DUAL PROCESS MODELS OF INTRA-PERSONAL REGULATORY
PROCESSES
Our understanding of intra-personal behavioural regulation is best conceptualized in
terms of two separate but interacting systems of regulatory processes. A series of ‘dual-
process’ models have characterized these two systems (Borland, 2014; Kahneman, 2011;
Strack and Deutsch, 2004). One system regulates conscious, deliberative control of
action while the other operates automatic action involving low levels of conscious
awareness and monitoring. The same behavioural sequence may involve one or both
systems in different contexts. Consider, for example, leaving your home and locking
the outer door. If you have lived in the same place for a while you may do this while
thinking of other things. The behavioural sequence can be initiated and completed
automatically with little conscious monitoring and consequently may be difficult or
impossible to remember later. Of course, you are conscious while locking the door
and so can engage in conscious control. For example, if, while you are leaving, a friend
says, ‘Don’t forget to lock the door and take your key’, then you may more carefully
monitor your actions and make changes to your usual routine such as checking the
door a second time. Such activation of conscious control facilitates change in routine
or automatic behaviour patterns and enhances action recall.
Many of the behaviour patterns that affect our health can be enacted in an
automatic manner. These include ‘addictions’, such as smoking, as well as many
‘habitual’ behaviour patterns, including eating, physical activity and computer use. For
example, we may eat and drink many times during a day. Each one of these action
sequences is unlikely to be carefully consciously monitored. Having another spoonful
or another drink can be initiated by internal impulses or external cues with little
conscious deliberation or monitoring. Many well-practised behavioural sequences
are controlled automatically with low levels of conscious monitoring. The problem
with such ‘mindless’ behaviour patterns (see Wansink’s 2006 discussion of ‘mind-
less eating’) is they can become increasingly independent of conscious control, being
prompted by well-learnt environmental cues. This can result in us doing things
repeatedly that, on reflection, we do not want to do. When this happens we experi-
ence a lack of control over our behaviour patterns and our motivation no longer
predicts our actions. For example, a person may be highly motivated to consume less
calories but, nonetheless, find themselves eating and drinking more calories than they
inteded to.
An important advance in conceptualizing these two regulatory systems was made
by Strack and Deutsch (2004) when they developed the reflective impulsive model
(RIM). This model has been elaborated by Borland (2014) as the context, executive
and operational systems (CEOS) model. Both models highlight the operation of an
automatic system referred to as the ‘impulsive’ (RIM) or ‘operational’ (CEOS) system.
Both models describe how progressive activation of associative neuronal clusters
linking perceptions, reward anticipation and learned motor responses can generate
automatic behaviour. Both models describe a second deliberative (or conscious con-
trol) system that enables conscious monitoring of action regulation. This ‘reflective’
(RIM) or ‘executive’ (CEOS) system generates deliberation and reasoning including
conscious attitudes and normative beliefs, feasibility assessments (resulting in greater
or lesser self-efficacy), goals and intentions to undertake and prioritise actions (see
196 MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIOUR