Seeing the Other Side? Perspective-Taking and Reflective Political Judgements in Interpersonal Deliberation
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720916605 |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Author | Lala Muradova |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720916605
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(3) 644 –664
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720916605
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Seeing the Other Side?
Perspective-Taking and
Reflective Political Judgements
in Interpersonal Deliberation
Lala Muradova
Abstract
A healthy democracy needs citizens to make reflective political judgements. Sceptics argue
that reflective opinions are either nonexistent or rare. Proponents of deliberative democracy
suggest that democratic deliberation is capable of prompting reflective political reasoning
among people. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. This
article offers a bridge between psychology and political theory and proposes a theory of
perspective-taking in deliberation. It argues that under the right conditions, deliberation induces
more reflective judgements by eliciting the process of perspective-taking – actively imagining
others’ experiences, perspectives and feelings – in citizen deliberators. Two institutional features
of deliberative forums are emphasized: the presence of a diversity of viewpoints and the
interplay of fact-based rational argumentation and storytelling. I test the plausibility of this
theory using a case study – the Irish Citizens’ Assembly – thereby, relying on qualitative in-
depth interview data and quantitative survey data. I further substantiate my findings with a
laboratory experiment.
Keywords
political psychology, deliberation, political reasoning, perspective-taking, empathy
Accepted: 12 March 2020
A reflective citizenry is crucial for democracy to flourish (Chambers, 2003; Dryzek,
2000; Goodin, 2000). Reflective opinions are the products of processes in which citi-
zens engage in careful and systematic consideration and evaluation of diverse and con-
flicting arguments and justifications, and weigh the reasons for and against the course
of action before arriving at political judgements (Dewey, 1933). Sceptics argue that
reflective opinions are either nonexistent or rare. Some question the ability and
Centre for Political Research KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Corresponding author:
Lala Muradova, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Bus 3602, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Email: lala.muradova@kuleuven.be
916605PSX0010.1177/0032321720916605Political StudiesMuradova
research-article2020
Article
Muradova 645
competence of citizens to engage in the demanding task of reflection (Achen and
Bartels, 2016); others argue that citizens know little about politics (Delli et al., 1996)
and/or they are largely misinformed (Kuklinski et al., 2000). Evidence from political
psychology corroborates this pessimism by emphasizing the prevalence of biased polit-
ical thinking in humans (e.g. Lodge and Taber, 2010).
Is it possible to make citizens’ judgements more reflective? Studying this question is
important because the quality of democracy is dependent on reflection. Many individuals
would have different voting preferences and more sophisticated input into policymaking
if they reflected on their choices more deeply (Fishkin, 2009; Fournier et al., 2011; Luskin
et al., 2002). Recent research finds that reflection decreases partisan-motivated reasoning
and attenuates affective polarization (Arceneaux and Vander Wielen, 2017).
Proponents of deliberative democracy, a school of thought that ‘puts communication
at the heart of democracy’ (Bächtiger et al., 2018: 2), suggest that citizen-to-citizen delib-
eration is capable of overcoming these biases and inducing more reflection in citizens’
political thinking. Research shows that deliberation, be it within structured citizen assem-
blies, deliberative polls, citizens’ juries or small group discussion experiments, leads to
transformed attitudes towards policy (e.g. Fishkin, 2009; Luskin et al., 2002; Suiter et al.,
2016), increased cognitive complexity of political reasoning (e.g. Colombo, 2018) and
better alignment between values, beliefs and preferences (Niemeyer, 2019; Niemeyer and
Dryzek, 2007) among citizen deliberators.1
Yet, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these transformations. There
have been few systematic theoretical and empirical endeavours to unpack the emotional
and cognitive processes through which deliberation leads to more reflective public opin-
ion (Rosenberg, 2013). Scholars propose at least two mutually nonexclusive potential
pathways. Some argue that citizens arrive at more reflective judgements through justifica-
tion rationality (Bächtiger and Parkinson, 2019), in other words, ‘by the force of the bet-
ter argument’ (Habermas, 1981), whereas others accentuate the role of knowledge
acquisition (Barabas, 2004). Yet, empirical evidence for these theories is mixed and
inconclusive. Furthermore, by focusing exclusively on factual information gain and rea-
son-giving, they tend to neglect the role of emotions in citizens’ political reasoning and
decision-making processes (Marcus et al., 2000; Morrell, 2010).
This study offers a bridge between psychology and political theory and proposes a
theory of perspective-taking in deliberation, which complements the existing theories on
reflection through deliberation. Building on the psychological theory of perspective-
taking2 (Todd and Galinsky, 2014), it argues that under the right conditions, deliberation
produces more reflective political judgements by inducing the process of perspective-
taking among citizens.
The theory is examined using the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (ICA) – a real-world delib-
erative body consisting of randomly selected and nationally representative citizens of
Ireland (Farrell et al., 2019). First, I discuss institutional characteristics of the ICA that
make it particularly suitable for inducing the process of perspective-taking among par-
ticipants. The following two design features are emphasized: the presence of a diversity
of viewpoints and the interplay of fact-based argumentation and storytelling during
deliberations. Furthermore, I examine if the ICA meets the theoretical conditions for
inducing perspective-taking from the viewpoint of the citizen deliberators by employing
rich qualitative data collected from 11 in-depth interviews with members of the assem-
bly. Second, with the help of survey data from the ICA, I study the relationship between
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