We make sense of others’ communication in part by comparing what we currently perceive with knowledge that we already possess. For example, I proposed to my wife by surprising her after class. I had decorated her apartment with flowers and donned my best (and only!) suit. When she opened the door, and I asked her to marry me, she immediately interpreted my communication correctly. But how, given that she never had been proposed to before? Because she knew from friends, family members, movies, and television shows what a marriage proposal looks and sounds like.

The knowledge we draw on when interpreting interpersonal communication resides in schemata, mental structures that contain information defining the characteristics of various concepts, as well as how those characteristics are related to each other (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). Each of us develops schemata for individual people, groups of people, places, events, objects, and relationships. In the example above, my wife had a schemata for “marriage proposal,” and that enabled her to correctly interpret my actions.

Because we use familiar information to make sense of current interactions, our interpretations reflect what we presume to be true. For example, suppose you’re interviewing for a job with a manager who has been at the company for 18 years. You’ll likely interpret everything she says in light of your knowledge about “long-term employees.” This knowledge includes your assumption that “company veterans generally know insider information.” So, when your interviewer talks in glowing terms about the company’s future, you’ll probably interpret her comments as credible. Now imagine you receive the same information from someone who has been with the company only a few weeks. Based on your perception of him as “new employee,” and on the information you have in your “new employee” schema, you may interpret his message as naïve speculation rather than “expert commentary”—even if his statements are accurate.