Schema Theory  Schemas provide ways of organizing information about the social world and provide guides for understanding and interaction.  A schema begins whenever a person comes in contact with a new situation or idea.  Schemas help to predict future interactions. Attribution Theory  Looks for causal reasons that could be used to explain observed behavior.  An internal attribution locates the cause of a particular behavior within the person and an external attribution locates the cause of the behavior in the situation. Narrative Paradigm  Sees storytelling as the most basic and universal of all human activities.  The world is a set of stories from which we choose and constantly re-create our lives. Dramatism  Life is often played out in the dramatic tension of guilt and redemption cycles. Constructivism  There is a creative emergent process of the social reconstruction of reality as involving an interplay of individual processes and socially and historically constituted processes ...