Deliberation Among Informed Citizens: The Value of Exploring Alternative Thinking Frames

We investigate the potential of deliberation to create consensus among fully-informed citizens. Our approach relies on two cognitive assumptions: i. citizens need a thinking frame (or perspective) to consider an issue; and ii. citizens cannot consider all relevant perspectives simultaneously: they are incompatible in the mind. These assumptions imply that opinions are intrinsically contextual. Formally, we capture contextuality in a simple quantum-like cognitive model. We consider a binary voting problem, in which two citizens with incompatible thinking frames and initially opposite voting intentions deliberate under the guidance of a benevolent facilitator. We find that when citizens consider alternative perspectives, their opinion may change. When the citizens' perspectives are two-dimensional and maximally uncorrelated, the probability for consensus after two rounds of deliberation reaches 75%; and this probability increases proportionally with the dimensionality (namely, the richness) of the perspectives. When dealing with a population of citizens, we also elaborate a novel rationale for working in subgroups. The contextuality approach delivers a number of insights. First, the diversity of perspectives is beneficial and even necessary for deliberations to overcome initial disagreement. Second, successful deliberation demand the active participation of citizens in terms of "putting themselves in the other's shoes". Third, well-designed procedures managed by a facilitator are necessary to secure increased probability for consensus. A last insight is that the richness of citizens' thinking frames is beneficial, while the optimal strategy entails focusing deliberation on a properly reduced problem.