What is person schemas?

Person schemas is a concept in personal epistemology: Your default assumptions about human nature shape every interaction.

Example: You hire a junior engineer who misses a deadline. Your schema about people determines what happens next. If your default model says 'people are lazy unless pressured,' you increase oversight and check-ins. If your model says 'people want to do good work but sometimes lack context,' you ask what blocked them. Same person, same missed deadline. Completely different intervention — and completely different trajectory for that engineer's development. You didn't respond to the person. You responded to your schema about the person.

This concept is part of Phase 17 (Meta-Schemas) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for meta-schemas.