Selfschema

Self-schema refers to cognitive representations that guide the processing of self-relevant information. It is a knowledge structure about the self that influences what one notices, stores, and recalls about oneself. Self-schemas are domain-specific and can concern traits, roles, or identities, such as being an athlete, a student, or a caretaker. The concept originates in social psychology, notably in the work of Hazel Markus and colleagues, who described self-schemas as organized patterns of thought about the self that shape information processing.

Self-schemas differ in content and salience across individuals and cultures and are subsets of the broader self-concept. They are formed from past experiences, social feedback, and cultural norms, and they can change over time with new experiences. They guide attention toward self-relevant stimuli, bias interpretation toward self-consistent information, and influence memory, with self-referent information often remembered better than information about others.

The cognitive organization provided by self-schemas interacts with broader constructs such as self-esteem and self-complexity. Positive self-schemas can support adaptive functioning, whereas negative or rigid schemas can contribute to vulnerability to mood disorders. Researchers study self-schemas using tasks that assess self-description, the self-reference effect in memory, and measures of self-complexity, among other methods.

Self-schema is distinct from, but related to, the broader concept of the self. It emphasizes the structured, cognitive aspects of self-knowledge that direct information processing, while self-esteem concerns evaluative judgments about the self as a whole.