Group-related network schema guides the learning of social networks

Navigating complex social environments requires understanding how individuals are connected within social networks. People are highly efficient at integrating dyadic relationships into larger network structures. However, social networks are embedded within different types of groups (e.g., task groups vs. social categories), raising the question of how group typology shapes the learning and representation of social networks. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that group-related network schemas-specifically, expectations that task groups are more interconnected and centralized than social categories-systematically guide social network learning and representation. Participants exhibited prior expectations about the relational structure of different group types, and memory for social relationships was enhanced when the learned network structure aligned with these schematic expectations, producing a matching effect that was correlated with schema strength (Experiment 1). This effect was causally driven by schema strength: Weakening group-related schemas through explicit descriptions attenuated the matching effect (Experiment 2). Critically, the effect was domain specific: When social relationships were replaced with nonsocial connections (airport-flight networks), the matching effect disappeared despite comparable structural properties and task demands (Experiment 3). Computational modeling using the Successor Representation framework further revealed that schema-structure misalignment reduced multistep abstraction, reflected in lower successor discount parameters (γ), yielding less integrated global representations of social networks (Experiment 4). Together, these findings show that social network learning is guided by top-down group-related schemas. It advances our understanding of social network cognition by highlighting the importance of schema-driven abstraction and by bridging local learning mechanisms with global representational structure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).