Its like this...

I wanted to talk about something I find extremely fascinating. It is commonly know in the psychology world as a “Schema” (pronounced) SKEE-MUH. This is a pattern we have learned that operates so flawlessly, and is so well ingrained in our minds that we do not notice that the pattern exists. The best simple example I know to explain is like this; when you were a child you learned very early on that the thing known as a chair was for you to sit upon for various reasons. Now do you remember what kind of chair you first learned was a chair? Chances are that you don’t. But amazingly where ever you go you can recognize this piece of furniture. How do you recognize a chair? Is it defined by its shape? Possibly how sturdy it is crafted or the materials it is made from?  It could be that you have a check list of all of these elements that you look at the furniture and check off in your head to recognize and then based on how well it matches your criteria for chair that qualifies it as something you can sit down on.  This is a schema.

Now think about how many of these types of patterns are running around in your head right now. After all you’re reading this, and how do you know what the symbols your brain is processing actually mean? Do you have to take each letter and make its sound, then string the sounds together out loud to distinguish what the word is, after that then reference a dictionary and find out what each words means and finally figure out how it works in the sentence to get the much larger meaning of this post? No. You read it and you just understand the words and the sentence structure, put them together and enjoy the interesting nature of the meaning of the subject of this communication.

This learning system runs though out every aspect of our lives, and the more complex the subject yet again our minds take this and expand on it. Take for instance phone numbers. Do you think it is a coincidence that phone numbers were initially only 7 digits or that at max they are now 10? How about this why is it that our social security numbers are 9 numbers? A largely unknown fact about our potential as humans is that we are capable of processing information in what as know as chunks (highly technical term there) and we can only process 7 (+ or -) 2 chunks at once.  So we can handle minimum of 5 maximum of 9 chunks at one time. To illustrate this for you imagine this; you are talking on the phone to a friend about anything you like, your child is behind you practicing the tuba, and you are writing an email, while cooking tonight’s dinner in the oven and you have the urge to go to the bathroom. How much are you really doing at this point? How long do you think you can continue to function doing all of these things? How about this add to this your spouse walks in complaining that they need you to help them with the budget right now because they need to buy something, and the family cat runs across the counter and spills a glass of water onto the floor, the anti virus on your computer pops up and says its infected, and now the lights start to flicker in your house. You have surpassed 9 things at once; the mind at this point goes into overload and shuts down.

So how do we deal with all this? Schemas, we take this phone conversations and say ok too much right now to ourselves and say “uh can I call you back?” you know your friend will understand, you say “Son put the tuba down and help clean up this water.” Then “honey I know you feel the money is important right now, but can you go look at the breakers and make sure they are ok?” and you provide answers to all of these issues until they are all solved. This I would call a crisis schema, assess each problem by level of importance to you and resolved them based on individual schemas you have used to solve the same or similar problems you have faced in the past. Great thing is this system allows us to solve problems and learn very quickly.

This same system also has the potential and often gets us into trouble as well. I can sum it up into one piece of advice my mother told me, “When you make assumptions you make and ass out of you and me.” Often assumptions are us projecting a schema upon a situation and if we don’t know enough about it, it can be potentially disastrous. One of my favorite shows as a kid had a great example of someone that makes the worst assumptions, on Saturday Night Live Gilda Radner had a character on the new portion of the show, whom was an elderly woman called Emily Latella. The bit she did I remember the most to this day is when she asked “what’s all this I hear about the endangered fishies? Leave the fishies alone! What did they do to you?... and she goes on like this for 10 minutes and at the end Chevy Chase Interrupts her and says simply “Emily! Its endangered species!” She then looks at the camera and says “Endangered species? Oh that’s different…. Never mind.” She was in my opinion a true comedic genius.

The true potential of the human mind is limitless, and the mechanisms that make up our abilities to deal with any situation can be and often are strings of very complex systems that seem simple to the person and to the observer. But in truth potentially thousands of schemas are at work under the surface of our thoughts at all times. So the next time you find yourself confused, you might ask yourself, ok what is this like? Then Bang notice you have a schema that says “its like this!”