Cultural Schema Theory - How Cultural Schemas Develop

How Cultural Schemas Develop

When one interacts with members of the same culture over and over again, or talks about certain information with them many times, cultural schemas are created and stored in one’s brain. Subsequent similar instances cause the cultural schema to become more organized, abstract, and compact. As this occurs, communication becomes much easier. Beyond the cognitive activity of cultural schemas is the complex pattern which occurs in the brain. When humans acquire and retain information from their surrounding environments, neural circuits are generated. Consequently, information processing experience is stored in the long-term memory. Memory representation or neural circuits created in the brain as a result of information processing are assumed to be schemas. Thus, schemas provide a foundation in the brain which helps to predict what is to be expected and looked for in certain situations. Not all schemas are uniformly important. High-level schemas are internalized and emotionally salient; likewise, when a schema is only weakly related to a person’s self it becomes emotionally empty and irrelevant (Lipset, 1993). Nishida (1999) simply explains that experience is the force which creates cultural schemas. As people have more experiences their developing cultural schemas become more tightly organized. The information not only becomes more complex, but more useful among members of a culture, alike or different.