Personal Prototypes. Week 5 d3

One thing that I found interesting was in chapter 3 on page 48. It talked about Cognitive Schemata. The one that stuck out the most to me was Personal Prototypes. It is an interesting concept and I believe that everyone has their own representation of a certain person. The book says that personal prototypes are, “ idealized representations of a certain kind of person.” When someone hears of a nanny, some might have an image of an older lady that is like a mom, or one that they see in the movies. While another person might think of a younger women as an image of a nanny. I believe that everyone has different images that they think of and that not everyone will agree on it. You use these images to classify people and like the book mentions, to sometimes stereotype them as well because you ignore individual details. The book also states that if you can form a mental image of things, then you are using personal prototype. So when you read this post and I ask if you can form a mental image of a body builder, baseball player, president, nanny or teacher, you are using personal prototype.