Biased political reasoning and relational inferences in a small-group deliberative context

摘要

Theorists of deliberative democracy envision a citizenry engaged in collective reasoning aboutpublic issues on the merits of rival arguments. Partisanship undermines this ideal when itcauses people to discount counter-attitudinal arguments, independent of their quality.Empirical deliberative theory lacks an account for what mechanism mitigates this bias insmall-group settings. To close that theoretical gap, this study draws on Relational FramingTheory and identifies a relational component of the reasoning process. Participants rated therelevance of dominance/submission and affiliation/disaffiliation relational frames aftera small-group deliberation. This perception influenced participants’ decisions to endorsearguments as legitimate public reasons. Implications for deliberative theory, research, andpractice are discussed.