Andrew Miles, Gordon Brett, Salwa Khan, and Yagana Samim
Sociological Science March 07, 2023
10.15195/v10.a4
Abstract
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.
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.
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- 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