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Dual Processes: Social Psychology

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The Interconnectivity of Dual Processes and How It Ties Into Almost Every Aspect of Psychology Chapter Summary Dual process theory is an interesting concept that ties into many common aspects of not just social psychology, but to biology and the psychology field as a whole. Dual process theory has ties to sensation and perception, priming, and Need for Cognition, and multiple psychologists are discussed in this chapter about how they tie all these ideas together in order to make sense of dual processing. One of the first psychologists mentioned, Lewin, places a strong emphasis on how needs and desires – called “quasi-needs” (Moskowitz, Skurnik, & Galinsky, 1999) – influence a person’s perception at a particular point in time. This is similar to the idea of priming, a perception and learning process that allows the brain to “prepare” for certain information and be more ready to receive said information than anything else in the environment. A good example is someone’s name. A person is acutely aware of their name, which …show more content…

If there is something we don’t know, why do people try to assume the missing information can be attributed to something we already know? From those questions rises Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance. In his paper When Prophecy Fails he discusses how quickly and easily people are willing to alter their reality so that new information will fit into the mold of how each person has decided the world needs to be. With enough “commitment to conviction” and social support, people will shove and twist information any way they deem necessary in order to fit information into the neat little lines organized in someone’s head (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956). As Moskowitz et all state at the beginning of the chapter, “People are biased by their particular views; they see what they want to see, that which they already believe to be true” (Moskowitz, Skurnik, & Galinsky,

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