-Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

-The term "Schema" is general- it encompasses our knowledge about many things (ex: other people, ourselves, social roles, specific events)

-Contain our basic knowledge and impressions that we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret new situations

-Useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge

-Particularly useful in helping us figure out what is going on in confusing or ambiguous situations

-The more ambiguous our information is, the more we use schemas to fill in the blanks