Where does deliberation collide?

In democratic theory, deliberation is collective reasoning in which citizens or representatives exchange and weigh justifications for public decisions, so that outcomes draw their legitimacy from the quality of reason-giving rather than from the mere aggregation of votes. Simone Chambers's 2003 Deliberative democratic theory surveys this program, in which free and reciprocal argument among equals, not bargaining or vote-counting alone, is what confers legitimacy on a collective choice. The referent is a social process of public justification among many people, and it is a different construct from the private, effortful cognition that decision researchers also call deliberation.[1]

Unit

The reciprocity and reasoned quality of public argument in collective decision-making

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Appraised in deliberative forums and mini-publics by the inclusiveness and reasoned quality of the exchange and by shifts in participants' considered judgments

In the study of judgment and decision-making, deliberation is slow, effortful, controlled reasoning (weighing options and consequences) set against fast, automatic intuition. David Rand, Joshua Greene, and Martin Nowak's 2012 Spontaneous giving and calculated greed manipulates deliberation directly, through time pressure and forced delay, and finds that intuitive responses favor cooperation while deliberation pulls people toward self-interest. The referent is an individual cognitive mode, timed in seconds within a single mind, and not the many-voiced public argument that democratic theorists call deliberation.[2]

Unit

The engagement of slow, controlled reasoning in an individual decision

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Isolated by manipulating response time (time pressure versus forced delay) or cognitive load and observing the shift between intuitive and reasoned choices