Understanding Social Judgment: Multiple Systems And Processes

The venerable dual and multiprocess models that have guided work on attitudes and social cognition for the past few decades (see Chaiken & Trope, 1999) have been challenged recently on one hand by those who claim that there is really only one fundamental process of judgment (e.g., Fishbein & Middlestadt, 1995; Kruglanski, Erb, Pierro, Mannetti, & Chun, this issue; Kruglanski & Thompson, 1999) and on the other hand by advocates of newer systems approaches (e.g., Kahneman, 2003; Lieberman, 2003) that try to subsume the earlier frameworks. Indeed, the claim of some systems theorists is that “the most important strength of dual-system models is their ability to integrate theory and research in the realm of existing dual-process models” (Deutsch & Strack, this issue, p. 168). In this commentary we argue that there is room for both multiprocessandmultisystemapproaches,becauseprocesses and systems are somewhat distinct beasts (although some have used these terms interchangeably; e.g., Kokis, McPherson, Toplak, Stanovich, & West, 2002). If systems and processes are distinct, then it is not clear that systems perspectives make process approaches unnecessary. In this commentary we first reinforce our belief that a single-process framework is not the most fruitful way to account for social judgment (see also Petty, Wheeler, & Bizer, 1999). Next, we examine the evidence for multisystem frameworks and conclude that although it is quite plausible that there are multiple systems that contribute to social judgment, the purported criteria for establishing different systems are not entirely convincing. Nevertheless, in accord with Sherman (this issue), we conclude that a consideration of both multiple systems and processes is the way to make the most progress in understanding the judgmental and behavioral phenomena of interest to social psychologists.