Schemas are referred to as mental structures that are organized in certain patterns to help store information related to certain stimuli. Schemas are responsible for interpreting new information and individual encounters when subjected in a new environment. Interestingly, Schemas can be modified to suit every new situation thereby guiding judgment. A stereotype is often an untrue or unfair belief about the nature of a particular person or object and cab influenced by the individual schemas. As such, schemas and stereotypes are related such that they influence eyewitness testimony. This paper limits itself to the discussion and evaluation of the role schemas and stereotypes on recalling past events. It covers related implications does this have for the accuracy of eyewitness accounts of events.
Memory: Schemas
Schemas are referred to as mental structures that are organized in certain patterns to help store information related to certain stimuli. Basically, information about events, activities, individual or any other concept is stored into people memories as schemas. Therefore, when people interact with the environment, they are able to notice new information or remember old information if there is consistency with already existing information within the schemas. The importance of schemas is that they influence how people interpret new information. Schemas also play an influential role in how people make judgments about events, places, ideas or even other people. Hence, schemas can be used to process and interpret information since they organize the cognitive aspect about something.
Schemas can easily be modified. If new information is associated with existing information within a schema, the information is easily remembered and helps to further build the world view of the individual (Tuckey & Brewer, 2003a). However, if there is no association of new information with existing one within the schemas, then most likely this information will be selectively ignored or quickly forgotten. This response can happen in various degrees. At the greater depth, the individual can become completely unconscious about perceiving the new information. On the higher degree, an individual can choose to make an interpretation that will not affect the already existing information in his or her schemas. Nevertheless, the information sometimes may seem hard to be oblivious to. In such circumstances, the individual may interpret the new information in such a way that it changes the already existing information in his or her schemas (Tuckey, M. & Brewer, 2003a).
Take an example of someone who believes that being rained on, one could easily catch malaria. If this person is told that malaria is actually caused by a pathogenic organism called plasmodium and its vector borne transmitted through mosquitoes, then this person can chose to completely change the earlier information stored within his or her schemas; this is if the information cannot be completely ignored. However, if the individual chooses to interpret the information in such a way that he does not have to change the already existing information in the schema, he or she can figure out a way to still relate cold to malaria.
A stereotype is often an untrue or unfair belief about the nature of a particular person or object. Stereotypes could be influenced by the individual schemas. Markedly, stereotypes can either be negative or positive. For instance, people can associate a certain general aspect about a group with an individual from that particular group. At the same time people develop perception about groups based on individual events and activities from single members of that group. Stereotypes are known to be a short cut way of understanding the complexities of social interactions and life experiences. They simplify these complexities by creating generalization and general ways of understanding concepts, objects, places, and people.
People generally chose to think that their evaluation of their surrounding is objective and at the same time reasonable. However, the manipulation of small details as people interact with objects and other people can easily influence how they remember things. A number of studies have been conducted to assess the role of human attitudes on memory. Recalling information from memory basically implies, re-accessing information about events that occurred in the past. These events were encoded and stored in the brain. As earlier mentioned, the information is stored as schemas. This is what is commonly referred to as remembering.
Some scholars have concluded that the schemas are scattered throughout the brain. They are not located specifically at one point. This means that the way, they are organized is not like books in a shelf but can be conceived as a jigsaw puzzle. This means that it involves different elements that are interrelated or connected. Therefore, in order for people to recall past information, the process will require interconnection and association of all these elements.
Schemas and stereotypes influence eyewitness testimony. An eye witness testimony is an account that people give about a past event that they witnessed. In most cases, eyewitness is used as a legal term where people who witnessed a robbery or an accident report what they saw at the scene of the event. Legal systems rely easily on the accounts that eyewitness give about a crime. However, based on research on cognitive psychology, it is noted that eye witness can be easily affected by some psychological factors including reconstruction of memory and anxiety.
According to the Bartlett’s theory of memory reconstruction, recalling is subjected to individual interpretation of information. Individual interpretation is also dependent on people’s personal values, cultural context and the way they individual make sense of their own world. This theory can be used to develop a deep understanding on the testimonies of eye witnesses. It can be used to influence whether eyewitness testimonies should be relied upon or not. Retrieval of information stored to the brain is does not occur the same way it was encoded. It is also not stored in the same way it was presented. Information is extracted from the brain based on the underlying meaning or the gist (Tuckey, & Brewer, 2003b)
Bartlett gave an illustration of how people often change their memories so that they can make sense to them. An individual hears a story, and tells it to another person who also tells the same story to different person and the sequence continues until after ten or more people hears the story. If all these people were to give an account of what they heard, they would each give different version based on what made sense to them. Each person will recall the story in their own individual way. Since the story was repeated severally to so many people by different people, some important details that never seemed too clear to the recipients were either omitted or rationalized by the individuals. If a detail is difficult to explain, an eye witness would definitely put the idea in a way that he or she understands or in other cases, the eye witnesses would opt to ignore the information. However, if the information is simple to get the underlying idea, then eye witnesses would easily recall and explain it plainly.
This therefore means that memory cannot be exact. It also means that it may more not be very prudent to rely on eye witnesses due to the fact that memory cannot be exact. Usually, the distortion of memory occurs because of the existing information on people’s schemas. People would only try to fit the new information into the existing schemas. If it fails to fit, then they chose to interpret the information in a way that will not change the information already existing in their schemas. Markedly, humans would reconstruct memories so that they can become aligned to their beliefs, culture, values, and expectations (Tuckey & Brewer, 2003b). This effect applies to eye witnesses too.
Stereotyping on the other hand also plays a central role in influencing memory of eyewitnesses. According to Kleinder et al. (2008), in a study participants were shown an unusual image of a white American and an African American man in a bus. The white American man was holding a razor blade while talking to the African American man. The picture was shown to the first participant and given the opportunity to describe it to a different person and so on. If the participant who described the picture first was white, then he or she would always report that it was the African American man who was holding the razor blade. This indicates that stereotyping plays a role in distorting memory. For instance, in this case, African Americans are stereotyped as violent and capable of participating violent activities.
Based on this and other similar studies, it is evident that stereotypic expectations of people would most likely influence how they remember eye witnessed events. These studies may have tried to provide accurate evidence of recalling information, but however, they had limitations. For instance, assumptions were made that for the time in which it takes the brain to develop distortions about the new information. If tests were done immediately, it is possible that the information can be recalled accurately.
References
Byron, Ben, & Renz. (2010). Our own worst enemy as protector of ourselves: stereotypes, schemas, and typifications as integral elements in the persuasive process.
Kleider, H. M., Pezdek, K., Goldinger, S. D., & Kirk, A. (2008). Schema-Driven Source Misattribution Errors: remembering the expected from a Witnessed Event. Goergia: Goergia State University.
Knuycky, Kleider, & Goldinger. (2008). Stereotypes influence false memories for imagined events.
Sacchi, Agnoli, & Loftus. (2007). Changing History: Doctored Photographs Affect Memory for Past Public events.
Tuckey, M. & Brewer, N. (2003a). The Influence of Schemas, Stimulus Ambiguity, and Interview Schedule on Eyewitness Memory Over Time.
Tuckey, M. R., & Brewer, N. (2003b). How Schemas Affect Eyewitness Memory over Repeated Retrieval attempts.
