Core Concepts
Diverse perspectives are not a hindrance but a necessary condition for achieving consensus in deliberative democracy, as exploring alternative thinking frames can lead to opinion change without new information.
Abstract
This research paper investigates the potential of deliberation to create consensus among fully informed citizens, focusing on the impact of diverse thinking frames. The authors argue that citizens rely on thinking frames to consider issues and cannot consider all perspectives simultaneously. This contextuality of opinions is modeled using a quantum-like cognitive model.
Bibliographic Information: Lambert-Mogiliansky, A., & Frérot, I. (2024). Deliberation Among Informed Citizens: The Value of Exploring Alternative Thinking Frames. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.05862.
Research Objective: To investigate how fact-free deliberation can affect citizens' voting behavior and how to structure deliberation to maximize consensus.
Methodology: The authors develop a quantum-like cognitive model where citizens' opinions are represented as quantum states and thinking frames as operators. They analyze a mediated communication game where a facilitator guides citizens to explore alternative perspectives.
Key Findings:
- Sharing the same thinking frame hinders consensus when starting from disagreement.
- Deliberation with diverse perspectives leads to consensus with a probability proportional to the degree of uncorrelation between perspectives.
- Maximally uncorrelated perspectives yield the highest chance of consensus.
- The citizen who is first to explore an alternative perspective has a higher chance of seeing consensus on their initial voting preference.
- Experts with uncorrelated perspectives can increase the chance of consensus.
Main Conclusions:
- Diversity of thinking frames is crucial for successful deliberation.
- Deliberation can transform opinions by encouraging citizens to explore alternative perspectives.
- Well-designed procedures and the role of a facilitator are essential for maximizing consensus.
Significance: This research provides a novel formal framework for understanding the dynamics of opinion change in deliberation, highlighting the importance of cognitive diversity and procedural design in achieving consensus.
Limitations and Future Research: The model assumes goodwill from citizens and full information for the facilitator. Future research could explore the impact of strategic behavior, incomplete information, and different facilitator strategies.
Stats
The probability of reaching consensus after two rounds of deliberation with uncorrelated perspectives is 75%.
Quotes
"The central hypotheses of this paper is that i. to be able to consider an issue, people have to build a representation of that issue. Building a representation requires selecting a perspective or a thinking frame (a model), ii. there exist perspectives that people cannot consider simultaneously, they are incompatible in the mind."
"A first central lesson of this work is that, if one admits that opinions are contextual, the diversity of perspectives is beneficial, and even necessary, to overcome initial disagreement."