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DFG Graduate Program Collective Decision-Making

Photo: Pixabay/Geralt

Research

P2: Disagreement

Most real-world collective decisions start with disagreement, i.e. differences in beliefs or credences among group members. The overall research question addressed by this project is whether and how a group can choose to preserve disagreement as long as it is rational to do so (economically speaking, welfare-enhancing) and reduce disagreement when it becomes harmful. Put differently, what are the epistemic and institutional prerequisites for groups to optimally “manage” disagreement?

The project contributes to theory-building about how groups and their members should rationally respond to disagreement. Such an account will help to improve actual decision-making policies and to make them more immune against the influence of “fake news”, propaganda, and long-term polarization.

Objectives

  • To investigate the epistemic and institutional prerequisites for managing disagreement.
  • To explore experimentally the use of normative principles in group disagreement.
  • To provide a game-theoretic framework of information biases and propaganda. 

Suggested Readings

Büchel, B. and L. Mechtenberg (2019): “The Swing Voter’s Curse in Social Networks,” forthcoming in Games and Economic Behavior.

Elga, A. (2007): “Reflection and Disagreement,” Noûs, 41, 478-502.

Gerardi, D. and L. Yariv (2007): “Deliberative voting,” Journal of Economic Theory, 134, 317-    338.

Goeree, J. and L. Yariv (2011): “An Experimental Study of Collective Deliberation,” Econometrica, 79, 893-921.

Iaryczower, M., Xiaoxia S. and M. Shum (2018): “Can Words Get in the Way? The Effect of Deliberation in Collective Decision Making,” Journal of Political Economy, 126, 688-734.

Inwagen, P. van (2010): “We’re Right. They’re Wrong,” in: R. Feldman and T. Warfield (eds.), Disagreement, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Landemore, H. (2013): Democratic Reason. Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

List, C. (2012): “The theory of judgment aggregation: an introductory review,” Synthese, 187, 179-207.

Young, I. (1997): “Difference as a Resource in Democratic Communication,” in: J. Bohman and W. Rehg (eds.), Deliberative Democracy. Essays on Reason and Politics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.