ABSTRACT
Our perceptions of the world are shaped by schemas, a set of beliefs about people or situations that guide our interaction with these things.1 Having a schema about a person or thing enables us to know (or believe we know) a great deal about that individual or object quickly. Thus, we treat that person or object in what we perceive to be an appropriate manner – in accordance with our schema. For example, we may schematically divide furniture into chairs and tables. When we categorise a new object into a schema, we know whether to sit in the thing or to place our drink on it. Schemas are crucial to our ability to function. If we had to analyse each piece
of information or situation anew, we would either be swamped by minutiae or paralysed into inactivity. Schemas, therefore, are how we process the incessant stream of demands and inputs. Schemas permit us to understand new people or situations rapidly and to interact successfully with them.We liberally edit information to fit our schemas: we extract and retain information because it is useful and consonant with them, and reject information when it is inconsistent, or no longer useful.2 Thus, schemas are idiosyncratic; they are neither necessarily accurate nor consistent with others’ models. We also interact with people according to our social schemas. We develop
models that ascribe a range of characteristics to others corresponding to their race, sex and other physical attributes, and these models include schemas for lesbians and gay men, and for homosexuality.3 One major characteristic of the popular schema about gay people is that they exhibit ‘cross-gender’ or gender atypical behaviour, behaviour traditionally associated with the opposite sex.4
