Dual Process Theories Overview

Dual Process Theories Overview

• Dual process theories categorize mental processes as automatic (quick, unconscious) and controlled (deliberate, effortful).
• Early models focused on specific phenomena like impression formation.
• Generalized models aim for domain-independent principles.
• Formalized models use mathematical methods to analyze automatic and controlled processes' contributions.

Phenomenon-Specific Models

• Impression Formation: Stereotypes heavily influence initial impressions but can shift towards individual traits under specific conditions.
• Attribution Models: Explain how people infer others' traits and motives.
  • Two-Stage Model (Trope, 1986): Automatic behavior identification followed by controlled dispositional inference.
  • Three-Stage Model (Gilbert, 1998): Adds situational correction to initial judgments.

Persuasion Dual Models

• Models like ELM (Elaboration Likelihood Model) and HSM (Heuristic-Systematic Model) describe when people use superficial cues (automatic) or in-depth argument analysis (controlled) for persuasion.

Attitude-Behavior Models

• The MODE Model (Fazio, 1990) examines how motivation and opportunity interact with attitudes for influencing behavior (automatic vs. deliberate).

Prejudice and Stereotyping

• The Dissociation Model (Devine, 1989) explains automatic stereotype activation alongside effortful attempts to reject these biases.
• Research demonstrates that biases can unintentionally influence split-second decisions.

Generalized Dual Models

• System 1 (Kahneman, 2003) is fast, intuitive, and automatic.
• System 2 is slow, deliberate, and monitors/adjusts System 1's actions.

Formalized Models

• Process Dissociation (Jacoby, 1991): Quantifies the interplay between automatic and controlled processes. Especially helpful with conflicting task demands.

Applications and Criticisms

• Often applied to social issues by reducing prejudice and stereotyping (e.g., cognitive training, counter-stereotypic thinking).
• Criticisms include the reliance on conceptual frameworks without empirical predictions.

Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)

• Misattribution: Mistaking the source of an emotional response. Example: tense reaction from a loud noise mistakenly attributed to a person.

• Projection: Attributing an internal feeling to an external source. Example: Feeling anxious and assuming others are upset with you.

• Affect: A general emotional state (pleasant or unpleasant).

• Assumptions:

  • Affective Transfer: Feelings from the prime are unintentionally projected onto the target.
  • Implicit Nature: Attitudes are not disclosed explicitly; implicit processing.
  • Automatic and resistant to explicit warnings.

• Purpose (Experiment 1–4): To test the validity and dependability of AMP.

• Findings (Experiment 1–4): Priming effects are robust, even when warnings are given.

• Experiment 6 (Measuring Racial Attitudes): Participants judged stimuli while primed (with images of Black or White individuals), assessing their automatic biases.

• Findings (Exp 6): Findings show a correspondence between participants' implicit and explicit attitudes, particularly under conditions without explicit warnings. White participants displayed more favorable judgment to stimuli after White primes, compared with those after Black primes.

Attention and Encoding

• Attention: Whatever occupies focus or consciousness, selective and effortful.
  • Two Components: Directionality (what is being focused on) and Intensity (mental effort put towards it).
• Encoding: Transforming external stimuli into internal representations.
  • Key Role: Impacts how information is interpreted, stored, and recalled.
  • Example: Noticing a smile as "friendly."

Factors Affecting Attention in Social Contexts

• Faces: Attracts attention more than averted gaze, automatically noted and processed holistically.

  • Inverted faces are harder to recognize, disrupting holistic processing and trait inferences.

• Gaze: Direct gaze has a more powerful and immediate effect.

• Holistic Processing: Perceiving faces as a whole, emphasizing connections between features—not individually.

Salience, Vividness, and Accessibility

• Salience: A stimulus's uniqueness or prominence in a context, evoking intense reactions.
• Vividness: Stimuli's emotional impact or imagery that creates strength and memorable impact, but not necessarily predictive.
• Accessibility: Readiness of concepts to come to mind—influenced by recency and frequency. Priming activates related concepts' accessibility. Chronic Accessibility; enduring patterns of concept accessibility.

Assimilation vs. Contrast

• Assimilation: Interpreting stimuli aligning with activated category.

• Contrast: Interpreting stimuli opposite to activated category by highlighting differences.