The Schema Bias resource illuminates how core beliefs are maintained
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
Schemas are enduring, foundational mental structures that play a crucial role in cognitive processing, enabling individuals to represent the complexities of the world (Rafaeli et al., 2016). Core beliefs, which are the most fundamental level of cognition, are embedded within these schemas. Core beliefs are also self-sustaining; they tend to attract confirmatory evidence while repelling or distorting disconfirmatory evidence.
This information handout visually explains how schema maintenance operates. It can help clients understand how the mind shapes and distorts information, helping prepare clients for schema-change interventions.
Understanding how schemas operate helps clients understand how they are maintained.Insight into how schemas operate helps clients understand how they are maintained.
Characterized by negative core beliefs about self-worth.
Characterized by negative core beliefs related to danger and vulnerability.
Schema-level interventions for personality disorders and chronic interpersonal difficulties.
Use the handout to explain the nature of schemas and how they work.
Discuss how the information applies to the client's difficulties.
Encourage clients to reflect on the implications for addressing their core beliefs.
Core beliefs form the most fundamental level of cognition and are embedded within schemas. Schemas are crucial cognitive structures in the cognitive theory of psychopathology, thought to contribute to the development, maintenance, recurrence, and relapse of psychological disorders (Arntz, 2018; Riso & McBride, 2007). Beck (1967) defines schemas as structures that help in screening, coding, and evaluating the stimuli that affect an individual (p. 283). In this context, core beliefs represent the verbal content of a schema (Beck, 2011; Wills, 2022).
According to the cognitive model, core beliefs influence how individuals select and interpret incoming information, leading to biases in information processing (Riso & McBride, 2007). These beliefs also affect memory recall, as people are more likely to remember experiences that align with their core beliefs (Clark & Beck, 2010). As a result, core beliefs significantly impact how individuals think, feel, and behave, and they are challenging to change because disconfirming information is often distorted, overlooked, or dismissed.
