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The chapter develops an epistemic focal bias account of certain patterns of judgments about knowledge ascriptions by integrating it with a general dual process framework of human cognition. According to such account, judgments about knowledge ascriptions are generally reliable but systematically fallible, as the cognitive processes that generate them are affected by what is in focus. Some puzzling patters of judgments about knowledge ascriptions and sketching show how a basic focal bias account seeks to account for them as compatible with strict invariantism. It is argued that the basic focal bias account should be integrated in a more general framework of human cognition. Central aspects of a prominent general dual process theory of human cognition are presented, with discussion of how focal bias figures at various levels of processing. A provisional categorization of the relevant judgments about knowledge ascriptions is outlined. It is argued that the basic epistemic focal bias account of certain contrast effects and salient alternatives effects can be plausibly integrated with the dual process framework. The absence of strong intuitions in cases of far-fetched salient alternatives is explained. Some methodological issues concerning the relationship between cognitive psychology, experimental data and epistemological theorizing are considered.

This chapter examines theoretical principles of false memory. It considers three early explanations of false memory: constructivism, a more detailed version of constructivism that is known as schema theory, and the source-monitoring framework. The dual-process tradition in memory research is discussed. The chapter then considers what, at present, is the modal approach to explaining false memories: opponent-processes theories.

A wide variety of well-studied phenomena associated with mindreading are surveyed to probe the consistency of what is known about them with our version of simulation theory. These phenomena include key ontogenetic stages such as gaze following, early intention tracking, and role play, as well as the psychopathology of autism. A link between mirror-neuron dysfunction and autism provides suggestive support for the simulation approach. Our distinction between low-level and high-level simulation fits comfortably with dual-process theories in cognitive science that draw a fundamental distinction between automatic and controlled processes. A tentative conjecture is offered about the evolution of simulation and mindreading, at least for more primitive kinds of simulation.

Religious people and their religions are not always harmonized. Scholars have long noted two faces of religious practice, one corresponding to an “official” set of beliefs and actions taught in texts, maintained by institutions, and communicated by specialists; the other is a “folk” form of religion pursued by ordinary people in everyday life. This chapter applies a dual-process model of cognition to the problem of “divergent religion,” arguing that how religious people think and act is directly linked to the way the brain processes religious concepts. Evidence drawn from social psychology and comparative religion suggests that religious concepts can proceed along two contrasting mental pathways to differing affect. This account of cognitive processing provides a new way of understanding duplicitous forms of religious thought, explaining common episodes of religious change (e.g., doctrinal and ritual innovation, syncretism, conversion, and the formation of new religions), and mapping an important set of selective forces at work on the content and stability of religious systems. Pentecostal Christianity and Theravada Buddhism provide case studies.

This chapter investigates the contours of those theories that assume that a single cognitive competence, for instance, inductive reasoning, is underwritten by several cognitive processes (a branch of theories called here “multi-process theories”). Three types of multi-process theories (including, Ashby's theory of categorization, dual-process theories of reasoning and decision-making, and Gigerenzer's adaptive toolbox) are examined critically. The relevance of dissociations for multi-process theories is discussed.

This chapter reviews recent theory and research on the dual-process cognitive-motivational model of ideology and prejudice. Consistent with a dual-process model perspective, the chapter argues that social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) assess dual ideological attitude dimensions that are made salient for the individual by competitive and dangerous worldviews respectively, which in turn result from the combination of socio-structural factors (resource scarcity, danger, and threat) and individual differences in personality (primarily low agreeableness and low openness to experience). Finally, the chapter extends the model by arguing that SDO and RWA elicit dual ideologies that stratify and position groups based on qualitatively different stereotypic characteristics. A competitively driven motivation (indexed by SDO) should cause the individual to endorse legitimizing myths or ideologies that are explicitly tailored toward maintaining hierarchical relations between groups. A threat-driven security-cohesion motivation (indexed by RWA) should, in contrast, cause the individual to endorse legitimizing myths that emphasize the maintenance of ingroup norms and values. Recent experimental and longitudinal research supporting the model is described.

Men and women, as well as members of different cultural groups, respond somewhat differently to the social and emotional support they receive. In particular, women discriminate somewhat more finely than do men among qualitatively different comforting messages; European Americans also discriminate among qualitatively different messages somewhat more than do members of other cultural groups. This chapter reviews the literature on sex and cultural differences in responses to supportive communication and proposes an explanation for these differences grounded in a dual-process theory of supportive message processing. The results of several recent studies whose results support this theory are summarized, and directions for future research are sketched.

The distinction between automatic and controlled cognitive processes was imported into social psychology, and formed the basis for a new generation of “dual-process” theories of social cognition and behavior. However, some social psychologists have gone further to claim that automatic processes dominate social interaction, leaving little room for anything like free will. For these theorists, human beings are machines — automatons — after all. However, no empirical evidence supports such a strong claim about human nature. In part, the automaticity juggernaut appears to reflect a reaction to the cognitive revolution in social psychology, with its implication that social interactions are mediated by conscious, deliberate, rational thought; in part, it may be a reflection of the biologization of social psychology. But it also seems to be a reflection of an emerging “People Are Stupid” trend within social psychology, as well as a throwback to the historical alliance between situationism and radical behaviorism. Finally, the emphasis on automaticity appears to be based on the “epiphenomenalist suspicion” that consciousness plays no role in human behavior, as well as the allure of the pinball determinism of classical physics.

This chapter considers the question of whether there is some general, distinctive, and plausible dual-process thesis about cognition. It argues that there is such an account, called the type version of dual-process theory. The first section identifies a substantive and interesting class of hypotheses worthy of the ‘dual-process’ label and contrasts them with some other, rather more banal claims. The second section distinguishes between two quite different versions of the hypothesis: one on which dual-process theory is construed as a thesis about cognitive tokens, the other on which it is a thesis about cognitive types. The third section sketches the reasons for rejecting the cognitive tokens version of dual-process theory. The fourth section highlights the virtues of the cognitive types version. The last section concludes that given a clear understanding of the cognitive types proposal, one can deflect the main general objections to dual-process theorizing.

This chapter describes a dual-process model of responses to stress as a framework for understanding stress, coping, and memory. The model includes both automatic and controlled responses to stress that involve engagement with or disengagement from sources of stress and one's emotions. Controlled responses to stress, which are equated with the concept of coping, are considered within the broader cognitive processes of executive functions and memory. Two examples from research on children and adults with cancer are used to show the diverse relations among these processes—the relations between controlled, working memory processes and coping, and the interplay between disengagement coping and intrusive, automatic memories. Finally, directions for future research on the role of memory in coping with stress are outlined.

This chapter offers a comprehensive overview of theoretical and methodological approaches grounded in dual-process models of memory. It begins by discussing how recollection has been defined and separated from familiarity-based recognition, and briefly describes the methods that have been developed to measure these two forms of memory. It then provides a selective review of the behavioral literature and discusses some of the more well-established findings that have informed us about the functional nature of these processes. Finally, it describes some recent neuropsychological work that has revealed how different regions within the medial temporal lobe support these two processes.

This chapter argues for a synthesis of two recent projects in moral psychology. One has proposed a division between “emotional” versus “cognitive” moral judgments, while another has proposed a division between “automatic” versus “controlled” moral judgments. These appear to describe the same underlying psychological systems: one that appears to give rise to automatic, rapid, and emotionally forceful moral intuitions, and another that appears to use controlled, effortful cognition to apply explicit moral principles. These psychological systems can explain a lot about the basic form of competing philosophical normative theories. Some core philosophical deontic principles are mirrored in ordinary people's emotional intuitions; meanwhile, people often use controlled cognitive processes to think about moral problems in utilitarian terms. The chapter concludes by arguing that this division is not hard-and-fast. There is evidence for reasoning from explicit deontic principles in ordinary people; meanwhile, utilitarian thought must depend on some underlying affective currency. This analysis is used to motivate several new questions facing the field of moral psychology.

The authors present a general framework for organizing the moderators of the attitude-behavior relationships suggested in the literature, focusing on several central distinctions. First, they distinguish between predictions of behavior and mechanisms that might actually mediate the underlying attitude-behavior link. The first category of moderators includes the kinds of measurement issues postulated by Fishbein and his colleagues—issues that are potentially germane to efforts to predict behavior from any individual difference variable. The chapter distinguishes mediational mechanisms further along lines suggested by dual-processing theory, into those involving low-deliberation behaviors and those involving high deliberation behaviors. The former includes perceptual and behavioral cuing effects that could implicate habitual or nonconscious processes similar to those described in Chapters 5 and 6. The latter arguably encompasses both higher-level propositional reasoning and biased information processing.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Great Rationality Debate in cognitive science—the debate about how much irrationality to attribute to human cognition—detailing the contrasting positions of the Panglossians and Meliorists. It then discusses individual differences in the Great Rationality Debate, dual process theory, and the features of Type 1 and Type 2 processing. It argues that the statistical distributions of the types of goals being pursued by Type 1 and Type 2 processing are different and that important consequences for human self-fulfillment follow from this fact. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter describes some counterintuitive age trends, presents a developmental dual-process theory that affords a more parsimonious interpretation of these trends than offered by traditional theories of development, and surveys a research program intended to test developmental predictions derived from dual-process theories. It begins by outlining evidence that contravenes traditional, unidirectional theories of development and then presents an amended version of the developmental dual-process theory the author has advocated in recent years. Next, the chapter presents research that has upheld several dual-process predictions, challenges black-and-white conceptions of rationality, and supports the ‘levels of rationality’ approach advocated by Reyna and her colleagues. It concludes by discussing briefly some theoretical and methodological shortcomings of developmental dual-process theories. Most of the chapter refers to two forms of processing: ‘experiential’ and ‘analytic’.

Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because, no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained, giving rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gap between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this chapter presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. The model provides an important part of the explanation for dualism being so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing.

This chapter describes a few influential social-psychological dual-process models and gives an in-depth review of the integrative models. It compares the general characteristics of dual-process models in social psychology with similar models in other areas of psychology, and discusses implications of this comparison for several conceptual issues. Most important is social psychologists' large and productive research investment in implicit measures, which aims to tap the output of associative (System 1) processing in relatively direct ways, at least more directly than conventional self-report measures. Because of the important place held by prejudice, stereotypes, and other negatively regarded phenomena in the social-psychological dual-process literature, research attention has been devoted to the conditions under which implicit attitudes or associations can change. The multiple-roles idea – that a single factor such as the individual's current mood may influence processing in more than one way – also seems important for the dual-process literature more broadly.

This chapter describes a social neuroscience framework of the processes through which racial biases are activated and controlled. It begins by reviewing the prevalent dual-process model of prejudice and stereotyping, and then describes some ways in which recent social neuroscience research has extended our understanding of the activation and regulation of intergroup bias. It shows that an expanded view of the basic dual-process model of prejudice that has dominated the field for nearly twenty years. Although the body of social neuroscience research on prejudice and stereotyping is still quite small, researchers have made efficient use of models developed in the larger cognitive and behavioral neuroscience literatures to inform social psychological questions.