Cultural schemas for social interactions are cognitive structures that contain knowledge for face-to-face interactions in one’s cultural environment. Nishida (1999) points out the eight primary types for generating human behavior for social interactions. These eight schemas are also referred to as Primary Social Interaction (PSI) schemas.
Fact-and-concept schemas: These are pieces of general information about facts, such as Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, and concepts, such as bicycles are vehicles that have two wheels, a seat, and pedals.
Person schemas: These are knowledge about different types of people, specifically personality traits; for example, Barb is shy or Dave is outgoing. Since people have some representation or idea of what being shy or outgoing is, they tend to classify others, such as Barb and Dave, into their dominant personality traits.
Self schemas: These contain people’s knowledge of how they see themselves and knowledge of how others see them.
Role schemas: These are knowledge about social roles that denote expected sets of behaviors of people in particular social positions.
Context schemas: These contain information about the situations and appropriate settings of behavioral parameters. Information in context schemas includes predictions about appropriate actions to take in order to achieve goals in the respective context. Information also includes suggestions for reasonable problem-solving strategies. It is important to note that context schemas are triggered before other schemas[citation needed].
Procedure schemas: These are knowledge about the appropriate sequence of events in common situations. This includes the specific steps to take and the appropriate behavioral rules for the events. The use of procedure schemas causes people to take certain actions some way.
Strategy schemas: These are knowledge about problem-solving strategies.
Emotion schemas: These contain information about affect and evaluation stored in long-term memory. This is accessed when other schemas are activated. Emotion schemas develop through social interactions throughout a person’s life. This schema is relatively new [clarification needed]. Researchers believed it was an important additive because emotions play important roles in human social interactions.