Do we need dual-process theory to understand implicit bias? A study of the nature of implicit bias against Muslims

Psychological dual-process theory has become increasingly popular among sociologists. The dual-process framework accounts for two types of thinking; a fast, associative, automatic or subconscious “System 1 thinking”, and a slow, propositional and reflective “System 2 thinking”. The insight that the former can also be empirically studied by sociologists has the potential to significantly improve sociological research. However, dual-process theory is not undisputed within psychology; some scholars question the associative nature of “fast thinking”. This discussion has implications for how implicit cognition should be studied. In this paper, we introduce this discussion to a sociology audience, exemplifying with the case of implicit bias against Muslims. We evaluate these approaches drawing on a set of experiments conducted at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. We discuss the implications of our results for sociological research.