An integrative review of process dissociation and related models in social cognition

Abstract

This chapter reviews the use of formal dual process models in social psychology, with a focus on the process dissociation model and related multinomial models. The utility of the models is illustrated using studies of social and affective influences on memory, judgement and decision making, and social attitudes and stereotypes. We then compare and contrast the process dissociation model with other approaches, including implicit and explicit tests, signal detection theory, and multinomial models. Finally we show how several recently proposed multinomial models can be integrated into a single family of models, of which process dissociation is a specific instance. We describe how these process models can be used as both theoretical and measurement tools to answer questions about the role of automatic and controlled processes in social behaviour.

Keywords:

• Automatic
• Control
• Implicit
• Process dissociation
• Social cognition

Acknowledgments

The first author acknowledges support from National Science Foundation Grant 0615478. We thank Jazmin Brown for assisting with references.

Notes

¹We use “independence” in the strong, stochastic definition of the word. That is, the independence assumption of interest is that control and automaticity are largely uncorrelated across participants and trials. This assumption is difficult to test directly because most analyses require aggregation across participants or trials. This stronger definition is not to be confused with weaker, theoretical independence, which refers merely to the fact that the theory allows parameters to vary on separate dimensions rather than forcing them onto a one-dimensional continuum.

²Although the original process dissociation model lacks a guessing parameter, guessing biases are sometimes accommodated by the A parameter in that model.