There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
This article describes a 2-systems model that explains social behavior as a joint
function of reflective and impulsive processes. In particular, it is assumed that
social behavior is controlled by 2 interacting systems that follow different operating
principles. The reflective system generates behavioral decisions that are based on
knowledge about facts and values, whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through
associative links and motivational orientations. The proposed model describes how
the 2 systems interact at various stages of processing, and how their outputs may
determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion. It extends previous models
by integrating motivational components that allow more precise predictions of behavior.
The implications of this reflective-impulsive model are applied to various phenomena
from social psychology and beyond. Extending previous dual-process accounts, this
model is not limited to specific domains of mental functioning and attempts to integrate
cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms.