[MUSIC] When I spoke of domestic violence, I should have mentioned that the victims, disproportionately women may justify it. In Egypt for example, one-half of the 5,450 women interviewed in the 2005 demographic and health survey, justified wife hitting or beating for some reason. The reasons range from the woman goes out without telling her husband and neglects the children, to she argues with the husband, refuses to have sex with him, and even burns the food. The reasons are related to gender roles, and often these roles and the related gender schemas are internalized. We have organized generic knowledge about ourselves as women or men. The roles we do and should perform. What we expect of ourselves in such roles. So schemas, roles, and the related norms regulate our behavior and produce emotions of shame or guilt if we do not live up to the expected standard. This is what I call the norm within me, which is sometimes difficult to change. The important question we want to ask is how can schemas change? There are several cognitive biases that help maintain a schema. One is the confirmation bias. The general tendency for people to attend to and remember information that conforms to their existing beliefs or expectations. Especially when a person's behavior is ambiguous. A confirmation bias will drive one to interpret it in a light that is consistent with one preexisting schemas and beliefs in general. Another is motivated reasoning that drives people towards judgement that maximize net positive effect. Though people are indeed motivated to be accurate, if a particular judgement carries the risk of making one feel worse than they already are, they will be motivated to avoid it. When people are particularly invested in a belief, motivated reasoning suggest that they are extra prone to seek out information that supports it. It should be apparent by now that schema change is not an easy thing to accomplish. Many factors, both regarding the schema itself and the information one is attempting to revise it with, must be taken into consideration. There are several theoretical models of schema change, and there are circumstances under which schema change is more likely than others. The most prominent models of schema change are the bookkeeping model, the conversion model, and subtyping model. The first one is called the bookkeeping model. It tells that the more schema discrepant information one encounters, the more likely one is to change a schema. So a few instances of discrepant information will not change one's schema much, but in aggregate many instances will, especially if observed over time. Suppose, for example, you have a new job, selling books to schools. You have to interact with many librarians, and suppose you have schematic knowledge about librarians as shy, retiring people. Contrary to your expectation, each librarian you meet is outgoing and quite friendly. Over time, because you are often exposed to these examples of librarians that defy your schema, you will gradually revise it, or at least revise some of its element. Shy and reserved will no longer be characteristics you attribute to librarians. The second model of schema change is called the convection model. The conversion model provides a more dramatic alternative to the bookkeeping model. This model asserts that a few highly salient instances of discrepant information will catalyze the process of schema revision. Instead of many instances of my list schema discrepant information, resulting in many minor revision to one's schema, as is the case with the bookkeeping model. The conversion model asserts that the observation of a few highly salient schema discrepant instances will trigger sudden revision of one's schema. It is important to realize that these few salient schema discrepant examples must be seen as representative or typical of the group or category to which they belong. And the category has to be perceived as homogeneous. By definition, a homogeneous group has few unusual members. Suppose you have a schema for Canadians, it is a positive one. Canadians are friendly, tolerant, and peaceful. They are practical, informal, courteous, and they behave in public. You are in a restaurant and sit near a Canadian man. He has a thick Canadian accent, wears a hockey jersey, and starts a friendly, cordial conversation with you. In many ways, he matches your stereotypical ideas of Canadians. But then later on shouts at the waiter, refuses to pay the bill, and last but not least, takes candy from a child on his way out. His behavior is awful and casts out about your schema of how Canadians are. Think if you can, of an example from your life in which a unique instance made you change your ideas about a whole group. You would have undergone a conversion. The last model is called the subtyping model. The observation of schema-discrepant information will cause us to create a new sub-schema that can explain the discrepancy. The new schema is less general than our original one, and it is specifically tailored to the class of observation that are discrepant with the original schema. Discrepant observation will be treated as exceptions to the rule. So, for example, in a culture where women do not work, a working woman might be subtyped. Subtyping may prevent schema change in some circumstances and not others. One proposed explanation is that the discrepant members in some cases are simply too atypical. Thereby making the classification of them as exceptions more reasonable. Slight diconfirmers who are more typical of their group will instead have a greater impact on our overall stereotype. A woman that is otherwise typical is a good wife and mother, tends to the house, is caring and supportive, but also works, will have a greater impact on the original woman schema.
