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Dual-process models are increasingly popular in sociology as a framework for theorizing the role of automatic cognition in shaping social behavior. However, empirical studies using dual-process models often rely on ad hoc measures such as forced-choice surveys, observation, and interviews whose relationships to underlying cognitive processes are not fully established. In this article, we advance dual-process research in sociology by (1) proposing criteria for measuring automatic cognition, and (2) assessing the empirical performance of two popular measures of automatic cognition developed by psychologists. We compare the ability of the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT), the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), and traditional forced-choice measures to predict process-pure estimates of automatic influences on individuals’ behavior during a survey task. Results from three studies focusing on politics, morality, and racial attitudes suggest the AMP provides the most valid and consistent measure of automatic cognitive processes. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for sociological practice.

Habits are the fundamental basis for many of our daily actions and can be powerful barriers to behavioural change. Still, habits are not included in most narratives, theories, and interventions applied to sustainable behaviour. One reason societies struggle to reach policy goals and people fail to change towards more pro-environmental lifestyles might be that many behaviours are now bound by strong habits that override knowledge and intentions to act. In this perspective article, we provide three arguments for why pro-environmental habits are a needed research agenda in sustainability science: (1) habit theory highlights how behaviour is heavily reliant on automatic processes, (2) the environmental context sets boundary conditions for behaviour, shape habits, and cues action responses, and (3) our habits and past behaviour shape our values and self-identity. These arguments highlight the transformative potential of looking at sustainable behaviours through a habit lens. We believe a research agenda on pro-environmental habits could generate a more holistic understanding of sustainable behaviours and complement today’s dominating approaches which emphasize reasoned decisions and intrinsic motivations such as values, norms, and intentions to understand and predict pro-environmental behaviour. We highlight evident knowledge gaps and practical benefits of considering habit theory to promote pro-environmental behaviours, and how habit architecture could be utilized as a strong leverage point when designing, modifying, and building urban environments.

Dual-process models of culture and action posit that fast, automatic cognitive processes largely drive human action, with conscious processes playing a much smaller role than was previously supposed. These models have done much to advance our understanding of behavior, but they focus on generic processes rather than specific cultural content. As useful as this has been, it tells us little about which forms of culture matter for action. Drawing on a cross-disciplinary set of theory and evidence, I argue that values are tied to many forms of behavior, across both contexts and cultures, and they operate in ways consistent with dual-process models. I illustrate the plausibility of these claims using data from the second wave of the European Social Survey, as well as real-time decision data from a large, online survey. I show that values predict self-reported behaviors in a variety of substantive domains and across 25 nations, and they operate using automatic cognitive processes. These findings suggest that values merit renewed theoretical and empirical attention.

Sociologists increasingly draw on dual-process models of cognition to account for the ways context, cognition, and action interrelate. Drawing from 40 interviews with improvisers and observations from improvisational theater, I find that dual-process model scholarship is limited in three respects: It does not consider how cognition operates in situations where order and disruption are concurrent, it fails to realize there is interindividual variation in cognitive processing, and it underestimates the creativity emerging through automatic processes. Interactions in improv contain elements of both order and disruption, and they place demands on automatic and deliberate cognition simultaneously. Improvisers respond to these competing demands through either automatic or deliberate thinking dispositions, which are engendered through explicit instruction, practical experience, and artistic commitments. These dispositions, in turn, shape creative decision-making, predicting interindividual differences in how improvisers respond to contingencies on stage. I conclude by discussing the implications for culture, cognition, and action.

Special topic volume with invited peer reviewed papers only.

Reasoned action approaches have primarily been applied to understand exercise behaviour for the past three decades, yet emerging findings in unconscious and Dual Process research show that behavior may also be predicted by automatic processes such as habit. The purpose of this study was to: (1) investigate the behavioral requirements for exercise habit formation, (2) how Dual Process approach predicts behaviour, and (3) what predicts habit by testing a model (Lally and Gardner in Health Psychol Rev 7:S137–S158, 2013 ). Participants (n = 111) were new gym members who completed surveys across 12 weeks. It was found that exercising for at least four bouts per week for 6 weeks was the minimum requirement to establish an exercise habit. Dual Process analysis using Linear Mixed Models (LMM) revealed habit and intention to be parallel predictors of exercise behavior in the trajectory analysis. Finally, the habit antecedent model in LLM showed that consistency (β = .21), low behavioral complexity (β = .19), environment (β = .17) and affective judgments (β = .13) all significantly ( p  < .05) predicted changes in habit formation over time. Trainers should keep exercises fun and simple for new clients and focus on consistency which could lead to habit formation in nearly 6 weeks.

PurposeResearchers continue to address the concept of self-disclosure because it is foundational for helping social networking sites (SNS) function and thrive. Nevertheless, the authors' literature review indicates that uncertainty remains around the underlying mechanisms and factors involved in the self-disclosure process. The purpose of this research is to better understand the self-disclosure process from the lens of dual-process theory (DPT). The authors consider both the controlled factors (i.e. self-presentation and reciprocity) and an automatic factor (i.e. social influence to use an SNS) involved in self-disclosure and broaden The authors proposed a model to include the interactive facets of enjoyment.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed model was empirically validated by conducting a survey among users of WeChat Moments in China.FindingsAs hypothesized, this research confirms that enjoyment and automatic processing (i.e. social influence to use an SNS) are complementary in the SNS self-disclosure process and enjoyment negatively moderates the positive relationship between controlled factor (i.e. self-presentation) and self-disclosure.Originality/valueTheoretically, this study offers a new perspective on explaining SNS self-disclosure by adopting DPT. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant SNS research by applying DPT to examine how the controlled factors and the automatic factor shape self-disclosure processes and how enjoyment influences vary across these processes – enriching knowledge about SNS self-disclosure behaviors. Practically, the authors provide important design guidelines to practitioners concerning devising mechanisms to foster more automatic-enjoyable value-added functions to improve SNS users' participation and engagement.

Solving a problem requires relating the pieces of information available to each other and to the solution. We investigated how the strength of these relationships determines the likelihood of solving insight tasks based on remote associates. In these tasks, the solver is provided with several cues (e.g., drop , coat , summer ) and has to find the solution that matches those cues (e.g., rain ). We measured the semantic similarity between the cues and the solution ( cue–solution similarity ) as well as between cues ( cue–cue similarity ). We assume those relationships modulate two basic processes underlying insight problem-solving. First, there is an automatic activation process whereby conceptual activation spreads across a semantic network from each cue node to their associated nodes, potentially reaching the node of the solution. Thus, in general, the higher cue–solution similarity, the more likely the solution will be found (Prediction 1). Second, there is a controlled search process focused on an area in semantic space whose radius depends on competing cue–cue similarity. High cue–cue similarity will bias a search for the solution close to the provided cues because the associated nodes shared by both cues are highly coactivated. Therefore, high cue–cue similarity will have a beneficial effect when the cue–solution similarity is high but a detrimental effect when cue–solution similarity is low (Prediction 2). Our two predictions were confirmed using both verbal and pictorial remote association tasks, supporting the view that insight is dependent on an interaction of meaningful relationships between cues and solutions, and clarify the mechanisms of insight problem solving in remote associates.

Background The lack of objective tools to assess social cognition can lead to significant challenges in comparing data from multiple studies. This lack of standardization can make it particularly difficult to understand tasks for individuals with cognitive impairments, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, employing a more straightforward scale that investigates both the perspective of individuals with AD and their informants may provide less biased data when studying this population. The aim of our study was to investigate the pattern of social cognitive impairment using the Social and Emotional Questionnaire (SEQ) in people with AD, differentiating between early‐onset (YOAD) and late‐onset (LOAD) cases, as well as considering different stages of the disease (mild and moderate). Method We conducted two cross‐sectional studies involving individuals with AD and their informants. The first study focused on age at onset, including 48 individuals with YOAD and 118 with LOAD. The second study was organized by disease stage, with 87 participants in the mild stage and 50 in the moderate stage. We assessed several aspects, including social cognition, global cognition, quality of life, functioning, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and caregiver burden. Result The YOAD group exhibited greater impairment in general cognition, reported poorer quality of life, and experienced more neuropsychiatric symptoms compared to the LOAD group. However, social cognition did not show the same degree of decline and did not differ significantly when compared with informant reports or with individuals with LOAD. A similar trend was observed when analyzing disease stages; while the moderate AD group demonstrated an overall decline compared to the mild group, there were no significant differences in social cognition between these two groups. Conclusion By investigating the different perspectives, the social and emotional questionnaire allows us to have a closer understanding of the real functioning of social cognition in people with AD. The results indicate a different progression of social cognition impairment, which leads us to infer that more direct and spontaneous tasks may be associated with automatic processes and appear more stable, whether in a moderately advanced stage of the disease or in a more aggressive progression, such as YOAD.

Lahman shares a guide to apply one general semantics principle in the future, to delay responding to automatic thinking processes and increase understanding of diverse positions. Placing case studies in portfolios will be evidence of the time-binding capability: sharing what they have learned with others.