[1] According to the theory, individuals rely on schemas, or mental frameworks, to understand and make sense of the world around them.
Cultural schemas can include knowledge about social roles, customs, and beliefs, as well as expectations about how people will behave in certain situations.
[2] 1920s: Jean Piaget's work on cognitive development in children furthered the research made toward cultural schemata theory.
Bartlett proposed that people use their schema, or mental frameworks, to organize and interpret new information based on their existing knowledge and expectations.
These eight schemas are also referred to as Primary Social Interaction (PSI) schemas:[6] The term cross-cultural adaptation refers to the complex process through which an individual acquires an increasing level of the communication skills of the host culture and of relational development with host nationals.
In order to better explain sojourners' cross-cultural adaptation, axioms are used to express causal, correlational, or teleological relationships.
Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher, traveled to Khartoum, Sudan in August 2007 to teach young students at Unity School.
She was granted a pardon by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir following pressure from the British government, and returned to England after serving nine days in jail.
As a sojourner, it is necessary to acquire the host culture's primary, secondary, and isolated (PSI) schemas in order to adapt cross-culturally.
However, Gibbons lived within the walls of Unity School, which was vastly different from the rest of Sudan and did not require her to acquire the PSI schemas of the host culture.
This lack of understanding of local PSI schemas likely led to her allowing the children to name the teddy bear Muhammad, which is unacceptable in Sudanese culture.
The theory can be utilized in cross-cultural training to aid individuals in adapting to their host culture environments.
[6] Efforts have been made towards this goal, such as using Cultural Schema Theory to argue that cross-cultural exposure stimulates entrepreneurial intentions by developing alertness, which improves one's capacity to identify novel business opportunities.