Revisiting the Automatic and the Controlled: A Review of Dual-Process Theories of the Social Mind

DUAL-PROCESS THEORIES, IN WHICH it is suggested that separate and often independent automatic and controlled mental processes are used to construct behavior, have become ubiquitous in both social and cognitive psychology. A simple search of PsycINFO for the term “dual process,” for example, nets over 1600 peer-reviewed results, with over 1400 of those articles being published in the last 15 years alone. This increase in the use of dual-process explanations for behavior can be traced in no small part back to the publication of Dual-Process Theories in Social Psychology (Chaiken & Trope, 1999). That book, which has been cited more than 800 times since its publication, provided an influential collection of what was becoming an explosion of dual-process theories. The increase in the use of dual-process explanations since 1999 has been accompanied by a diversity of models, assumptions, and criticism that clearly warrants a return to the topic. In Dual-Process Theories of the Social Mind, editors Jeffery Sherman, Bertram Gawronski, and Yaacov Trope have organized a follow-up to the original book that does more than simply collect the last 15 years of developments in the use of dual-process explanations. Specifically, this book attempts to provide structure and critique to what has become a sometimes too broad and non-falsifiable method of explaining behavior. Given the range of use of dual-process theories in social psychology, from attitude formation to decision making, this is no small task. Yet, it is likely this this text will become as commonly cited as its predecessor due to this effort. The book is divided into nine parts, with a total of 38 contributions by well-regarded experts in their field. The first two parts, “Part I: The Basics” and “Part II: Dual-System Models,” serves both as an introduction to understanding the processes involved at a general level as well as an attempt to provide a more molar level breakdown of different aspects controlled and automatic processes. The themes detailed here, primarily focused on defining the types of automaticity and control processes as well as their independence or lack thereof, are echoed across the rest of the text and serve to set the stage for the specific models that are presented later in the book. Part III, “Measurement and Formal Modeling,” deals with methodological issues in clearly defining and measuring the