How a Schema is Used to Interpret Information

Information about public events is typically both ambiguous and inconsistent. Despite the ambiguities and inconsistencies, decision-makers must cope with their environment as best they can. In order to cope with their environment they evaluate what information they have in an attempt to make sense out of their complex world. Thus decision-makers are also information processors. But there are many ways of processing a set of information in an attempt to make sense out of it. The precise techniques which are used may be quite important in determining the actual image of their environment which the decision-maker adopts. The information processing is not simply an averaging process—it can result in large amounts of “error correcting” on the one hand or “distortion” on the other hand depending on whether the techniques are suitable or unsuitable to the task.