The influence of the level of schema abstractness upon the processing of social information

The influence of the level of schema abstractness upon the processing and recall of behavioral information which varied in its schema relevance was examined. In the first study the speed with which subjects could classify behaviors as consistent, inconsistent, or irrelevant to a concrete schema was found to be faster than the speed with which they could classify behaviors in relation to an abstract schema. Experiment 2 demonstrated that schema inconsistent behaviors were remembered better in an impression formation task if the schema was concrete as compared to abstract. It was theorized that the concrete schemata prompted more spontaneous classification of the inconsistent items as schema discrepant than the abstract schemata. This was postulated to result in more immediate explanatory analyses and better recall for inconsistent information when the schemata were concrete. In the third experiment, an analysis of subjects' on-line thoughts in the impression formation task lent support to this analysis. These findings are discussed with regard to the need to question the generality of schematic processing principles and to refine our understanding of the variety of possible schemata.