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Since the 1920s, psychologists have made much use of the schema concept.

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The term refers to cognitive frameworks, templates, or rule systems that we apply to the world to make sense of it.

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The progenitor of the modern concept of schema is the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget.

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For example, Piaget described the child’s schema for the “conservation of matter” — the rule that the amount of matter is the same regardless of the size and shape of the container that holds it.

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If you pour water from a tall, narrow container into a short, wide one and ask a young child whether the amount of water is more, less, or the same, the child is likely to say either “more” or “less.”

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An older child will recognize that the amount of water is the same.

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Piaget also identified more abstract rule systems such as the child’s schema for probability.

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We have schemas for virtually every kind of thing we encounter.

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There are schemas for “house,” “family,” “civil war,” “insect,” “fast food restaurant” (lots of plastic, bright primary colors, many children, so-so food), and “fancy restaurant” (quiet, elegant decor, expensive, high likelihood the food will be quite good).

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We depend on schemas for construal of the objects we encounter and the nature of the situation we’re in.

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Schemas affect our behavior as well as our judgments.

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The social psychologist John Bargh and his coworkers had college students make grammatical sentences out of a scramble of words, for example, “Red Fred light a ran.”

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For some participants, a number of the words, — “Florida,” “old,” “gray,” “wise” — were intended to call up the stereotype of an elderly person.

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Other participants made sentences from words that didn’t play into the stereotype of the elderly.

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After completing the unscrambling task, the experimenters dismissed the participants.

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The experimenters measured how rapidly the participants walked away from the lab.

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Participants who had been exposed to the words suggestive of elderly people walked more slowly toward the elevator than unprimed participants.

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If you’re going to interact with an old person — the schema for which one version of the sentence-unscrambling task calls up — it’s best not to run around and act too animated.

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(That is, if you have positive attitudes toward the elderly.

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Students who are not favorably disposed toward the elderly actually walk faster after the elderly prime!) Without our schemas, life would be, in William James’s famous words, “a blooming, buzzing confusion.”

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If we lacked schemas for weddings, funerals, or visits to the doctor — with their tacit rules for how to behave in each of these situations — we would constantly be making a mess of things.