., Pattern Recognition (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1971)Google Scholar.

108 For schemata of infinite size (e.g., with continuous rather than discrete parameters), the appropriate measure of size uses degrees of freedom. For example, a linear equation has two degrees of freedom (namely a and b in y = ax + b), and a quadratic equation has three degrees of freedom (namely a, b and c in y = ax3 + bx + c).

109 Kogan and Tagiuri, “Interpersonal Preference and Cognitive Organization.”

110 To carry the analysis further one could do the type of indifference curve analysis used in microeconomics. Negatively sloped indifference curves could be drawn in Figure 4 to represent the tradeoffs between smallness and veridicality. Then the schemata should be given accessibility in order of their intersection with the ordered set of indifference curves. If there are enough alternative schemata to allow for a continuous approximation of the frontier of knowledge, then the schema which should be given the highest accessibility is represented by the point at which one of the indifference curves is tangent to the frontier of knowledge.

111 A metric function has the following properties: d(x,y) = d(y,x); d(x,y) ≥ 0; d(x,y) = 0 if and only if x = y, and d(x,y) + d(y,z) ≥ d(x,z).

112 Although the distance between points is a metric function as defined in the previous footnote, the distance between sets is not.

113 Abelson and Rosenberg, “Symbolic Psycho-logic.”

114 Wiest, “A Quantitative Extension.”

115 Signal detectability theory treats the situation in which there is only one accessible schema. See Coombs, Dawes, and Tversky, Mathematical Psychology.

116 Geometric analysis of this section can be extended to yield a number of suggestive theorems about some of the more subtle consequences of the present information processing model. Here are four such results.

(1) Potential Completeness. If Q is a continuous space, then under a weak set of assumptions the modified and extended specification of a case will be a complete specification of the case. This corresponds to the situation in which the person can make an estimate about every feature of the case (e.g., every friendship relationship). For example, in Figure 5 the set of points in S2 which are minimally distant from X is a single point, x′, and is therefore a complete specification.

(2) Potential Enlargement. Under certain circumstances the modified and extended specification can actually be larger than the initial partial specification. This occurs when there are few points in the partial specification, but more points in the selected schema which are at the minimum distance from the initial partial specification than there were in the initial partial specification itself. In such a situation the person has a schema which he can use to interpret the case, but he does not end up with a single unique specification of the case (even if he started with one). He believes something is wrong with the initial information, but he can not pin down what it is, even though he has selected a schema with which to interpret the case.

(3) Cancellation Effect. Under a wide range of conditions, an initial partial specification with continuous parameters will be modified to achieve a fit to the selected schema by leaving most of the parameters unchanged and by giving the rest neutral values. This can be called the cancellation effect since the only changes in the modification are neutralizations. The cancellation effect is a consequence of the principle that the modification is made in such a way as to move the least distance to the selected schema.

(4) Seriatim Effect. Under a wide range of circumstances, the sequential presentation of the same information can reduce the amount of attitude change compared to a simultaneous presentation. The seriatim effect is due to the principle that a message is first evaluated for how well it fits into a previous interpretation of the case. Presenting discrepant information a little at a time can result in each message being blamed as it is received, whereas if the discrepant information were presented all at once, the blame might be affixed to the old interpretation.

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