Psychologyspeaking topic
Schema theory: we always understand, and distort, new information through our existing mental templates. Is memory a recording device or an interpreter?
— Bartlett, schema theory
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Babies learn the melody of their mother's language before they're even born: German newborns cry with a falling pitch, French newborns with a rising one, matching each language's intonation. We carry the fingerprint of a language from our very first breath. Does language belong to us, or are we born into it?
- The representativeness heuristic: when someone fits a stereotype, why do we throw probability out the window? How do we forget the statistics the moment we think 'he's exactly the librarian type'?
- Words like gaslighting, boundaries, and trauma have escaped the therapist's office into everyday speech. When everyone talks like a therapist, do we understand each other better or worse?
- The method of loci: placing information inside an imagined space has been a memory technique for thousands of years. Why is our spatial memory so powerful?
- Confirmation bias: why do we only pay attention to information that supports what we already believe? Why do we demand far more evidence to change our minds than to keep them?