Seeing the Other Side? Perspective-Taking and Reflective Political Judgements in Interpersonal Deliberation

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.