Schemata can have a noticeable effect on social situations, as people’s perception of others often defines their attitude towards them. Stereotypes, personal constructs, and scripts are widely used by people to help deal with similar situations efficiently. Although these schemata are usually helpful, there are cases when such preconceptions can have a negative impact on social interaction. This post will review a scene from the popular TV show called “The Office” where Michael Scott had to undergo 6 hours of counseling with the branch’s HR specialist Toby Flenderson. Michael has an intense hatred for toby throughout the series, and their close encounter in this scene exhibits the effects of several personal constructs and scripts.
For most of the scene, one can see that Michael is not open to toby in any way. Although he has not had counseling with toby before, Scott is convinced that the session will be of no use to him. This negative attitude towards toby’s abilities has little rational ground, as the latter is a trained professional. The most probable reason seems to be the fact that Michael has low expectations of toby because of his melancholic character. Michael seems to have a personal construct that makes him see sad people with tragic life stories as bad. This can be seen when Michael argues that toby cannot help anyone because he could not help his marriage. Even though toby manages to use his skills to get Michael to tell him about his issues, when Michael realizes that he is still in a counseling session, he switches to the previous script. Based on nothing but preconvention, Michael changes his behavior to the way he treated Toby at the beginning of the clip, even though he was helping him.
Reference
Therapy with Toby – The Office US. (2020). Web.