Sex-Related Comparisons: Theory 169and what emotions to present to others. Some-
one who isgender aschematicdoes not con-
sider gender when making these decisions.
To understand this more clearly, let’s
take an example of another variable on which
people vary in terms of schematicity: religion.
For some of you, religion is central to your
identities and one of the first things you no-
tice about a person: whether the person is re-
ligious and, if so, to which religion he or she
belongs. You notice whether a person ob-
serves religious practices and has any religious
belongings in the home. And, being religious
(or not) influences your behavior. That is, you
are religious schematic. For others of you, re-
ligion is not central to your self-concept, and
you are religious aschematic; you will not
notice whether a person engages in religious
practices (“Did we say prayers before the meal
at Joe’s house? I really can’t recall”), not notice
if religious symbols are in a person’s home,
and fail to notice religious holidays. Being re-
ligious aschematic does not mean you are not
religious; it just means religion is not some-
thing you think about and not something that
influences your behavior. A strong atheist can
still be religious schematic; an atheist may
be well aware of religious practices and go to
great lengths to ignore religion. This person is
still letting religion influence behavior.
It is likely that all of us are gender sche-
matic, to some extent. Bem (1981) argues that
gender is a pervasive dichotomy in society
that guides our thinking about what clothes to
wear, what toys to play with, and what occupa-
tions to pursue. But there is variability among
us in how readily we think of gender when
processing information. The person who does
not rely on male/female categories as a way
of organizing the world is gender aschematic.
This person is less likely to be concerned with
the gender category when deciding how to
think, feel, or behave. It does not occur to theelaborate schemas for psychology than those
of you who are not psychology majors. You
know there are differences among clinical
psychology, social psychology, and cognitive
psychology; a nonpsychology major may not
know all of these distinctions and may think
all fields of psychology are alike. Those of you
who are avid football fans have more elaborate
football schemas, including all the rules of the
game, the players on the different teams, and
the current status of each team, compared to
those of you who are not interested in football.
Schemas can be helpful in processing in-
formation. Whenever you encounter the ob-
ject or the setting for which you have a schema,
you do not have to relearn the information. So,
those of you who have rich football schemas
can use your knowledge of what happened in
last week’s play-offs to understand the games
being played this coming weekend.
A gender schema includes your knowl-
edge of what being female and male means
and what behaviors, cognitions, and emo-
tions are associated with these categories.
When buying a gift for a newborn, one of the
first questions we ask is if the baby is a boy
or a girl. This category guides our choice of
clothing or toys. When looking over the per-
sonnel at the dry cleaners, we presume the
person who is sewing is the female clerk and
not the male clerk because sewing is con-
sistent with the female gender role, not the
male gender role. When hiring a secretary,
we presume all applicants are female because
secretaryis part of our female gender-role
schema, not our male gender-role schema. In
fact, to have male secretaries, we have come
up with a new term:administrative assistant.
Whatdoesitmeantobegender
schematic? Someone who is gender schematic
uses the gender category to make decisions
about what to wear, how to behave, what ca-
reer to pursue, what leisure interests to pursue,M05_HELG0185_04_SE_C05.indd 169 6/21/11 8:03 AM