... cognitive capacity to attend and process all information available (Kahneman, 1973, Buchanan et al., 2002). Schematic processing is an effective and efficient way of processing information perceived by selecting what is important and filtering out what is not. Schema refer to a particular way in which our knowledge or information is organised and stored in our memory, how it is accessed and used. Just a few bits of information trigger a particular schema relating to a social object helping us to attend to relevant information only. This information also tells us what to expect, therefore making the world more predictable. This predictability can sometimes be inaccurate as our assumptions are not always correct. Schemas can therefore be self-confirming - we tend to see what we expect to see. An experiment carried out by Darley and Gross (1983, reported in Buchanan et al., 2002) demonstrates how the interpretation of social information ...

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