Deliberation and Attitude ChangeRichard Bradley

7 November 2024

Richard Bradley (London School of Economics and Political Science), presents his project in the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar of the GRK "Collective Decision-Making”.

Location: Room 0079, Von-Melle-Park 5

Abstract

In this talk I will present a model of collective deliberation that treats its properties as effects of repeated episodes involving speech acts and subsequent attitude revisions by the individuals engaged in it. The main 'lesson' is that the outcomes of collective deliberation (consensus, polarisation, etc.,) are as much a function of how deliberation influences what individuals attend to, and hence what inferences they make, than of the flow of information between them. This demonstration depends on modelling forms of attitude revision by individuals that are ruled out by the standard idealisations of rational choice theory: such as suspension of judgement, new awareness and shifts in attention. 

Find the abstract as PDF here.