An Overview of Assimilation in Psychology

Assimilation is the cognitive process of making new information fit in with your existing understanding of the world. Essentially, with assimilation, when you encounter something new, you process and make sense of it by relating it to things you already know.

There are many benefits of adapting to the world around you, such as through assimilation, which includes building increased resilience. Keep reading to learn more about how assimilation works and examples of this process.

How Assimilation Works

Assimilation refers to a part of the adaptation process initially proposed by Jean Piaget. Through assimilation, we take in new information or experiences and incorporate them into our existing ideas. The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences or information to fit our pre-existing beliefs.

In assimilation, children make sense of the world by applying what they already know. It involves fitting reality and what they experience into their current cognitive structure. A child’s understanding of how the world works, therefore, filters and influences how they interpret reality.

In early childhood, children are constantly assimilating new information and experiences into their existing knowledge about the world. However, this process does not end there. As people encounter new things and interpret these experiences throughout life, they make both small and large adjustments to their existing ideas of the world around them.

Assimilation vs. Accommodation

Piaget believed that there are two basic ways that we can adapt to new experiences and information: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation is the easiest adaptation method because it does not require a lot of adjustment. Through this process, we add new information to our existing knowledge base, sometimes reinterpreting new experiences so they will fit in with existing information.

For example, imagine your neighbors have a child you have always known to be sweet, polite, and kind. One day, you glance out your window and see the child throwing a snowball at your car. It seems out of character and rather rude.

How do you interpret this new information? If you use the process of assimilation, you might dismiss the child’s behavior, believing that it’s something they witnessed a classmate doing and they do not mean to be impolite.

If you were to utilize the accommodation method of adaptation described by Piaget, the young child’s behavior might cause you to reevaluate your opinion of them. With accommodation, old ideas are changed or even replaced based on new information.

Assimilation and accommodation work in tandem as part of the learning process. Some information is incorporated into our existing schemas through the process of assimilation, while other information leads to the development of new schemas or total transformations of existing ideas through the process of accommodation.

Equilibration

Piaget also believed that as children learn, they strike a balance between the use of assimilation and accommodation. This process, known as equilibration, allows children to find a balance between applying their existing knowledge and adapting their behavior to new information.

According to Piaget, the learning process involves the following:

• Assimilation: Attempting to interpret new information within the framework of existing knowledge
• Accommodation: Making small changes to that knowledge to cope with things that don’t fit those existing frameworks
• Equilibration: Eventually adjusting existing schemas or forming new ones to adjust to a new understanding

Assimilation and accommodation are complementary learning processes that play a role at each stage of cognitive development. During the sensorimotor stage, for example, some information is assimilated, while some experiences must be accommodated. It is through these processes that infants, children, and adolescents gain new knowledge and progress through the stages of development.

Examples of Assimilation

Piaget did not believe that children just passively take in information. He argued that they actively try to make sense of the world, constantly forming new ideas and experimenting with those ideas. Examples of assimilation include:

• A child sees a new breed of dog they’ve never seen before and immediately points to it and says, “Dog!”
• A chef learns a new cooking technique
• A computer programmer learns a new programming language

Another common example would be how children learn about different types of animals. A child might begin with a schema for a dog, which in the child’s mind, is a small, four-legged animal.

When the child encounters a horse, they might assimilate this information and immediately call the animal a dog. The process of accommodation then allows the child to adapt the existing schema to incorporate the knowledge that some four-legged animals are horses.

In each of these examples, the individual is adding information to their existing schema. Remember, if new experiences cause the person to alter or completely change their existing beliefs, then it is known as accommodation.

Reasons for Assimilation

Assimilation can be viewed as a mental shortcut that lets us process and categorize massive amounts of information at one time. It plays a significant role in allowing humans to adapt to and learn about their environment—especially during childhood when we’re constantly learning new things.

Of course, assimilation can have its drawbacks. There are times when new information doesn’t neatly fit into an existing category or schema in our minds, which may lead to errors in judgment.

An example would be a child calling a skunk a “kitty.” However, when the child is taught that this animal is, in fact, a skunk, the animal will be removed from their existing cat schema and enter a new mental category.