• DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.35.2.63
• Corpus ID: 16756658

Self-schemata and processing information about the self.

@article{Markus1977SelfschemataAP,
  title={Self-schemata and processing information about the self.},
  author={Hazel Rose Markus},
  journal={Journal of Personality and Social Psychology},
  year={1977},
  volume={35},
  pages={63-78}
}

• H. Markus
• Published 1977
• Psychology
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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.