During the past two decades, mounting evidence suggests that much of human social cognition occurs without deliberate effort and largely outside conscious awareness. Dual-process models, which distinguish explicit (conscious, slow, effortful) cognitive processes from implicit (often unconscious, fast, effortless) cognitive processes, “form the dominant paradigm [of social cognition research] for the past 20 years or more” (Evans 2008). Although these advances in social cognition research have begun to be integrated into models of political cognition over the past decade (e.g., Kim, Taber, and Lodge 2010; Lodge and Taber 2013; see Nosek, Graham, and Hawkins 2010 for a review), and are beginning to influence other disciplines like communication (see Hefner et al. 2011), the role of implicit processes in outcomes commonly studied by political scientists deserves more attention. This symposium aims to showcase the diverse set of subject areas within political science to which dual-process models have been and can be applied. We hope that this symposium is a springboard for those who are considering bringing a dual-process approach into their own research by providing an overview of relevant literatures and methods.
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