On Rupture: Establishing the Cognitive Bases of Social Change

Abstract

This article presents a cognitive model of social rupture and develops its implications for social change processes. It takes as its foundation established research on the reflexive transition from implicit (i.e., Type 1) processing into conscious (i.e., Type 2) processing that occurs when individuals’ automatic inferences about their environment become unreliable. By considering how this “conflict monitoring response” (Botvinick et al. 2001) and its associated cognitive and affective effects play out within social contexts, this work establishes a general, cognitive model of social rupture that converges significantly with classic sociological perspectives on the subject. The second half of the article mobilizes the developed model to establish the cognitive bases of social change processes as they manifest across societal scales, from the intrapersonal to the macrosocial. After foregrounding key implications that follow from this socio-cognitive perspective of social change, this work concludes by providing a general framework for how the presented model can be used to develop new empirical approaches for studying real-world social change as it unfolds via individuals’ implicit sensemaking processes.