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Testing Models of Cognition and Action Using Response Conflict and Multinomial Processing Tree Models

By on March 7, 2023 in Articles

Andrew Miles, Gordon Brett, Salwa Khan, and Yagana Samim

Sociological Science March 07, 2023
10.15195/v10.a4

Abstract

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Dual-process perspectives have made substantial contributions to our understanding of behavior, but fundamental questions about how and when deliberate and automatic cognition shape action continue to be debated. Among these are whether automatic or deliberate cognition is ultimately in control of behavior, how often each type of cognition controls behavior in practice, and how the answers to each of these questions depends on the individual in question. To answer these questions, sociologists need methodological tools that enable them to directly test competing claims. We argue that this aim will be advanced by (a) using a particular type of data known as response conflict data and (b) analyzing those data using multinomial processing tree models. We illustrate the utility of this approach by reanalyzing three samples of data from Miles et al. (2019) on behaviors related to politics, morality, and race.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrew Miles: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: andrew.miles@utoronto.ca

Gordon Brett: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: gordon.brett@alum.utoronto.ca

Salwa Khan: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: slw.khan@mail.utoronto.ca

Yagana Samim: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: yagana.samim@mail.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgments: We wish to thank the reviewers and editors at Sociological Science for their helpful comments.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Miles, Andrew, Gordon Brett, Salwa Khan, and Yagana Samim. 2023. “Testing Models of Cognition and Action Using Response Conflict and Multinomial Processing Tree Models.” Sociological Science 10: 118-149.
  • Received: September 23, 2022
  • Accepted: November 22, 2022
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Werner Raub
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a4


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Who Thinks How? Social Patterns in Reliance on Automatic and Deliberate Cognition

By on May 10, 2021 in Articles

Gordon Brett, Andrew Miles

Sociological Science May 10, 2021
10.15195/v8.a6

Abstract

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Sociologists increasingly use insights from dual-process models to explain how people think and act. These discussions generally emphasize the influence of cultural knowledge mobilized through automatic cognition, or else show how the use of automatic and deliberate processes vary according to the task at hand or the context. Drawing on insights from sociological theory and suggestive research from social and cognitive psychology, we argue that socially structured experiences also shape general, individual-level preferences (or propensities) for automatic and deliberate thinking. Using a meta-analysis of 63 psychological studies (N = 25,074) and a new multivariate analysis of nationally representative data, we test the hypothesis that the use of automatic and deliberate cognitive processes is socially patterned. We find that education consistently predicts preferences for deliberate processing and that gender predicts preferences for both automatic and deliberate processing. We find that age is a significant but likely nonlinear predictor of preferences for automatic and deliberate cognition, and we find weaker evidence for differences by income, marital status, and religion. These results underscore the need to consider group differences in cognitive processing in sociological explanations of culture, action, and inequality.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Gordon Brett: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: gordon.brett@utoronto.ca

Andrew Miles: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: andrew.miles@utoronto.ca

Acknowledgments: We thank Vanina Leschziner, Martin Lukk, Lance Stewart, and Lawrence Williams for their very helpful feedback on an early draft of this article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brett, Gordon, and Andrew Miles. 2021. “Who Thinks How? Social Patterns in Reliance on Automatic and Deliberate Cognition.” Sociological Science 8: 96-118.
  • Received: February 10, 2021
  • Accepted: March 10, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a6


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Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts

By on November 9, 2020 in Articles

Marshall A. Taylor, Dustin S. Stoltz

Sociological Science November 9, 2020
10.15195/v7.a23

Abstract
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Recent methodological work at the intersection of culture, cognition, and computational methods has drawn attention to how cultural schemas can be “recovered” from social survey data. Defining cultural schemas as slowly learned, implicit, and unevenly distributed relational memory structures, researchers show how schemas—or rather, the downstream consequences of people drawing upon them—can be operationalized and measured from domain-specific survey modules. Respondents can then be sorted into “classes” on the basis of the schema to which their survey response patterns best align. In this article, we extend this “schematic class analysis” method to text data. We introduce concept class analysis (CoCA): a hybrid model that combines word embeddings and correlational class analysis to group documents across a corpus by the similarity of schemas recovered from them. We introduce the CoCA model, illustrate its validity and utility using simulations, and conclude with considerations for future research and applications.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Marshall A. Taylor: Department of Sociology, New Mexico State University
E-mail: mtaylor2@nmsu.edu

Dustin S. Stoltz: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University
E-mail: dss219@lehigh.edu

Acknowledgments: A replication repository for this article can be found at: https://github.com/Marshall-Soc/CoCA. We thank Jesper Sørensen, the deputy editor, and the consulting editor for their thoughtful comments on this article.

  • Citation: Taylor, Marshall A., and Dustin S. Stoltz. 2020. “Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts.” Sociological Science 7:544-569.
  • Received: July 31, 2020
  • Accepted: October 4, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a23


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Fast or Slow: Sociological Implications of Measuring Dual-Process Cognition

By on February 27, 2017 in Articles

Rick Moore

Sociological Science, February 27, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a9

Abstract
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Dual-process theories of cognition within sociology have received increasing attention from both supporters and critics. One limitation in this debate, however, is the common absence of empirical evidence to back dual-process claims. Here, I provide such evidence for dual-process cognition using measures of response latency in formal data collected in conjunction with an ethnographic study of atheists and evangelicals. I use timed responses to help make sense of evangelicals’ language that frames “religion” as negative but “Christ-following” as positive. The data suggests that despite these Christians expressing a concept of the self that rejects “religion,” deep dispositions remain associating religion as a positive entity, not a negative one. I further argue that the significance of dual-process theories to sociology is in untangling such complex webs of identity discourse by distinguishing between immediate responses primarily due to fast cognition and those that are further mediated by slower, more deliberate cognition.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Rick Moore: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
Email: rickmoore@uchicago.edu

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank John Levi Martin, Terry McDonnell, Gabe Ignatow, and the editors of Sociological Science for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award number SES-1333672).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Moore, Rick. 2017. “Fast or Slow: Sociological Implications of Measuring Dual-Process Cognition.” Sociological Science 4: 196-223.
  • Received: October 20, 2016
  • Accepted: January 28, 2017
  • Editors: Jesper B. Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v4.a9


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