The Dual-Process Approach to Human Sociality: A Review

Abstract

Which social decisions are intuitive? Which are deliberative? The dual-process approach to human sociality has emerged in the last decades as a vibrant and exciting area of research. Here, I review the existing literature on the cognitive basis of cooperation, altruism, honesty, equity-efficiency, positive and negative reciprocity, and moral judgments. For each of these domains, I list a number of open problems that I believe to be crucial to further advance our understanding of human social cognition. I conclude by making an attempt to introduce a game-theoretical framework to organize the existing empirical evidence. This framework seems promising, as it turns out to make predictions that are generally in line with the experimental data in all but one domain: positive reciprocity. I tried to keep the review selfcontained, exhaustive, and research-oriented. My hope is that it can contribute to bring further attention to this fascinating area of research.

Liking but Devaluing Animals: Emotional and Deliberative Paths to Speciesism

“…Most notably in the context of utilitarian psychology, it has been shown that people are less willing to engage in instrumental harm for the greater good (e.g., to harm one in order to save many) when they think emotionally than deliberately (for review, cf. Capraro, 2019;Greene et al, 2001;Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008;Patil et al, 2018;Timmons & Byrne, 2019;Trémolière, Neys, & Bonnefon, 2012). In contrast, impartial beneficence remains unaffected by a manipulation that induces people to think emotionally or deliberately (Capraro, Everett, & Earp, 2019).…”

About Linda Again: How Narratives and Group Reasoning Can Influence Conjunction Fallacy

“…This violation can be seen as a mistake by the normative criterion of probability theory, but it's extremely likely within the narratives constructed by participants. Given the importance of dual-process theory of thought for prosocial behavior [28], integrating Bruner's perspective with the dual-process framework may give clues for the design of crowdsourcing technologies. Given the importance of dual-process theory of thought for prosocial behavior [28], integrating Bruner's perspective with the dual-process framework may give clues for the design of crowdsourcing technologies.…”

“…Within the dual-process framework, conjunction fallacy arises because there is an automatic and immediate similarity-based impression (e.g., the description of Linda is very similar to a feminist), whereas the deliberative system fails to inhibit this response (and suggesting a more formal analysis of the problem). This distinction has a central role in human sociality, including cooperation, honesty and altruism and other pro-social behaviors (see [28] for a review).…”

Consequences of Poverty on Economic Decision-Making: Assessing the Verisimilitude of the Cognitive Mechanism

“…Thus, testing this exact model is not the only option in capturing poverty perpetuation at the level of an individual, and future research on the topic could try to cover it very differently. (2) Based on existing research, it can be assumed that cognitive load is related to both poverty and decisionmaking (Schilbach et al, 2016;Capraro, 2019). However, its operationalization might be problematic.…”

“…Previous research has shown that poverty is related to factors like stress (Haushofer and Fehr, 2014), cognitive load (Schilbach et al, 2016), worsened cognitive functions (Mani et al, 2013), and present-oriented behavior (Griskevicius et al, 2011). These, as well as the other correlates of poverty (for a review, see Pepper and Nettle, 2017), are often identical to the determinants of decision-making and preferences (see, for example, Burks et al, 2009;Capraro, 2019). If these variables are indeed related, it should be possible to derive a tenable model of a mechanism that could explain why people cycle themselves in their financial situation.…”