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Empathy and Political Reasoning

This document explores how individuals form political opinions, focusing on the role of empathy in promoting reflective political reasoning. It argues that empathy for opposing viewpoints can motivate citizens to engage in more thoughtful political deliberation, and that deliberative institutions can facilitate this empathy. The findings are supported by experimental and qualitative data from various countries, including Belgium, Chile, Ireland, and the UK.

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Empathy and Political Reasoning

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Muradova

How do individuals make up their mind about politics? This

question has sparked a vigorous debate in the study of political
behavior for the last few decades. Some scholars contend that
citizens can and should engage in political reflection, while
others highlight biases in human political reasoning that make
reflection impossible. This Element is about the conditions Political
under which citizens can be motivated to transcend their
egocentric biases and engage in reflection. Rather than asking Psychology
whether citizens are capable of reflection, it shifts focus to a
more productive question: how to motivate reflection. Firstly,
it argues that (situational) empathy for the other side can
inspire citizens to think reflectively about politics. Secondly,

Empathy and Political Reasoning

Empathy and
the Element proposes that deliberative institutions have the
potential to evoke empathy for the other side in individuals.
Thirdly, it draws on experimental and qualitative data from

Political
Belgium, Chile, Ireland, and the UK to test the theoretical
expectations.

About the Series

Most political events and outcomes
Series Editor
Elizabeth Suhay
Reasoning
are the results of people’s decisions. American University,
This series delves into the psychology Washington, D.C.
behind these decisions to understand
contemporary politics. The publications
in the series explain real-world political
Lala Muradova
events by using psychology to understand
people’s motivations, beliefs and,
ultimately, behaviors.

Cover image: Mina De La O / Stone /

Getty ISSN 2633-3554 (online)
ISSN 2633-3546
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Elements in Political Psychology
edited by
Elizabeth Suhay
American University, Washington, D.C.

EMPATHY AND POLITICAL

REASONING

How Empathy Promotes Reﬂection

and Strengthens Democracy

Lala Muradova
University of Southampton

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009643603
DOI: 10.1017/9781009643573
© Lala Muradova 2025
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI 10.1017/9781009643573
First published 2025
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ISBN 978-1-009-64360-3 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-009-64361-0 Paperback
ISSN 2633-3554 (online)
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or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
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remain, accurate or appropriate.

How Empathy Promotes Reﬂection and Strengthens

Democracy

Elements in Political Psychology

DOI: 10.1017/9781009643573
First published online: February 2025

Lala Muradova
University of Southampton
Author for correspondence: Lala Muradova, [email protected]

Abstract: How do individuals make up their mind about politics? This

question has sparked a vigorous debate in the study of political
behavior for the last few decades. Some scholars contend that citizens
can and should engage in political reflection, while others highlight
biases in human political reasoning that make reflection impossible.
This Element is about the conditions under which citizens can be
motivated to transcend their egocentric biases and engage in
reflection. Rather than asking whether citizens are capable of reflection,
it shifts focus to a more productive question: how to motivate
reflection. Firstly, it argues that (situational) empathy for the other side
can inspire citizens to think reflectively about politics. Secondly, the
Element proposes that deliberative institutions have the potential to
evoke empathy for the other side in individuals. Thirdly, it draws on
experimental and qualitative data from Belgium, Chile, Ireland, and the
UK to test the theoretical expectations.

Keywords: political reasoning, political polarization, empathy, deliberation,

citizens’ assembly

© Lala Muradova 2025

ISBNs: 9781009643603 (HB), 9781009643610 (PB), 9781009643573 (OC)
ISSNs: 2633-3554 (online), 2633-3546 (print)

1 Introduction 1

2 Theory: Empathy, Deliberative Institutions, and Reﬂection 5

3 Measurement and Empirical Strategy 14

4 Study 1: Empathy for the Other Side and Policy Attitudes

on Universal Basic Income 18

5 Study 2: Political Institutions that Elicit Empathy for

the Other Side – The Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016–2018) 24

6 Studies 3 to 5: Interpersonal Deliberation

and Reﬂection – Evidence from Experimental Studies 36

7 Discussion and Conclusion 46

References 54

1 Introduction
How do individuals make up their minds about politics? This question has
sparked a vigorous debate in the study of mass political behavior for the last few
decades. Some scholars contend that citizens can and should engage in political
reflection, while others highlight the biases in human political reasoning that
make reflection impossible. This Element is about the conditions under which
citizens can be motivated to transcend their egocentric biases and engage in
reflection.
Normative democratic theorists expect citizens to engage in reflective polit-
ical thinking, whereby they consider and assimilate diverse and opposing
viewpoints into their thinking, weigh up the pros and cons of an issue or
a candidate, and reexamine their prior beliefs when forming their political
beliefs and attitudes. Aristotle posited that individuals’ political judgments
should be the product of “determined effort, a pausing-and-reflecting, and
a self-distance,” as opposed to “spontaneous, immediate intuition” (Beiner
1983, 105). In Reflective Democracy, Robert Goodin argues that people should
think “long and hard what they want and why [ . . . ], what others want and why,
and how those others’ goals might articulate with their own” (2003, 1). For
Arendt, critical political thinking “is possible only where the standpoints of all
others are open to inspection” (Arendt 1989, 43). Reflection, according to John
Dewey, is the hallmark of democratic citizenship (Dewey 1933).
However, there is a widespread pessimism about the capability and willing-
ness of voters to reflect. This skepticism stems from empirical evidence in
political science and psychology. Research finds that most people rarely think
about opposing perspectives, and when faced with opposing information, they
react defensively by clinging to their existing attitudes and beliefs (Taber and
Lodge 2006). People’s emotional attachment to their favored political party
makes them support their party and endorse party positions, irrespective of
whether these positions reflect citizens’ policy preferences or not (Bartels
2002). This strand of literature concludes that prior political beliefs and social
identities predetermine and shape people’s political beliefs and policy choices.
Those findings prompted some critics to argue that there is a disjuncture
between the normative conceptions about how citizens should reason, and
empirical research on how citizens do think (Achen and Bartels 2016;
Campbell et al. 1960; Converse 1964). Pointing to empirical findings that
citizens have biased, “thin, disorganized and ideologically incoherent” belief
systems (12), Achen and Bartels (2016) argue that the normative democratic
theory, in particular, its deliberative conception, is “unrealistic,” “populist,”
“romanticized,” and “folk”; and “amount[s] to fairy tales” (7). But such an

argument about the “insurmountable” divide may be overly simplistic, as

suggested by a growing body of recent work on the psychology of political
opinion formation (e.g., Groenendyk and Krupnikov 2021).
In this Element, I take a different approach to political reasoning. Rather than
asking whether citizens are capable of reflection or not, I focus on a more
productive question of how to motivate citizens to engage in reflective political
thinking. I draw on insights from contemporary political psychology to start
with an argument that human political reasoning is dynamic, rather than static
(see also Esterling et al. 2011). Different situational factors can either enhance
or depress people’s motivation to engage in reflective political thinking. People
should be “sufficiently motivated” to engage in even-handed political thinking
(Druckman 2012, 199). The tendency to engage in reflection “depends on the
goals made salient by the context of politics” (Connors, Pietryka, and Ryan
2022; Groenendyk and Krupnikov 2021, 181).1 Altering people’s motivations,
by holding them accountable (Colombo 2018), making the value of open-
mindedness salient (Groenendyk and Krupnikov 2021), paying them to be
accurate in their judgments (Bullock et al. 2015), or reminding them about
their civic duty (Mullinix 2018) have shown to engender better, and normatively
more desirable political thinking. Intense political campaigns (Kam 2006) and
televised election debates (Turkenburg and Goovaerts 2024) have the potential
to start similar reflective thinking processes in citizens. I build on this literature
and expand it with novel theoretical arguments and new empirical evidence.
First, I theorize about the motivating force of empathy for the other side for
reflectiveness of people’s political reasoning. In a nutshell, I argue that empathy
can promote political reflection. In building my argument, I focus on situational
empathy (empathic reactions and states in response to a specific situation and/or
to a person), rather than dispositional empathy (a character trait). Given that
individuals often lack self-awareness about their empathic abilities (Ickes 1993,
2003) and that empathy is a motivated response (Zaki 2018), I argue that
situational empathy is more suitable for studying its democratic effects. In
short, I contend that when individuals are encouraged to imagine the world
from different others’ vantage point and feel empathy for the other side, they are
motivated to move beyond their egocentric political thinking and engage in
more reflective political reasoning.
Second, I offer theoretical insights into the kind of political institutions that
are capable of evoking empathy for the other side in citizenry. I develop an

1
Research shows there are also individual-level characteristics that make people either more or less
willing to process political information in a reﬂective manner (e.g., Arceneaux and Vander Wielen
2017; Bakker et al. 2020; Valli and Nai 2023; see Muradova and Arceneaux 2022a for a review of
the literature). Engaging with this literature, however, falls outside of the scope of this Element.

account of how and under what conditions deliberative institutions have the
potential of providing a fertile environment that facilitates the kind of affective
engagement that enables citizens to connect with each other and experience
empathy for the other side. This elicited empathy motivates individuals to
reflect about their political judgments. In developing my argument, I focus on
structured deliberative forums, because these approximate the ideals of demo-
cratic theorists through their design. Lastly, I explore the upscaling potential of
interpersonal deliberation.
I test my theoretical expectations through the examination of diverse policy
issues, such as abortion, assisting aging populations, climate change, legalizing
assisted dying, and universal basic income, using a mix of experimental, quasi-
experimental, and qualitative data collected from Belgium, Chile, Ireland, and
the UK.
This Element speaks to different strands of literature within political psych-
ology and deliberative democracy. First, the findings have implications for the
contemporary political psychology and communication literatures on political
reasoning, emotions, and attitude formation. It adds to the motivational theories
of political reasoning by showing that empathy for the other side can create
a motivation for individuals to engage in more reflective political reasoning.
The findings are consistent with the argument advanced by George Marcus and
others about the motivating role of some emotions for the deliberativeness of
political reasoning (Marcus et al. 2000; Webster and Albertson 2022). Prior
literature examined the role of different discrete emotions, such as anxiety,
anger, and enthusiasm in individuals’ political reasoning, showing the ways via
which anxiety can lead to more enlightened political judgments. For the first
time in the literature, I argue about and study the motivational effect of another
emotion, empathy, for reflectiveness of people’s political reasoning. I show
that when a political environment triggers empathy for the other side in individ-
uals, this elicited empathy engenders more reflective political reasoning in
individuals.
The findings of this project also hold important implications for the recent
political science literature investigating the role of empathy in politics (Clifford
et al. 2019; McDonald 2023; Simas et al. 2020; Sirin et al. 2016, 2021). This
work has broadly fallen into two distinct camps: (a) the studies that investigate
empathy as a disposition (a stable, trait-level characteristic), and (b) the studies
that examine the effect of perspective-taking interventions, that is, those that
focus on cognitive dimension of empathy. My contribution to this field is (at
least) two-fold. First, contrary to studies suggesting that individual-level dis-
positional empathy is biased against outgroups (Brophy and Mullinix 2024;
Simas et al. 2020), I demonstrate that situational empathy toward the opposing

side enhances the reﬂectiveness of political judgments by motivating individ-

uals to actively entertain counter-attitudinal arguments and perspectives.
Similarly, in contrast to Paul Bloom’s (2017) argument that (affective) empathy
leads to irrationality, this Element suggests that situational empathy can prompt
individuals to engage in more (not less) thoughtful reasoning. This finding
challenges the notion that empathy inherently distorts judgment. While disposi-
tional empathy may have detrimental consequences for the quality of democ-
racy, motivating individuals to be empathetic – regardless of their personal
traits – holds normatively optimistic potential for fostering reflective demo-
cratic citizenship.
The findings of this Element align with research showing that perspective-
taking interventions can help reduce outgroup biases (Broockman and Kalla
2016; Kalla and Broockman 2023) and diminish attitude entrenchment (Tuller
et al. 2015). I demonstrate that empathy promotes greater reflection, even if it
doesn’t always result in persuasion.
Second, the results have implications for the field of deliberative democracy.
I propose a theory of deliberation that links affective engagement and the
resulting empathy for the other side in interpersonal deliberative settings to
normatively desirable political judgments. In doing so, I attend to the affective
dimension of interpersonal deliberation (Krause 2008; Morrell 2010;
Rosenberg 2007), and I contribute to filling in the gap identified by Michael
Neblo (2020, 926) that “the theories of what roles emotion can and should play
[in interpersonal deliberation] have been underdeveloped” within deliberative
democratic literature. This focus also speaks to an incipient body of theoretical
and empirical work on the role of emotions in deliberation (Curato 2019;
Lacelle-Webster 2024; Landemore 2024; Muradova 2020; Penigaud 2024;
Saam 2018).
The Element has seven sections and proceeds as follows. The subsequent
section (Section 2) articulates the theoretical framework that informs this
Element. I start by conceptualizing reflective political thinking and differentiat-
ing it from other similar concepts. Next, I position my model of political
reasoning within the latest research that places emotions at the heart of political
information processing and belief formation. In Section 3, I discuss the oper-
ationalization and measurement of two concepts central to this Element: reflect-
ive political reasoning and empathy. I further elaborate on the analytical strategy
adopted in this Element. I briefly describe all five empirical studies testing
different parts of the theory. Section 4 presents the findings of a large and
nationally representative survey experiment in the UK (Study 1, UK), which
tests my first theoretical argument (i.e., “empathy motivates more reflection,”
H1). This study manipulates empathy for the other side in the context of

a political disagreement on the issue of introducing universal basic income and

studies its effect on the reflectiveness of individuals’ political reasoning. In
Section 5, I undertake an empirical inquiry to test the theoretical expectation
about the potential of deliberative institutions to elicit empathy for the other side
in individuals (H2), focusing on a real-world structured deliberative institution,
the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (Study 2) and relying on qualitative in-depth
interview data, and participant observations. In Section 6, I substantiate my
findings from the Irish Citizens’ Assembly with a quasi-experiment (Study 3,
Belgium) and a laboratory experiment (Study 4, UK) on small-group deliber-
ation about the issue of legalizing assisted dying (H3). I further investigate the
upscaling effect of interpersonal deliberation on reflection through a survey
experiment focused on the issue of universal basic income (Study 5, Chile, and
the UK). Section 7 summarizes the Element’s main contributions and discusses
the ways via which reflective political reasoning can strengthen democracy.
I then devote the remainder of the section to discussing the limitations of my
empirical studies and pondering over the future avenues for research.

2 Theory: Empathy, Deliberative Institutions, and Reﬂection

2.1 Conceptualizing Reflective Thinking
Reflective political thinking happens when one uses their thinking processes to
consider and integrate diverse and counter-attitudinal information and perspec-
tives about an issue or a political candidate, before forming their political
attitudes. Reflection involves the willingness to go beyond one’s existing beliefs
and group identities and evaluate political information in an even-handed and
deliberative manner. To conceptualize “reflection,” I build on normative demo-
cratic theories about the ideal citizenry (Arendt 1989; Dahl 1971; Dewey 1933;
Goodin 2003; Habermas 1996) and the definition of reflection adopted by
Arceneaux and Vander Wielen (2017). A crucial defining aspect that characterizes
“reflection” in my project is its “other-regardingness”: at its center is the willing-
ness to contemplate the perspectives contrary to one’s own (Muradova 2020).
What distinguishes “reflection” from other similar concepts in the field?
Reflection involves more than just thinking hard. Thinking hard about political
information and perspectives could be done in service to one’s prior prefer-
ences. Individuals can think hard to produce post hoc rationalization for their
unreflective and intuitive judgments (Arceneux and Vander Wielen 2017).
Reflection is the act of actively entertaining not only the perspectives and
arguments that support one’s stance, but especially those that oppose it.
Quoting philosopher Robert Goodin, reflection involves “taking due account
of the evidence and experience embodied in the beliefs of others” (2003, 1).

Reflection is also distinct from critical reasoning. Both reflection and critical
reasoning require a skeptical mindset when evaluating political information at
hand. Yet reflective reasoning extends past mere skepticism, involving an active
consideration and incorporation of different and opposing perspectives on the
issue or the candidate.
The concept of reflective thinking shares similarities with the concept of
accuracy-motivated reasoning. According to the influential motivated reason-
ing framework, individuals are driven by different goals when processing
political information. Two main motivations guide people’s political reasoning.
The default goal is directional. Political reasoning is directional when individ-
uals are motivated by a goal of protecting their prior beliefs and partisan
identities. When motivated directionally, people process and evaluate new
information through the lens of their existing beliefs and/or partisan attach-
ments. This motivation leads individuals to seek out arguments that align with
their existing beliefs, while deliberately ignoring those that challenge them
(Taber and Lodge 2006). In my conceptualization, directionally motivated
reasoning stands in opposition to what constitutes “reflective reasoning.”
When engaging in directionally motivated thinking, individuals do not consider
or integrate the perspectives of those they disagree with. Neither are they
willing to reconsider their previously held views on a political issue. Their
affective attachments to their prior beliefs and political partisanship drive their
political attitude formation. Conversely, when individuals are motivated by
accuracy goals, they strive to develop a belief or attitude that can be considered
the most correct or optimal (Kunda 1990; Taber and Lodge 2006, 756).
Accuracy-motivated political reasoning, thus, is similar to reflective thinking.
Yet the former fails to fully encapsulate the essence of the latter. Reflection goes
beyond achieving accuracy in political judgments. Reaching accurate judg-
ments may not always be attainable or relevant. It could be conceptually and
empirically much easier to apply “accuracy” to the matters of fact, but less so to
the matters of morality, where different, more other-regarding considerations
should come into play. Moral issues involve complex and nuanced consider-
ations of values, norms and ethics, and the goal of attaining accurate judgments
on such issues may be elusive (if possible, at all). To illustrate this, consider this
(simplified) example about attitude formation on legalizing assisted dying.
Person A holds a belief that it is individuals’ right to decide to die on their
own terms, particularly if they suffer from a terminal illness and, therefore,
supports the legalization of assisted dying. Person B is against legalizing
assisted dying and is convinced that its legalization would put vulnerable
parts of the population, such as the elderly and those with physical and mental
needs, at risk of coercion and pressure. When motivated to think reflectively

about legalizing assisted dying, Person A should actively consider and integrate
Person B’s opposing perspective. The goal here, however, is not accuracy,
which is impossible, but more reflective judgments.
Another distinct feature of reflection is its nonlinear relationship with attitude
change. I believe this is what makes reflection normatively more desirable than
mere persuasion. Reflective political reasoning offers an opportunity for a shift
in beliefs and/or attitudes, though the change is not always the ultimate outcome
of reflection (Muradova and Arceneaux 2022b, 741). At times, upon hearing the
opposing argument/viewpoint and reflecting upon it, an individual may decide
to update their prior beliefs in the direction of a new piece of information. In
other instances, reflection may ultimately reaffirm one’s initial beliefs or even
strengthen them. Reflection may also encourage behavioral change without
transforming people’s beliefs.2 Furthermore, while observable transformation
of attitudes may capture attitude change post-exposure to an intervention,
reflection may yield changes in beliefs and attitudes in the longer run.
Reflection can also increase future openness and tolerance to opposing views
without immediately altering one’s existing beliefs. Finally, the outcome of
reflection may not warrant any change in people’s political attitudes, either
short- or long-term. I believe all these outcomes are democratically valid, as far
as they are the result of reflective political reasoning.

2.2 Empathy for the Other Side Engenders More Reﬂective

Political Thinking
The main argument guiding this Element is that empathy for the other side has
the potential to enhance the reflectiveness of people’s political judgments.
Before laying out my argument, however, it is important to elaborate on the
definition of “empathy” adopted in this Element. The term “empathy” is
a definitional morass.3 Empathy means different things to different people in
different disciplines, leading some scholars to argue that empathy is a layered,
umbrella concept (de Waal 2012), encompassing a range of interconnected
emotions, such as sympathy, empathy, compassion, and emotional contagion,
among others.4
In this Element, consistent with the most recent literature, I define empathy as
a multidimensional concept, having both affective (feeling) and cognitive
(imagining and understanding) components that occur together, interact with

2
I illustrate this point empirically with an example in Study 2.
3
The expression of “deﬁnitional morass” comes from Gerring (2004).
4
Due to space restrictions, I’m unable to discuss the vibrant contemporary debate about the
deﬁnition of empathy. For comprehensive and interdisciplinary reviews on empathy, see
Decety (2012) and Stüber (2019).

each other, and work in synch (Cikara et al. 2011). Empathy is thus defined as
“actively imagining, feeling and understanding the world from the other per-
son’s vantage point” (Muradova and Arceneaux 2022b, 743). Even though
empathy has a motivational cognitive component (“actively putting yourself
into someone else’s shoes”), it also includes affective reactions of sympathy and
compassion to the target (whose perspective one is taking) and to their emo-
tional experiences (Sirin et al. 2016). I argue that these affective reactions,
together with the parallel processes of understanding where the target is coming
from, influence and motivate our reasoning.
In building my argument, I depart from previous research and focus on
situational empathy, defined as a “situational [empathic] response in specific
situations” (Stüber 2019), rather than a dispositional one. I build on the premise
that social contexts can either activate or depress people’s empathic reactions,
with some contexts exerting a strong influence on individuals’ inclination to
empathize with others (Cheng et al. 2017). Lastly, my focus here is on empathy
targeted toward political opponents, people whom one disagrees with on polit-
ical matters, which I call empathy for the other side. Empathy for the other side
thus entails imagining the feelings and perspectives of someone who does not
share one’s political views on a given issue.
However, actively imagining the world from the vantage point of someone
who doesn’t share our political views may be challenging and come with
inherent biases and barriers. For instance, we may be more predisposed to be
empathetic toward people who share common characteristics or backgrounds
with us. I argue that, for empathy for the other side to happen, at least three
conditions need to be met.
The first necessary condition is for the individual to be actively willing to
engage in empathy – “to put themselves in the shoes of the other,” figuratively
speaking. Empathy is not automatic. It requires a personal commitment to
engage in such a process. Different situational and institutional factors can
create a motivation in individuals to engage in empathy for the other side. In
experimental settings, specific empathy instructions could play this motiv-
ational role.
Second, for an individual to imagine the world of the other, they need to have
enough and accurate information about that world (Muradova 2020). The lack
of information may lead the individual to make erroneous inferences about the
lives and experiences of the target of their empathy, reinforcing their biases. In
the absence of information about the other side, an individual may automatic-
ally rely on their stored knowledge, which may consist of “stereotypes or other
idiosyncratic information known about the target” (Epley and Caruso 2009,
300–305; Muradova 2020).

Third, empathy requires an activation of people’s affective empathic reac-

tions, not only their active willingness to take a perspective. Empathy as
a multidimensional emotion incorporates both cognitive (actively putting one-
self into someone else’s shoes) and affective (the feelings of warmth and
concern felt toward the other) dimensions and the two are intertwined and
work in tandem. Communicating the other’s world (including perspectives,
arguments, and feelings) in a way that facilitates the process of affective
empathy for the other side is crucial. Personal stories and narratives are strong
discursive tools for encouraging affective empathy and imagination in individ-
uals (Black 2008; Muradova et al. 2020). They bring in an affective piece of
information which is helpful in the processes of imagining the other’s world
(Black 2008).
In sum, actively imagining the world from the perspective of a political
opponent, after having read/seen/heard about their perspectives and feelings,
in a narrative format, facilitates the processes of empathy for the other side.5
This argument about the power of empathy to promote reﬂection builds on the
prior literature that posits that emotions are consequential for humans’ willing-
ness and tendency to process political information and reason about politics in
a more deliberative way (Brader and Marcus 2013; Marcus 2010). Much of this
research has conﬁrmed the existence of the dual-process models of reasoning. In
these accounts, political reasoning is the outcome of two interlinked processes,
the intuitive (automatic or system 1) and the deliberative (rational or system 2),
and emotions are involved in both processes (Arceneaux and Vander Wielen
2017). The default mode of reasoning for individuals is to rely on their habits
when making political decisions unless something novel shakes their default
system. George Marcus, in developing his Affective Intelligence Theory (AIT)
argues that one discrete emotion, anxiety, can act as a motivator for more
deliberative political reasoning, by prompting individuals to stop relying on
their habitual thinking and search for more diverse information. Enthusiasm

5
My conceptualization of empathy for the other side has some similarities with the concept of
perspective-getting, proposed by Kalla and Broockman (2023). The authors make a distinction
between perspective-taking (where one self-generates a narrative about the life of an outgroup
member) and perspective-getting (when an individual hears a narrative about a life of an outgroup
member either from them directly or from a third party). Both concepts (empathy for the other
side and perspective-getting) incorporate the narrative format and information about the experi-
ences of the different other. Perspective-getting is only one aspect of empathy, with other
dimensions involving affective engagement with the feelings, perspectives, and life experiences
of others, which are important for its reﬂection-inducing motivation. Hence, while Kalla and
Broockman (2023) focus on perspective-getting, my argument includes both the cognitive and
affective dimensions of empathy, examining it in its entirety. Moreover, according to my
conceptualization, all forms of empathy require information about the other side; without it,
our potentially ﬂawed perceptions can impede our ability to empathize effectively.

and anger, on the other hand, are argued to prompt more intuitive and biased
political reasoning. There is an increasing body of work that shows that anxiety is
linked to people’s tendency to seek more information, rely less on party identifi-
cation or ideology as a heuristic and consider the characteristics of policy
proposals and candidates when making political decisions (Brader et al. 2008;
Gadarian and Albertson 2014; Huddy et al. 2015; Marcus et al. 2000). I argue that
empathy, more specifically empathy for the other side, can start similar reflective
processes in individuals. When the cues in the environment elicit empathy in
individuals toward people with opposing views, the resulting empathy signals
them to stop relying exclusively on their default system of reasoning and engage
in more even-handed thinking. In the language of AIT, empathy acts as a trigger
for individuals’ surveillance systems, prompting them to go beyond their egocen-
tric reasoning. Empathy, therefore, disrupts our habitual patterns of political
thinking and encourages us to consider opposing perspectives and arguments.
I argue that the arousal of empathy for the other side can activate and engender
more reflective political thinking.
This argument is in line with the findings of social and political psychological
research that shows empathy has the potential to reduce explicit and implicit
intergroup biases at the individual and group level (Simonovits et al. 2018; Sirin
et al. 2021), foster more inclusive and altruistic behavior (Batson 2010; Todd and
Galinsky 2014), lead to transformation of political views (Tuller et al. 2015) and
influence political ambition (Clifford et al. 2019).6 I extend this body of work by
studying how situational empathy is related to people’s tendency to engage in
a more demanding and normatively desirable kind of political reasoning, reflection.
Several causal mechanisms could be responsible for the relationship between
empathy for the other side and reflection. First, the argument on self-other
merging in empathetic imaginings suggests that empathy can create a sense of
psychological connectedness between individuals (Todd et al. 2012, 739) and
help them recognize shared similarities and fates with the person whose per-
spective they are adopting (Erle and Topolinski 2017). Consequently, one may
perceive oneself as being more like the other and/or vice versa. Second,
empathic imaginings could activate more positive evaluations of others, and
more liking (Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000). This may lead to openness about
the arguments and perspectives of different others. Therefore, when political
environments are fertile for eliciting empathy in individuals toward those with
divergent political views, people would be more likely to engage in reflective
reasoning.
6
The source of empathy-related interest in psychology dates to the moral philosophy of the
eighteenth century and is inspired by the works of David Hume and Adam Smith. For
a discussion of the history of scholarly interest in empathy, see Stüber (2019).

Figure 1 Schematic representation of the hypotheses

This argument leads us to expect that empathy for the other side would
motivate more reﬂective political reasoning in individuals (H1). Figure 1
lays out this and other proposed relationships.

2.3 Political Institutions that Induce Empathy for the Other Side
How to make people more empathetic toward different others, outside the
controlled experimental settings? How can political institutions help individuals
to feel empathetic toward their policy opponents and consequently, engage in
more reflective political reasoning?
The second main argument of this Element is that one type of institutions –
deliberative minipublics – have the potential to elicit empathy for the other in
individuals. Minipublics are nonconventional, non-electoral and participatory
institutions that approximate the ideals of deliberative democracy through their
design (Fung 2003). They are considered to be the microcosm of the larger
population that they represent. Minipublics bring together randomly chosen
citizens with diverse views to hear from the experts and witnesses, engage in
consideration, discussion, and deliberation about the chosen issue, and arrive at
a set of recommendations under the conditions of respect and equality (Curato
and Farrell 2021). The assumption underlying these institutions is that
a minipublic models “what the electorate would think if, hypothetically, it
could be immersed in intensive deliberative processes” (Fishkin 1991, 81).
There are different types of minipublics (e.g., citizens’ juries, consensus
conferences, citizens’ assemblies, and deliberative polling) and their political
influence differ from case to case.7 The organization and use of a specific type of
minipublic – citizens’ assemblies – by governments and nongovernmental

7
See Ryan (2021) for the discussion and policy impact of another type of democratic innovations,
participatory budgeting.

organizations worldwide have been on the rise. Citizens’ assemblies (herein-

after CAs) have been employed to tackle various contentious issues, including
climate change, abortion, and same-sex marriage (www.participedia.com). My
argument in this section refers to citizens’ assemblies, considered to be “demo-
cratically superior” to other deliberative institutions (Elstub 2014, 172), with
larger number of participants (usually around 100), longer period of deliber-
ations, and a more established link to the conventional political institutions.
I argue that participation in a deliberative institution can make people more
empathetic toward the other side, which is consequential for the reflectiveness
of their political judgments. One explanation of this relationship could be found
in intergroup contact theory. Originating in social psychology, the contact
theory contends that intergroup interaction has the potential to promote positive
intergroup outcomes, such as reduced anxiety, lower levels of physiological
stress, and enhanced empathy in addition to its more widely known outcomes,
such as reduction in prejudice and conflict between groups (Allport 1954;
Pettigrew and Tropp 2006; Pettigrew et al. 2011). In The Nature of Prejudice,
Allport (1954) posits that for intergroup contact to have positive effects it
should meet four important conditions: (a) equal status of interacting groups
in the situation, (b) common goals, (c) intergroup cooperation, and (d) the
support from the authorities, law or custom. Even though these conditions are
not always necessary (Pettigrew et al. 2011), their presence facilitates and
increases the beneficial effects of contact with different others. A minipublic
looks like mediated intergroup contact. Instructions given by the organizers to
the members of the minipublic are intended to encourage cooperation between
people holding opposing perspectives, foster equal status, and motivate them to
work toward the common goal. Minipublics also offer institutional support to
deliberating individuals (Fishkin et al. 2021).8 Thus, minipublics are institu-
tions that create necessary institutional conditions for individuals to engage in
positive intergroup contact.
However, in building my theoretical expectations about the relationship
between interpersonal deliberation in minipublics and empathy for the other
side, I go beyond intergroup contact theory and theoretically unpack affective
processes that encourage and facilitate empathy for the other side in deliberating
individuals.
When designed well, minipublics create a positive and safe space for individuals
of different background and perspectives to engage affectively with each other and
with each other’s lives and perspectives. In Jane Mansbridge’s words (1983, 5),
8
The argument and the empirical studies in this Element study contact with different others; but the
difference here is defined across political beliefs and attitudes, rather than social group
memberships.

face-to-face discussions in such settings inspire individuals to “identify with one

another and with the group as a whole” (Mansbridge 1983, 5), leading to co-
creation of shared goals and aspirations. This co-creation of common goals
happens in a social context, where human emotions take a central stage.
Spending time together within deliberative groups and beyond, for extended
periods of time, encourages individuals to form more intimacy with different others
and fosters overall trust and social bonding (Rosenberg 2007). On one hand, this
affective engagement would encourage people to share their lives and experiences
more openly. These exchanges of personal stories and perspectives would provide
the individuals with the necessary information to empathize with the lives of others
who were previously distant. On the other hand, affective engagement can foster
a positive affinity for political opponents – those with differing political perspec-
tives – and encourage openness to learning about their lives. As Diana Mutz (2002,
112) contends, “one could learn from personal experience that those different from
one’s self are not necessarily bad people.” Through affective engagement and
social bonding, minipublics create favorable physical and discursive spaces for two
necessary conditions for practicing empathy for the other side: (a) sufficient and
accurate information about the other, and (b) affective empathic elicitation via
narratives and personal stories. Emotional proximity and interpersonal linkages
facilitate the expression of such information by different others and enhance
participants’ receptivity to it. Social bonding also leads people to be open to telling
personal stories from their lives. Moreover, the institutional design of deliberative
minipublics encourages individuals to engage in empathic imagination. From the
outset, organizers urge citizen deliberators to remain open to the lives of others,
inspiring them to actively empathize with opposing perspectives. In sum, delibera-
tive minipublics are institutions that through their design create an environment
that facilitates and harnesses the feelings of empathy for the other side.
This argument contributes to the previous work within deliberative democ-
racy that emphasizes the role of empathy for deliberation. Michael Morrell’s
(2010) influential book Empathy and Democracy calls for reimagining and
reshaping deliberative democracy by placing empathy at its heart. For many
deliberative democrats, empathy is a deliberative virtue with the potential to
promote inclusiveness (Krause 2008) and strengthen mutual respect and reci-
procity (Morrell 2010; see also Richards et al. 2022). While deliberation litera-
ture has either implicitly or explicitly referred to empathy in talking about
interpersonal discussion, there is a dearth of research that links deliberation to
empathy both theoretically and empirically. There are, however, some notable
exceptions. Grönlund and colleagues (2017) study the extent to which deliber-
ation in small groups improves people’s capacity to empathize with others on
the issue of immigration. In their experimental study design, they manipulate

whether deliberation is “enclave” (deliberation with like-minded people) or

“cross-cutting” (deliberation with different others). The findings show that
deliberation increases outgroup empathy among individuals with restrictive
attitudes toward immigration. In a highly divided political context, relying on
an experiment in Colombia between ex-combatants, victims, and members of
communities affected by conflict, Ugarriza and Nussio (2017) find that inter-
personal deliberation is conducive to positive intergroup attitudes when small-
group discussion protocol emphasizes mutual empathy. Another relevant recent
study is by Connors and colleagues (2022), who show that pro-socially motiv-
ated participants in small-group discussions arrive at more enlightened and
mutually beneficial choices.
My next hypotheses are that participating in a deliberative minipublic
fosters empathy toward those who harbor divergent political opinions (H2)
and motivates people to engage in more reflective political reasoning (H3)
(Figure 1).

3 Measurement and Empirical Strategy

3.1 Measuring Reflection
Reflection is a complex construct. Capturing the intrapsychic steps that individ-
uals undergo in reflecting is challenging, if not altogether elusive. Therefore, my
proxies in this Element constitute an attempt. I use two measures to capture the
reflectiveness of individuals’ political reasoning.
The first proxy is a psychometric measurement of deliberation within
(Weinmann 2018), which approximates the definition of reflection adopted in this
project. Respondents are asked to self-report on a 7-point scale (“1” meaning
“strongly disagree” and “7” meaning “strongly agree”) how each of the following
five items, (a) reassessing the biases favoring or opposing different arguments, (b)
taking responsibility for making up one’s own mind about the topic, after listening to
or reading the arguments of others, (c) simulating several opinions about the topic,
(d) thinking about the arguments for and against ones’ own as well as others’
opinions, and (e) evaluating the arguments that speak for and against own as well
as others’ opinions, describe the development of their thought processes when
forming their political views on an issue. However, like most social science
measures, this battery is not devoid of shortcomings. First, it relies on self-
reported responses; as such, it may be prone to social desirability bias, errors, and
other cognitive biases from respondents (Weinmann 2018, 12–13). Second, the
processes underlying reflection may not be conscious, or apparent to the individual.
Therefore, in most of my studies, I use the second proxy – cognitive complexity
of political reasoning – as an indirect measure of reflection. Cognitive complexity

of thinking, a widely used construct by social and political psychologists

(Brundidge et al. 2014; Owens and Wedeking 2011; Suedfeld 2010; Tetlock
1983), captures the extent to which people’s reasoning is unidimensional or
multidimensional and encompasses two core elements of reasoning: differenti-
ation and integration. While differentiation captures the degree of differentiation
between perspectives, dimensions, or solutions to the issue under consideration,
integration means integrating these different perspectives into reasoning and
decision-making (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010). Out of these two dimensions,
one unidimensional score is created that ranges from the least complex to the most
complex. The least complex language refers to an individual’s “rel[iance] on
rigid, one-dimensional, evaluative rules in interpreting events, and [ . . . ] mak-
[ing] decisions on the basis of only a few salient items of information,” whereas
the most complex language denotes a language which “interpret[s] events in
multidimensional terms and [ . . . ] integrate[s] a variety of evidence in arriving at
decisions” (Tetlock et al. 1985, 1228).
I capture the cognitive complexity with an open-ended display question that
asks individuals to provide justiﬁcations for their position on a given issue after
having measured their position on the issue. Short essays that individuals write
in response to this open-ended question are used to calculate the cognitive
complexity score. While it is possible to use manual coding to capture this
score, the current trend favors computerized text analysis. This approach aims
to overcome challenges associated with manual coding, such as human biases,
the labor-intensive nature of coding, and cost considerations. I use a software
package called Linguistic Inquiry and World Count (LIWC) to calculate the
cognitive complexity score. The LIWC cognitive complexity calculation works
under the assumption that “natural language use provides important clues as to
how people process information and interpret it to make sense of their environ-
ment” (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010). The scores generated by LIWC are
based on LIWC dictionaries with psychometrically validated groups of words.
The package analyzes the written text and categorizes each word into psycho-
logically adequate groups and generates the percentage of words in the text that
belong to each identiﬁed LIWC category. In calculating the cognitive complex-
ity score, I employ ten LIWC indicators (e.g., causation, insight, certainty)
(Owens and Wedeking 2011; Wyss et al. 2015).9 These indicators are put into
a formula to calculate one quantity of interest, cognitive complexity of thinking
score.

9
See the supplementary materials of Muradova and Arceneaux (2022b) for more detailed
information.

3.2 Measurement of Empathy

As mentioned elsewhere, I conceptualize empathy as a multidimensional construct,
incorporating both affective (affective empathy) and cognitive (perspective-taking)
aspects. Affective empathy encompasses the feelings of warmth and concern felt
toward the other, while perspective-taking entails actively imagining the feelings,
thoughts, and lives of the other. Furthermore, I’m interested in situational empathy,
that is, empathy elicited by different situational contexts, as opposed to disposi-
tional empathy, a trait-level stable characteristic (Davis 1983). Finally, the focus is
on empathy for the other side, conceptualized as empathy toward one’s political
opponent, someone one disagrees with on a political matter.
For Study 1 (Section 4) I manipulate empathy, while for Studies 2 and 3,
I measure it. To measure the affective dimension of situational empathy, where
relevant, I use the Emotional Response Questionnaire (McCullough et al. 1997).
Respondents are asked to indicate (on an 11-point scale, with “1” meaning not at
all, and “10” meaning very much) the extent to which they felt sympathetic,
empathic, concerned, moved, compassionate, warm, soft-hearted, and tender,
when deliberating in a group or reading the text about their political opponent.
These items are summed to form an index. To capture the cognitive empathy,
I use the items tapping into perspective-taking dimension of the inﬂuential
Interpersonal Reactivity Index by Davis (1983) and adapt them to capture
situational (rather than dispositional) cognitive empathy.

3.3 Research Methods

This Element applies a mixed-method research design (Tashakkori and
Teddlie 2021) and brings together both quantitative and qualitative data. H1
is tested with the help of a large survey experiment fielded in the UK (Study 1,
Section 4), where empathy is manipulated. To study H2 and H3, I first take an
exploratory mode, by relying on a case study of a real-world deliberative
institution – the Irish Citizens’ Assembly – with the data from participant
observation, and in-depth interviews (Study 2, Section 5). I then proceed to
a confirmatory mode by studying the relationship between small-group delib-
eration and reflection (H3) via a quasi-experiment (Belgium) (Study 3,
Section 6) and a laboratory experiment (UK) (Study 4, Section 6). I further
investigate the scalability of H3 to a larger public, by isolating one element of
interpersonal deliberation, exposure to cross-cutting information, with
a cross-national survey experiment in the UK and Chile (Study 5,
Section 6). Table 1 presents the list of empirical studies and descriptive
information about them.

Table 1 List of empirical studies that test the theory

Part of the
Study Country theory Method Outcome variable(s)
Study 1: UBI (2019) UK (H1) Survey experiment Cognitive complexity of
reasoning
Study 2: ICA (2017−2018), issues: Ireland (H2) and (H3) Participant observation Empathy for the other side
abortion, climate change, and aging Interviews Deliberation within
population
Study 3: Assisted dying (2018−2019) Belgium (H2) and (H3) Pretest-posttest quasi Empathy for the other side
experiment Cognitive complexity of
reasoning
Study 4: Assisted dying (2018) UK (H3) Laboratory experiment Deliberation within
Study 5: UBI (2019, 2020) UK and Chile Scaling up H3 Survey experiment Cognitive complexity of
reasoning
18 Political Psychology

4 Study 1: Empathy for the Other Side and Policy Attitudes

on Universal Basic Income
My first study examines whether and how empathy for the other side in the
context of a political disagreement can influence people’s political opinion
formation on the issue of universal basic income (hereinafter UBI) in the
UK.10 The objective is to see whether empathy can motivate people to move
beyond the dismissal of opposing perspectives on the issue; and actively
incorporate these views in their political reasoning. The study is an online
survey experiment that induces empathy in individuals for a person holding
opposing views on UBI and measures the reflectiveness of their political
reasoning posttreatment.

4.1 Issue Context

While UBI is not a single homogeneous policy, its core idea is that everyone
should receive a regular, universal, nontaxable, and non-means-tested cash
payment from the government to guarantee a minimum standard of living
and cover essential needs. The payment amount varies by country and
ideology, and its structure depends on the speciﬁc scheme. While discus-
sions about UBI trace back to the eighteenth century (see Bidadanure 2019),
the policy has recently gained prominence in mainstream political discourse,
with countries like Canada, Kenya, Uganda, Finland, and others experiment-
ing with various trial schemes. One contributing factor to this increased
interest is concern over labor force automation. When Study 1 was con-
ducted, UBI was a contentious issue in several European countries, includ-
ing the Netherlands, Finland, and Switzerland. In the UK, public support for
UBI was divided but generally leaned toward approval, with approximately
50 percent of Brits in favor according to the European Social Survey (ESS
2016). Around this time, the Scottish government, led by Nicola Sturgeon,
expressed interest in implementing pilot UBI experiments in several local-
ities. However, the pilot scheme was ultimately not pursued due to concerns
about its impracticality.

4.2 Study Design

This study focuses on how empathy inﬂuences individuals’ political reasoning
in the context of political disagreement. The core expectation is that empathy
for one’s policy opponent will increase the reﬂectiveness of people’s political
reasoning. A survey experiment was conducted in which political disagreement

10
This section is based on a study reported at Muradova and Arceneaux (2022b).

was induced by a text vignette. Individuals were exposed to a short text about
a ﬁctitious character – Sarah – who is either in favor or against the UBI,
providing a justiﬁcation for her position. The experiment was designed so that
Sarah’s position on UBI was always opposite to that of the respondent. The
text includes Sarah’s photo to enhance realism and engagement. This was
held constant across placebo and empathy conditions. Thus, respondents in
both conditions were exposed to political disagreement through a text
about Sarah and her position on UBI. Empathy for the other was induced via
a writing assignment (Todd and Galinsky 2014). Individuals randomly assigned
to the empathy condition were instructed to actively imagine the feelings and
thoughts of their policy opponent, Sarah, and to write about what they had
imagined.
The design also included a control condition in which individuals neither read
about Sarah nor received empathy instructions. They only completed a pre- and
post-survey. The objective was to account for the effects of time. I summarize
the structure of the experiment in Figure 2.

4.3 Sample
We preregistered and conducted a survey experiment in March 2019 with
a sample of 2,014 British residents, recruited through the survey company
Dynata. The subject pool was non-probability based but nationally representa-
tive across census age, gender, and region (see the supplementary materials of
Muradova and Arceneaux 2022b for more information).

4.4 Measures
Reflection was measured through the cognitive complexity (CC) of political
reasoning, captured using an open-ended display item. After measuring
respondents’ posttreatment policy attitudes on UBI, individuals were asked to
provide written justifications for their position in four to five sentences.
Individuals’ policy attitudes on UBI were measured using a question from the
European Social Survey, which provided a brief overview of a hypothetical UBI
scheme. They were then asked to indicate their support or opposition to
implementing this scheme in the UK, using a scale from 1 (“strongly oppose”)
to 6 (“strongly favor”). Using automated text analysis with validated dictionar-
ies, we calculated the cognitive complexity score from the qualitative short
essays written by individuals. As stated in the previous section, cognitive
complexity taps into the multidimensional reasoning, that is the hallmark of
reflection. It captures how individuals define and integrate different dimensions
of the issue in their reasoning.

Figure 2 Experimental design.

Note: Individuals in the placebo and empathy conditions encountered political disagreement. Those in the empathy condition were instructed to imagine
themselves in the shoes of their policy opponent and write their thoughts. In contrast, the control group completed only pre- and post-questionnaires.
Empathy and Political Reasoning 21

I also measured the extent of affective empathy – feelings of empathic

concern – toward the issue opponent whose perspective participants were
trying to take. Participants rated their feelings of sympathy, empathy,
concern, compassion, warmth, and kindness toward Sarah on a scale of
1 to 5.
Finally, although it is not the primary outcome variable, I examined whether
empathy for the other leads to attitude change on UBI by calculating the mean
difference between post- and pretreatment attitudes.

4.5 Results
The preexperimental survey shows that the majority of individuals in our
sample favor UBI (Figure 3). Approximately 65.3 percent of respondents are
either “slightly,” “somewhat” or “strongly” in favor of introducing a UBI
scheme in the UK. On average, baseline support for UBI differs across gender,
age, political ideology, and partisanship. Younger and more liberal individuals
are more supportive of UBI, while supporters of the Conservative Party, UKIP,
and non-partisans are signiﬁcantly less so.
First, I begin by exploring the extent to which the empathy treatment induced
the feelings of affective empathy in respondents toward their issue opponents,
by comparing the mean affective empathy (a sum index of sympathy, empathy,
concern, being moved, compassion, warmth, and soft-heartedness; rescaled to
0–1) across placebo and empathy conditions.
Figure 4 shows that individuals in the empathy condition experienced greater
affective empathy toward their issue opponent (M = 0.38; SD = 0.24) than those in

Figure 3 Baseline support for UBI

Figure 4 Affective empathy elicited by the writing assignment

the placebo condition (M = 0.31; SD = 0.23). In standardized terms, the effect is

equal to one-third of a standard deviation (SD). Our treatment encouraged indi-
viduals to feel empathy for their issue opponents despite differing political views.
To test my hypothesis on empathy’s impact on the reflectiveness of political
reasoning, I estimate its effect on the standardized cognitive complexity score
(Model 1, Figure 5), using the placebo condition (political disagreement with-
out empathy instructions) as the baseline. The findings show that imagining life
from the perspective of someone with counter-attitudinal views increases the
cognitive complexity of people’s political reasoning. In other words, upon
imagining their issue opponent’s thoughts and feelings, respondents began
entertaining diverse perspectives and integrating them into their reasoning.
The magnitude of the effect equals to 0.13 SD. Empathy for the other side
effectively encourages individuals to be more reflective in their political rea-
soning. Even after controlling for individual characteristics like political parti-
sanship, the positive effect of empathy remains robust (see Muradova and
Arceneaux 2022b).
As shown in Table 2, the mean cognitive complexity scores across three
conditions reveal that political disagreement alone (vs. control) reduces the
reflectiveness of political thinking about UBI. This supports the idea that
exposure to opposing views can strengthen prior attitudes and lead to less
reflective, more directionally motivated reasoning (Wojcieszak and Price
2010; Guess and Coppock 2020 for a review). However, this observed effect
is not statistically significant at conventional levels.

Table 2 Mean (standardized) cognitive

complexity score across experimental
conditions

Control 0.00 (0.04)

Placebo −0.04 (0.04)
Empathy 0.09 (0.04)
N 2014

Figure 5 The effect of empathy on reﬂective political thinking

Finally, I explore whether the effect of empathy translates into signiﬁcant

attitude changes. The OLS regression results (Model 2, Figure 5) show that
empathy treatment neither increases nor decreases individuals’ likelihood of
shifting their attitudes on UBI. While their political reasoning becomes more
reﬂective, it doesn’t translate into mean attitude change, at least in the short term.

4.6 Discussion
This study finds that when individuals are motivated to empathize with their
policy opponents, they become more open to considering diverse and opposing
perspectives. Even amid political disagreement, empathy for those with oppos-
ing views to ours can foster more reflective political thinking. The effect size of
empathy on reflection is consistent with the effect sizes observed in real-world
interventions designed to change people’s attitudes (e.g., Kalla and Broockman
2023).

5 Study 2: Political Institutions that Elicit

Empathy for the Other Side – The Irish Citizens’
Assembly (2016–2018)
There were elderly people, who would have been raised in a very Catholic environ-
ment [ . . . ], they were totally opposed to abortion. They made it totally clear
from day one that they had huge issues with this. Towards the end [of discussions],
they would say: ‘that is still how all stands, that is how I feel . . . But I totally
understand why things need to change for other people [ . . . ]. I will not vote [ . . . ]
[my] way, even though this goes against my beliefs’. I thought it was empathetic,
brave, and unselﬁsh. I could see these people were really struggling; that was the
core of their belief; that was how they grew up; that was ingrained [in them], you
know. Yet, they decided that changes need to happen, even though [they] did not
believe in it. [ . . . ] a very hard decision for many people . . . not just some sort of
a throw-away decision, [ . . . ] there was a lot of soul-searching for a lot of people.
(An interviewee, male, in his late 30s, a member of the ICA, talking about the Irish
Citizens’ Assembly processes on legalizing abortion in Ireland)
In the booth, the ballot booth, when I was voting, after all the information we had
heard . . . from the witnesses especially [ . . . ], when I stood in that voting booth and
a woman stood in front of me, and I said, ‘I cannot make a decision for you’.
I would have had views that said, ‘Yes, but under these circumstances, and yes,
under those’ . . . then I found myself . . . I would still ﬁnd myself in the conservative
end [of the issue] [ . . . ]. But I said, I am not going to be the one to say, [ . . . ] ‘You
cannot have it.’ . . .
(An interviewee, female, in her early 50s, a member of the ICA, talking about the
Irish Citizens’ Assembly processes on legalizing abortion in Ireland)

To understand the potential of a deliberative institution to elicit empathy for the

other side, I conduct an in-depth case study of a real-world deliberative institu-
tion, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016–2018) (hereinafter ICA). In doing so,
I rely on data from extensive participant observation, and in-depth interviews
with the members of the ICA.

5.1 Description of the ICA

The ICA brought together a cross-section of the Irish public to learn from expert
evidence and witnesses, engage with each other, consider several contentious
socio-political issues concerning Irish society, and make informed recom-
mendations. On its ofﬁcial website, the ICA is deﬁned as “an exercise in
deliberative democracy, giving voice to citizens and placing them at the heart
of important legal and policy issues facing Irish society” (https://citizensassem
bly.ie).
The ICA was initiated by the Irish Government, approved by both Houses of
the Irish Oireachtas (Parliament) in 2016, and operated until 2018. It was tasked

with considering ﬁve high-priority socio-political issues: legalizing abortion,

responding to the challenges and opportunities of an aging population, fixed-
term parliaments, the manner in which referenda are held, and tackling climate
change. The primary objective of convening the ICA, however, was to address
the contentious and partisan constitutional issue of legalizing abortion, known
as “repeal of the 8th amendment”.11 Commentators argue that the constitution
and approval of the ICA on abortion were driven by pressure from abortion
activists and civil society organizations (see, e.g., O’Shaughnessy 2022). This
pressure compelled the newly elected minority government, led by Enda Kenny,
the leader of the liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic party, Fine Gael,
to act.
The ICA consisted of ninety-nine Irish citizens (plus one independent chair),
chosen through citizen lottery, and broadly representative of the Irish population
along sociodemographic variables such as age, sex, region, and socioeconomic
group.12 The stratified random system for the recruitment of members ensured
that the spectrum of opinions, perspectives and voices broadly mirrored that of
the wider Irish society. Activists and lobbyists were explicitly excluded from the
recruitment process. The members received remuneration for their travel
expenses and were provided with accommodation during the weekends of
deliberations.
The sessions of the ICA comprised the following parts. First, prior to
deliberations, citizens were provided with written information about the topic,
which included printed expert presentations and a summary of the submitted
suggestions and viewpoints from the larger public.13 Second, participants were
presented with evidence from both national and international experts offering
diverse perspectives, along with firsthand accounts from individuals with lived
experiences related to the topic under discussion. Third, they engaged in facili-
tated small-group deliberations with different others. The length of deliber-
ations varied by issue, ranging from five weekends (abortion) to one weekend
(referenda). The deliberations ultimately culminated in voting on one or several
specific recommendations. Voting was conducted via secret ballot and overseen

11
The 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, approved in 1983, guaranteed the right to life of the
unborn, making abortion constitutionally illegal except in cases where there was a life-
threatening risk to the mother. The ICA and subsequent referendum aimed to determine whether
the 8th Amendment should be repealed.
12
Stratiﬁed random sampling was used to recruit the subjects. A market research company, RED C,
was responsible for cold calling door-to-door to recruit ninety-nine subjects and an additional
ninety-nine substitute members (see Farrell et al. 2023).
13
Submissions played a key role in the ICA process. The general public had the opportunity to
share their views on the issue by submitting their perspectives and suggestions, which enriched
the debate. All submissions were published on the ICA website (https://citizensassembly.ie/
submissions/).

by the independent chair, along with the participation of two other assembly
members. The results of the vote were submitted to the Irish Parliament for
further deliberation and policy action.

5.2 Case Selection

The choice of the ICA for this case study is driven by the following reasons.
First, the ICA exemplifies a deliberative institution, with a design that incorp-
orates essential institutional features of a normatively desirable deliberative
process. Additionally, the ICA is a real-world institution with clearly defined
ties to the larger democratic political decision-making processes in Ireland.
Since 2013, citizens’ assemblies have become an integral part of political
decision-making in Ireland. Ireland started this tradition with the
Constitutional Convention (2013–2014),14 followed by the ICA (2016–2018),
Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality (2020–2021), Dublin Citizens’
Assembly (2022), Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (2022), and
Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use (2023) (www.citizensassembly.ie).
The recommendations from the citizens’ assemblies have wielded significant
influence over Irish policy-making. Since the advent of the first Irish delibera-
tive minipublic, six referendums were approved and took place, stemming from
the recommendations by these assemblies. These referendums resulted in
historic constitutional changes on abortion, same-sex marriage, and blasphemy.
Similarly, the ICA recommendations on climate change found their way into the
Irish Government’s Climate Action Plan of June 2019. While not all the
recommendations were embraced, the plan incorporated several ambitious
proposals, including a substantial rise in the carbon tax from 20 to 80 euros
per ton and a notable increase in the proportion of renewables in the energy mix,
targeting a shift from 30 to 70 percent before the year 2030. The assembly on
biodiversity loss recommended a future referendum on the constitutional
amendment concerning biodiversity sometime in the future. A referendum
will determine whether the Irish constitution should be amended to bestow
environmental rights upon nature. Lastly, on the 8th of March 2024, consistent
with the recommendations of the citizens’ assembly on gender equality, two
constitutional referendums concerning the concepts of family and care in the
Irish constitution, took place in Ireland. Both suggested amendments were
rejected by an overwhelming majority of the Irish voters.

14
The convention on the constitution was convened by the Irish government and considered a set of
issues, including same-sex marriage and blasphemy. The convention consisted of 66 randomly
chosen lay citizens, and 29 members of the parliament. This made it different from the subse-
quent citizens’ assemblies whose members were lay people only.

The ICA (2016–2018) garnered signiﬁcant media attention, particularly for

its deliberations on the complex and contentious issue of liberalizing abortion
law. The ICA deliberations on abortion happened “under the glare of publicity”
(Farrell et al. 2023, 55). After five weekends of deliberation (November 2016 to
April 2017), the ICA’s recommendations were submitted to a special Oireachtas
committee. Following further discussions by elected politicians, the committee
recommended and called for a referendum in summer of 2018.
The ICA vote results showed overwhelming support from members to
replace the constitutional article with a new provision decriminalizing and
legalizing abortion and providing abortion on request. Notably, this support
was achieved despite a nontrivial number of participants who initially held
either conservative views or were undecided prior to the deliberative process.
The abortion referendum, with a near-record turnout of 64 percent, resulted in
the removal of the abortion ban. Observers noted that in addition to directly
influencing the call for a referendum and the wording of the referendum
question, the ICA views and recommendations were eventually reflected in
the referendum vote of the Irish voters (Farrell et al. 2023). Sixty-six percent
of the electorate voted to repeal the 8th Amendment, closely matching the
64 percent vote from the ICA members.

5.3 The ICA and Empathy

The ICA members were provided with dedicated time and resources to engage
in in-depth discussions and carefully consider the policy issues under discus-
sion. These deliberations took place in a setting that functioned like a mediated
intergroup environment. The question driving this section is: Which institu-
tional features of the ICA fostered empathic perspective-taking and reﬂection?
To answer this question, I draw on extensive participant observation (Kawulich
2005) and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with eleven ICA members to
gain insights into the process.
Between September 2017 and February 2018, I closely observed the ICA
sessions. It was essential for me to be physically present, acquaint myself with
the ICA, and directly observe the processes shaping the assembly meetings.
I took notes of my observations, documented, and interpreted them to under-
stand the process better. I paid special attention to the behaviors and verbal and
nonverbal expressions of participating individuals. The observation extended to
spaces beyond the formal venues of the assembly, including the hotel lobby,
corridors, and restrooms. I complemented my observation with informal talks
with the members of the organizing committee and the experts who were part of
the process. The goal was to understand the process, discover fresh insights, and

identify recurring patterns in the expressions and behaviors of participating

individuals. Additionally, I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with
eleven members of the ICA (four females and seven males).15 Consistent with
Saunders et al. (2018), I used data saturation as a criterion for discontinuing
interviews.
In the subsequent portion of this section, I outline the main recurring patterns
derived from both interview data and my participant observation. First, the ICA
fostered an environment wherein individuals cultivated emotional bonds, sur-
faced, and ﬂourished both in formal and informal spaces of the ICA. In addition
to being a formal deliberating event bringing together a diverse group of people
to consider complex socio-political issues, the ICA was ﬁrst and foremost
a social event that engaged people’s emotions. Emotional engagement served
as the initial catalyst for members’ cognitive involvement with the information
and with different perspectives. Despite long and hard discussions on divisive
topics, like abortion and climate change, participating individuals managed to
forge friendships across profound political divides.

The process is so engaging, [ . . . ], that you meet people, friends as well, [ . . . ].

One of them [became] a very good friend of mine. I got to meet her on the
fourth day. We sat there, cracking jokes [ . . . ] that broke the ice. [ . . . ] It is
especially the social end of things. To hear what other people are doing in their
lives, the similarities, you know . . . (male, in his 50s)

As illustrated by the following two quotes, the social aspects of the ICA
meetings were crucial for getting to know different others and understand
where they were coming from. Social bonding facilitated the formation of
shared hopes and goals.

[W]hen the meetings are over, you are going to your dinner, and discuss
something else, sport or whatever . . . . Discuss families [ . . . ] It is like
bonding. People feel like they are a part of something. (male, in his late 40s)

[I]f you are going to talk about such difﬁcult things [ . . . ], such intense kind
of discussions, it is important to be able to have a bit of laugh, a bit of
comradery with people. [ . . . ] Especially, when we are seeing each other all
the time. [ . . . ] It is nice to have a bit of laugh with people. [ . . . ] It enlightens
the mood. (female, in her 20s)

Emotional engagement, nurtured within a safe, inclusive, and respectful setting,

laid the groundwork for frank conversations.

[T]he most important thing [ . . . ] is people being respectful. It is just respect

for those different views, that variety of opinions; and I have not come across

15
See Muradova (2020) for more information.

anybody that has been outright disrespectful of other people’s opinions. You
can sit back, listen, and then make your point, knowing that you do not agree
or whatever. But there has never been any kind of backlash, if you will, for
having an opinion that was not the popular opinion at the table [ . . . ].
Everybody feels like it is a safe space for their opinion, even if they know
that it is not going to be popular with the people at the table. (female, in her
20s)

[T]he set-up of the whole thing [ . . . ]. The secretariat set it up in a way that it
makes it easy to talk. There is no fear. You feel conﬁdent talking and
expressing opinions and knowing that [no-one] will take an offense or will
get upset about. I think that the fact that we get information from both sides,
and as I see, non-confrontational manner, so the information given is to use to
listen, to digest and reﬂect upon, and then vote upon it at various stages.
(male, in his late 40s)

I felt very free to express my view without fear of being denigrated or of being
made feel small; it does not matter what point of view you have to make . . . to
feel free to make it [is what counts]. (female, in her early 50s)

Through its design, ICA created three conditions that promoted empathy for the
opposing side. First, it actively motivated empathic engagement. The organizers
consistently encouraged members to stay open to each other’s arguments,
perspectives, and life experiences. The ICA was governed with six key prin-
ciples: openness (including openness to hear from all other members of the
wider society via submissions), fairness (diverse perspectives on every issue to
be heard during deliberations along with the provision of high-quality brieﬁng
materials), equality of voice (everyone has the right to express their views),
efﬁciency (good time management), and respect and collegiality. These prin-
ciples were consistently reinforced in each session, actively encouraged, and
nurtured throughout the meetings.
Second, the presence of diverse opinions and perspectives at the ICA enabled
participants to imagine what the others’ lives looked like, and why they held the
perspectives that they held. Diversity was ensured at different stages during the
ICA processes. First, the topics discussed impacted various segments of Irish
society. Abortion clearly affected the women. Climate change pertained mostly
to the future generations, while the aging population concerned the elderly.
Second, the ICA tried to resemble a microcosm of the Irish society, at least with
regards to age, education, gender, and region, as well as the baseline perspec-
tives they held at the start of the process. Third, one of the characteristics of the
ICA meetings was that the members of each small group would be rotated at
every meeting. The aim was to ensure participants didn’t sit with the same
people, but instead were exposed to a diverse range of individuals and

perspectives. One interviewee, referencing deliberations on Ireland’s aging

population, stated:

[A] lot of the kind of personal stuff were self-generated, within the people
who had already experienced that, you know, dealing with elderly relatives.
[ . . . ] Let us not to forget, because of the population spread within the group,
there was, you know, the number of elderly, yeah, so they [ . . . ] had an
opinion, because a lot directly affects them. [ . . . ] For people who are little bit
younger to have one to one conversation, that, or round table conversation,
was important. (male, in his late 30s)

Third, the ICA, via its design, created and continuously nurtured an environ-
ment where all kinds of arguments were welcomed – both fact-based, rational
information and more emotional expressions, such as personal stories, narra-
tives, testimonies, and humor. In addition to the statistical and factual evidence
presented by experts, the ICA invited witnesses to share their lived experiences.
For example, on the issue of abortion, members heard from women directly
impacted by Ireland’s abortion ban, including rape survivors who had to travel
abroad for the procedure. They also heard from doctors who performed abor-
tions and organizations supporting vulnerable women from disadvantaged
backgrounds. On the issue of climate change, nonexpert speakers shared their
personal experiences in proactively dealing with its challenges. One speaker
had founded a nonproﬁt that connected supermarkets with impoverished citi-
zens, aiming to contribute to tackling both food waste and hunger.
Stories and narratives helped members navigate complex issues. Everyday
language on climate change, especially from nonexpert witnesses, encouraged
individuals to see it as an issue impacting daily life, fostering a deeper, more
personal connection (Muradova et al. 2020). Personal stories and narratives
were especially powerful on moral issues like abortion and elderly care.
Consider the following thoughts from one interviewee:

[O]ther people’s experiences . . . sometimes we sit in these sessions . . . we

may not fully realize that individual experiences at the end of the day is
actually big experiences, you know, you are talking about things that affect
people’s lives, and quite often can change their lives. (female, in her late 50s)

For another member, the interplay between factual evidence and personal
stories was crucial to the deliberative process of abortion:

[T]he ﬁrst few meetings were speciﬁcally about facts, and statistics. [ . . . ]
They [referring to the organizers] wanted to make sure that we understood the
facts surrounding the 8th amendment, around the constitution, around what
currently is happening. [ . . . ] Further along the process, because some of it
was kind of abstract, then became more personal, when we heard personal

stories of some of the women involved. We heard the recordings of them. We

heard from advocacy groups, stuff like this. So that brought personal, more
emotive part from a late date once we had a grounding in proper factual
information. (male, in his late 30s)

Personal stories enhanced individuals’ empathic understanding and concern for

others. This is illustrated by a quote from a young female member discussing the
issues surrounding the aging population.

Personal stories . . . it is the part that gets you in the guts. It is the part you
actually feel something . . . hearing that it is somebody’s story. We heard one
story of an older lady who had been put in a care home, against her will
basically, and you know that was just incredibly sad, no amount of statistics
could give you what actually happens on the ground, what actually happens in
people’s lives. Because you cannot boil down the people to numbers, gener-
ally speaking. (female, in her 20s)

Stories and testimonies brought out compassion and understanding among the
members. Consider the following quotes regarding the deliberations on legaliz-
ing abortion.

[T]hey had people speak via tape recorder about their experience on the
termination [of pregnancy] [ . . . ], and there were six people. [ . . . ] and it
was very powerful. You can never [ . . . ] ignore the lived experience.”
(female, in her late 50s)

“[I]f you take something like the 8th amendment, listening to conversation of
women who already experienced. Their experiences, good or bad, kind of
gives you greater insight of what it is like to walk in that person’s shoes. [ . . . ]
that has emotional impact on how you would vote on the issue. (male, in his
early 40s)

An overwhelming majority of the interviewees reported that their experience

at the ICA made them much more empathetic overall, beyond the conﬁnes
of the assembly meetings. This can be best illustrated by the following
quotes.

[W]hen I am in a discussion in a pub and outside of this, I would be a lot more

tolerant listening to somebody state something that I disagree with. I would
be more . . . I would be looking for more follow-up . . . A little more, a kind of
understanding. (male, in his late 30s)

I’d be a lot of more patient in the face of the opinions that do not necessarily
align themselves with my own. I think, I would be a little bit, [ . . . ] more
respectful and patient with, you know, diverging opinions, than previously.
That is probably been my, personally my biggest takeaway. [ . . . ]I would now
have more than of an ability to do that. In the ﬁrst meeting, if somebody

disagreed with me, I would be little bit more like, ‘how can you think that,
you know, how can you think that?’ Now, I would be like . . . ‘Ok, I do not
agree with you, but ok’ . . . I would have more difﬁcult discussions [now].
(female, in her 20s)

Before I would have . . . been probably under the basis of if somebody had
a conﬂicting view to me, I would go, yea, idiot . . . Now I’m more open-
minded. I have seen people, people that were presenting to us and also fellow
citizens who have conﬂicting views. Everybody is entitled to those views. My
views might, to somebody else, look idiotic or strange. I realize it now. When
I see people, hear people, I kind of go, well, these are your views, you [may]
not know all the facts, fair enough. (male, in his early 30s)

In sum, the institutional characteristics of the ICA motivated and facilitated the
processes of empathy for the other side. Affective engagement of the members
of the ICA was a necessary condition for empathy to be evoked in interpersonal
deliberative settings. Despite its central focus on learning and deliberating,
human emotions and social bonding took a central stage in these processes.
Sharing a friendly and respectful space over an extended period allowed distant
individuals to get to know each other, connect with one another’s lives, and
bond, resulting in greater emotional responsiveness to each other’s perspectives
despite political differences on contentious issues. Emotionally engaged indi-
viduals were more inclined to empathize with the other side. Furthermore, two
institutional characteristics of the assembly were crucial in facilitating the
processes of empathy for the other side: the presence of diversity of perspec-
tives, and the interplay of fact-based rational argumentation and storytelling and
narratives during deliberations.

5.4 The ICA and Reﬂection

My data from the ICA also shows that reflection does not necessarily or
always lead to a significant shift in attitudes and positions. Past research on
the ICA and other assemblies indicated that participation in such institutions
can result in noticeable attitudinal changes. For instance, Farrell and col-
leagues (2023) show that on the issue of abortion, participating at ICA led
to significant opinion transformation toward more liberal positions, in par-
ticular, among those who were undecided. However, the outcome of reflective
thinking is not always an attitude change. Reflection can lead to other equally,
if not more, crucial nuanced outcomes that are difficult to capture through
survey data.
During the interviews, some members noted that although they maintained
their pre-deliberation positions (e.g., on legalizing abortion or climate change),
their attitudes underwent a transformation: they became more informed about

the issues, resulting in stronger positions after discussions and reﬂection. The
following quotes are good illustrations of this reasoning:

I’d say that I stayed pro-choice, but I did swing. I was pro-choice. I was not
a fanatical pro-choice, just pro-choice. It was, then, given all the
information . . . Then, I heard the arguments from the pro-life side, and then
I was . . . ‘they have a point, they have a point, but I still see the reason of
having the choice’. So, I would have been less pro-choice than I was, but I am
still pro-choice. (male, in his early 60s)

[M]y opinion on these topics did not change massively. [ . . . ] It evolved

a little bit [ . . . ]. The most I probably learned was from climate change. I did
not really have an opinion on it, other than I knew [that] the climate change
[was] a problem. I wouldn’t have had any particular opinion on the thing that
needs to be done. [ . . . ] I have learned most on that one. (female, in her 20s)

Contrary psychological processes also emerged. For some, participation at

the ICA led to the moderation of their conservative views on the issue of
abortion:

I would have had a view, but having heard the information that we were
given, my view has softened. I would not say that my view changed radically,
but it became less conservative. [ . . . ] I am not in a position to stand in
a position of judging anybody else in terms of changing the legislation,
changing the constitution. (female, in her early 50s)

Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study was that empathy led some
individuals to vote against their deeply entrenched beliefs on the morally
divisive issue of abortion. This perfectly illustrates how reflection can change
political behavior without first altering beliefs and attitudes. Two quotes at the
outset of this section illustrate this idea. Repeating one such quote:

In the booth, the ballot booth, when I was voting, after all the information we
had heard . . . from the witnesses especially [ . . . ], when I stood in that voting
booth and a woman stood in front of me, and I said, ‘I cannot make a decision
for you’. I would have had views that said, ‘Yes, but under these circum-
stances, and yes, under those’ . . . then I found myself . . . I would still ﬁnd
myself in the conservative end [of the issue] [ . . . ] But I said, I am not going
to be the one to say [ . . . ]: ‘You cannot have it’ . . . (female, in her early 50s)

5.5 The ICA and Partisan Politics

This Element focuses on the microlevel psychological processes underlying
interpersonal deliberation at the ICA. However, understanding the broader
political landscape surrounding the ICA’s establishment is crucial, as it may
have played a role in inﬂuencing the behavior of the ICA members during and

beyond the deliberative process. For example, one might ponder the role of
conventional partisan politics in these processes, questioning whether the ICA
created a nonpartisan environment, and how dynamics within the ICA might
unfold differently in more partisan contexts.
Deliberations of the ICA did not happen in a vacuum and were not divorced from
conventional partisan politics. First, the ICA’s predecessor, the Constitutional
Convention, was established by the coalition government formed after the 2011
election, comprising Fine Gael (a liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic
party) and Labor (a center-left social-democratic party). The ICA was established
in accordance with the program led by a Fine Gael – independent minority govern-
ment. The most recent assemblies were convened under a coalition government of
Fianna Fáil (a conservative, Christian-democratic party), Fine Gael and the Green
Party. Hence, it would be inaccurate to characterize the ICA as an experiment
conducted solely by left-wing politicians. Second, well before the assembly mem-
bers were recruited and the sessions began, the ICA attracted signiﬁcant media
attention, primarily due to the contentious and partisan nature of its initial agenda:
the legalization of abortion. The organization’s formation was sometimes seen as
a sign that Irish politicians were either unable or unwilling to address this sensitive
issue on their own, prompting them to delegate decision-making responsibility to
ordinary citizens (Marlborough 2016). The initiative also faced intense scrutiny
from both pro-choice and pro-life advocates, each with distinct perspectives. Pro-
choice activists called for an immediate referendum on the issue, while pro-life
proponents claimed the ICA was inherently biased, and that its outcome was
predetermined. Even during the deliberations, pro-life activists voiced their dissent
both online and outside the hotel where the discussions were held. Thus, the ICA
emerged within a highly charged partisan context.
Deliberations on abortion happened against the backdrop of a polarized polit-
ical context. However, what the ICA achieved was to help transcend the partisan
divide on the issue of legalizing abortion. My qualitative data shows that the ICA
created and nurtured a safe and neutral space, where individuals were encouraged
to set aside their ideology, partisanship, and their preconceived ideas about the
issue. The institutional characteristics of the ICA that elicited empathy in individ-
uals helped individuals to transcend their partisan attachments and prior beliefs
and engage in more reﬂective political thinking and vote accordingly.

5.6 Discussion and Limitations

In this section, I show how a deliberative institution like the Irish Citizens’
Assembly (2016–2018) can elicit empathy for the other side among participating
individuals, which, in turn, is consequential for their willingness to engage in

reﬂective thinking. My qualitative data showed that institutional characteristics of

the ICA enabled and nurtured a safe space where a diversity of perspectives on
moral (abortion) and nonmoral (climate change) issues were respected and
communicated through diverse communicative tools. The environment engaged
people’s emotions and led to empathy for different others. Empathy served as
a precursor for overcoming preconceived ideas and biases and for engaging in
more reflective political reasoning.
However, this study is not without its shortcomings. The first concerns the
representativeness of the case study. I rely on a single case, which serves as
one example of a larger population of cases. Generalizing the results from
a single deliberative institution presents certain challenges. Therefore, future
research should explore these questions in different countries and institutional
contexts. The second issue concerns the potential self-selection bias in par-
ticipating in deliberative minipublics. It is possible that members of the ICA,
those who chose to participate in this institution, may systematically differ
from the broader Irish population (see Jacquet 2017). However, I currently
lack the data needed to evaluate the validity of this assumption. What is known
about this case is that, even on the sensitive issue of abortion, the ICA brought
together individuals with diverse beliefs and attitudes. As part of the process,
researchers were not allowed to measure the members’ baseline views on
abortion before they started their small-group deliberations. Farrell et al.
(2023) conducted a survey at the beginning of the third deliberative weekend,
which was midway through the deliberation process. This survey included
a question regarding the members’ stance on legalizing abortion. By this point,
members may have already shifted their views after two weekends of deliber-
ation over the span of two months. Nevertheless, the data from Farrell et al.
(2023) provides valuable insights into the members’ positions at this stage of
the process. Their findings indicate that around 41 percent of ICA members
remained undecided about the liberalization of abortion, while 5 percent were
completely opposed, and the remaining members held liberal positions on the
issue. We do not know what proportion of the “undecided” members initially
held conservative views versus liberal ones when the deliberation process
began. Thus, although the overall composition of the ICA was skewed toward
members who already held more liberal positions on abortion, the presence of
individuals with opposing perspectives demonstrates that a range of view-
points was represented in the deliberation. Future research should systematic-
ally investigate this question by examining the individual characteristics of
those who willingly participated in the process and those who chose not to,
focusing particularly on dispositional traits such as empathy and open-minded
thinking.

6 Studies 3 to 5: Interpersonal Deliberation and Reﬂection –

Evidence from Experimental Studies
In Section 5, I examined the real-world and influential deliberative
forum – the Irish Citizens’ Assembly – to demonstrate that, under the
right conditions, a deliberative institution can foster empathy and encour-
age more reflective reasoning among individuals. However, what
Section 5 lacks is empirical evidence establishing a causal relationship
between small-group interpersonal deliberation and increased reflection.
To address this gap, this section presents the findings from three experi-
ments designed to investigate the effect of interpersonal deliberation on
reflection.

6.1 Three Experiments

Study 3 (Belgium) and Study 4 (UK) involve small-group discussions about
legalizing assisted dying, one of the contested moral questions of our times.
The term “assisted dying” typically refers to both physician-assisted suicide
(i.e., doctors prescribing a life-ending medication at a voluntary request of
a seriously ill, but mentally competent patient with an objective of relieving
their suffering) and euthanasia (i.e., administering a life-ending medication at
a voluntary request of a seriously ill, but mentally competent patient with an
objective of relieving their suffering). Public interest and support for legaliz-
ing assisted dying in western democracies have grown substantively over the
years. According to European Social Survey, the majority of surveyed indi-
viduals in twelve European countries (69 percent of individuals in the UK and
86 percent in Belgium)16 believed that euthanasia can be justified (Bottoni
2023). At the time of fielding my experiments (2018/2019), assisted dying was
only legal, under specific legal conditions, in Belgium, Canada, Colombia,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Victoria of Australia, and several
US states.17
Study 5 (Chile and UK) examines the upscaling effects of interpersonal
deliberation, by isolating and causally studying the effect of one important
feature of small-group deliberation – exposure to cross-cutting views – on the
reflectiveness of people’s political judgments. I use a survey experiment to
study this relationship in the context of the universal basic income.

16
The question was measured with a scale that ranges from 0 (never justiﬁed) to 10 (always
justiﬁed). These percentages were calculated by grouping the responses from 6 to 10. Those who
reported “10” constituted 32 percent of the surveyed Belgian and 21 percent of the surveyed UK
citizens.
17
As of today, assisted dying is also legal in all six states of Australia (since 2022), New Zealand
(since 2021), Portugal (since 2023) and Spain (since 2021).

6.2 Study 3: A Quasi-Experiment in Belgium

Design: Study 3 was a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment conducted in Belgium
that involved moderated face-to-face discussions in heterogeneous small groups
(Figure 6). While it is difficult to satisfy all deliberative ideals in designing
small-group deliberation approximating real-world deliberative institutions, the
experiment met the following core design conditions. First, subjects were
exposed to cross-cutting views on the issue. Everyone received balanced infor-
mation on the issue of assisted dying. They were invited to read a one-page
printed article about legalizing assisted dying, which presented the most com-
mon arguments in favor of and against the policy. Moreover, I ensured that each
small group was heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, and policy positions.
Second, discussions were moderated to ensure that all participants had equal
opportunities for discursive engagement. Third, the deliberators collaboratively
established rules to ensure respectful group discussions. Lastly, respondents
were encouraged to share their perspectives and arguments using a variety of
communicative tools, including fact-based arguments, personal stories, and
narratives.
Twelve small groups were formed, with an average of six participants in each
group (ranging from three to nine).
Sample: Participants were university students, recruited via the international
center of a Belgian university. They had diverse educational (e.g., mathematics,
humanities, biology, and economics) and country of origin backgrounds (e.g.,
Turkey, India, Greece, South Africa, and Zimbabwe).18 The rationale for opting
for international (as opposed to local) students was to assure variance and
diversity in baseline issue attitudes.
Ninety-five respondents took part in the Wave 1 (November 2018 to
February 2019), where I measured individuals’ baseline positions on legalizing
assisted dying, together with their socio-demographic characteristics (Mage = 26.3;
SDage = 5.8; range: 18–47; 65 percent self-identified as female). In Wave 2,
respondents were invited to participate in small-group discussions. Seventy-four

Figure 6 Pretest–posttest experimental design

18
In total, there were thirty-seven nationalities in our sample.

participants took part (Mage = 26.6; SDage = 6.4; range: 18–47; 63 percent self-
identified as female19).
Measures: The main outcome variable of interest, reflection, was captured with
cognitive complexity of political reasoning. The variable was a within-subject
change in cognitive complexity (CC) score. The CC was captured with an open-
ended question. At Wave 1, individuals were first questioned about their position on
legalizing assisted dying. They were asked to indicate, on a scale from 0 to 10,
whether they disapproved or approved of legalizing assisted dying in their country
of origin (M = 6.9; SD = 3.1, range: 0–10), preceded by a short explanation of what
assisted dying entails. Furthermore, participants were given the opportunity to
justify their position in four to five sentences through an open-ended question.
This question was repeated after the small-group deliberation, allowing for
a comparison of responses pre- and posttreatment. The qualitative responses
(short essays) were analyzed quantitatively to assess the complexity of their polit-
ical reasoning. The complexity score was standardized for easier interpretation.
I also measured the level of situational empathy experienced by individuals as
a result of small-group deliberation. Both affective and cognitive dimensions of
empathy were captured. As a part of the post-deliberation questionnaire, individuals
were instructed to indicate, on a 7-point scale, the extent to which they experienced
empathic feelings, captured with seven empathy adjectives, including, “compas-
sionate,” “warm,” “empathic,” among others (McCullough et al. 1997). Moreover,
situational perspective-taking was measured with four statements from an adapted
version of Davis (1983): (a) I tried to imagine how I would feel if I were in the place
of people who thought differently than me, (b) I believe there are at least two sides to
the issue of legalizing assisted dying and I tried to look at them both during the
discussion, (c) I found it difficult to see things from the other person’s point of view,
during the discussion (inverse), and (d) One should try to place oneself in the
position of the person who thinks differently on the issue of legalization of assisted
dying. Two indices were created and were further rescaled (0–1).
Results: To test whether interpersonal deliberation induces more reflective
political reasoning in individuals, I examine within-subject change in cognitive
complexity by running paired t-tests comparing (standardized) pre- and post-
cognitive complexity scores (Table 3). The results show that respondents’ mean
cognitive complexity score increased post-discussions (Mpre = 0.04; SDpre = 0.96;
Mpost = 0.47, SDpost = 0.53, two-tailed p < 0.00). The effect is large and substantive,
equaling to nearly half a standard deviation (0.43 SD). Engaging in small-group

19
The drop-out rate was primarily due to individuals leaving Belgium at the end of their exchange
programs or because the proposed dates and times for the group discussions did not ﬁt their
schedules. Post-hoc analyses indicate that dropout was not systematic with respect to socio-
demographic factors or attitudes toward legalizing assisted dying.

Table 3 Effect of small-group deliberation

Mean SD Range
Pretreatment CC score 0.04 0.95 –4.23 to 2.49
Posttreatment CC score 0.47 0.53 –0.71 to 2.18

discussions with diverse participants on the issue of legalizing assisted dying

enhanced the reﬂectiveness of the participants’ political reasoning.20
We proceed to examine the distribution of affective and cognitive empathy
that individuals experienced as a result of small-group deliberation. Our design
lacks both a control condition and a pretreatment measure for situational
empathy. Therefore, the results reported here are descriptive, rather than causal.
Figure 7 shows that the distribution of empathy in both cases is skewed to the
right. On a scale from 0 to 1, the mean situational cognitive empathy is M = 0.62
(SD = 0.26), a bit more than the experienced affective empathy (M = 0.55, SD =
0.22). The majority of respondents indicated that they tended to empathize with
those who held opposing views on the issue and experienced feelings of
empathic concern during small-group deliberation.

6.3 Study 4: A Laboratory Experiment in the UK

Design: The subsequent study is a laboratory experiment conducted in a mid-
sized university city in the UK. The primary treatment involves small-group
deliberation on the issue of legalizing assisted dying. Similar to Study 3, this
study also consists of two waves. A larger pool of subjects was recruited during
the ﬁrst stage. In Wave 2, participants were randomly assigned to one of three
experimental conditions – control group, information group, or deliberation
group – using the Z-tree program. The washout period between Wave 1 and
Wave 2 ranged from 8 to 23 days (see Figure 8).
Those who were randomly assigned to the information group were invited to
the lab to complete a survey. After reading the instructions and signing the
informed consent form, participants took a short survey. Initially, they were
asked to read an article about legalizing assisted dying in the UK, which
presented four arguments in favor and four against the policy, commonly

20
Although it is not the primary focus of my studies, I also examined potential attitude changes
regarding the legalization of assisted dying following the discussions. The results of a paired t-test
comparing pre- and post-discussion attitudes among participants in both Wave 1 and Wave 2
revealed no statistically signiﬁcant within-subject attitude transformation (Mpre = 7, SDpre = 3.05;
Mpost = 7.07, SDpost = 3.26; range: 0–10; two-tailed p < 0.78).

Figure 8 Study 4 design

found in media discussions. Following the reading, they were instructed to

answer questions measuring the variables of interest. The purpose of designing
this condition was to disentangle the effects of mere informational exposure
from those of small-group deliberation.
Subjects who were randomly assigned to the deliberation group were invited
to take part in a small-group discussion. To ensure that information provision
remained constant, participants were ﬁrst instructed to read a brief text about
legalizing assisted dying in the UK, identical to the one given to the subjects in
the information group. They were then directed to the seminar room, where they
participated in a group discussion facilitated by a moderator. Each discussion
group comprised eight to twelve participants, and the discussions lasted
between 45 and 70 minutes. The design of the small-group deliberations
included several key conditions: the provision of balanced information, the
presence of a facilitator, establishing deliberative rules for discussions, encour-
agement to utilize various communicative tools, and exposure to diverse per-
spectives. Finally, those randomly assigned to the control condition received
a short survey to complete.
Sample: For the Wave 1 survey, the subjects (N = 600) were 55 percent
students and 45 percent nonstudents, recruited using a social sciences laboratory
of a UK university. Among these participants, 68 percent were female, with
55 percent falling within the age group of 18 to 26, and 32 percent holding at
least an undergraduate degree or equivalent (with approximately 0.5 percent
having no formal qualiﬁcations). This sample was notably more diverse than the
Belgian sample.
A total of 127 subjects participated at Wave 2: N = 37 in the deliberation,
N = 59 in the placebo and N = 31 in the control conditions. Sixty participants were
invited to take part in the experiment for both the information and deliberation
groups. However, there were dropouts, particularly in the deliberation condition.

Post-hoc analyses indicated that the attrition was not systematic with respect to
socio-demographic variables or baseline attitudes toward assisted dying. The
dropouts were primarily due to heavy snowfall on the day of the discussions
and the potentially demanding nature of the deliberations. The smaller sample
size for the control condition was intentional, reflecting the relatively low interest
in that group.
Measure: To capture reflection, in this study, I use Weinmann’s (2018)
psychometric self-reported measure for the concept of “deliberation within.”
The battery is designed to assess the cognitive information processing steps
involved in reflective political reasoning, as predicted by the normative ideals of
deliberative democracy. Respondents are asked to self-report on a 7-point scale,
where “1” means “strongly disagree” and “7” means “strongly agree,” how each
of five items, (a) reassessing the biases favoring or opposing different argu-
ments, (b) taking responsibility for making up one’s own mind about the topic,
after having heard the arguments of others; (c) simulating several opinions
about the topic, (d) thinking about the arguments for and against ones’ own as
well as others’ opinion, and (e) evaluating the arguments that speak for and
against own as well as others’ opinions, describe the development of thought
processes during and after either having deliberated in a group (deliberation
condition), read the text (information condition), or forming their opinion
(control condition). The results of the factor analyses indicated that the first
two items did not load effectively onto a single deliberation within variable.
Consequently, a summary index was created from the remaining three items
(alpha = 0.75; M = 16; SD = 3; range: 6–21) and was subsequently standardized
using the control group’s mean and standard deviation.21
Results: Table 4 reports the means and standard deviations of reflective
political thinking across three experimental conditions.

Table 4 Reﬂective political reasoning

Mean SD N
Control 0.00 1.00 31
Information 0.50 0.69 58
Deliberation 0.59 0.95 37

21
This experiment was also reported in Muradova (2020). Yet the analytical strategy in Muradova
(2020) differed from the current strategy along two dimensions. First, in Muradova (2020),
despite a low Cronbach’s alpha, an index of all ﬁve items was created. Second, in the original
study, the outcome variable was standardized by sample mean and standard deviation. For
experimental studies, the common practice is to standardize it by control mean and SD, which
I adopt here.

The results of the difference-in-means t-tests indicate that both small-group

deliberation and information provision have a statistically significant effect on
individuals’ tendency to engage in reflective political reasoning compared to the
control condition. The effect size for information provision is equivalent to half
a SD, while small-group deliberation yields an effect size of slightly more than
half a SD, at two-tailed significance levels of p < 0.01 and p < 0.02 respectively.
Having been exposed to cross-cutting arguments and views on legalizing
assisted dying either by reading information or deliberating about it in small
groups increases the reflectiveness of people’s political reasoning on the issue.
As the table shows, the mean reflection is larger in the deliberation group (0.09
SD greater, compared to the information condition). Yet, this effect is not
statistically significant at conventional significance levels, potentially due to
the sample size.

6.4 Study 5: A Survey Experiment in Chile and the UK

Design: Study 5 investigates the scalability of the reflection-inducing effects of
deliberation on a larger public. At the core of deliberative institutions is expos-
ure to cross-cutting views (Mutz 2002). This study is designed to isolate this
component of deliberation and assess whether exposure to cross-cutting per-
spectives, in the absence of the affective and discursive elements of small-group
deliberation, can similarly promote reflection and influence individuals’ polit-
ical attitude formation.
I conducted an online survey experiment where participants were exposed to
either a conflicting perspective (disagreement condition) or an aligned perspec-
tive (agreement condition) on the issue of universal basic income. The treatment
consisted of a vignette featuring a hypothetical couple, outlining their views on
UBI and presenting arguments either for or against the introduction of the UBI
scheme in the UK or Chile.
Sample: The experiment was a part of a larger study by Nuffield College
Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE) and was fielded in the spring
of 2019 (UK) and winter of 2020 (Chile) in two online subject pools of the
Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) of the University of Oxford.
Both the UK sample (N = 215) and the Chile sample (N = 208) are descriptively
diverse, but non-probability samples.
Measure: Similar to Study 3 (Belgium), I operationalize reflection with the
cognitive complexity of political thinking, which concerns the degree to which
a text conveys multidimensional as opposed to unidimensional reasoning.
Individuals were first asked about their views on four different policy issues,
in the form of a battery: legalizing assisted dying, investment in mental health

services, introducing a universal basic income scheme, and obligatory military

service (the latter was replaced by the issue of “reforming the pension system”
for Chilean sample). The order of policy issues was randomized. Individual
attitudes on universal basic income scheme (Muk = 4.33; SDuk = 1.66; Mchile =
4.05; SDchile = 1.8; response scale: 1“strongly” – 6“strongly favor”) were
measured with a one-item tapping in respondents’ approval of the scheme and
proceeded by a short description of the scheme (adapted from ESS 2016). This
was measured twice: pre- and post-treatment. Individuals were further asked
to provide justification for their choice on introducing a basic income scheme.
The exact question was as follows: “You indicated that you ${D_1/
ChoiceGroup/SelectedAnswers/3}22 introducing a basic income scheme in the
UK/Chile. Why do you think so? Please justify your choice in one paragraph.”
Their essays were further coded for cognitive complexity score (standardized
M = 0; SD = 1; range –1.8 to 2.5).
Results: The results of a manipulation test show that political disagreement
was manipulated successfully in both UK and Chilean samples (MagreeUK =
0.02, MdisagreeUK = 0.95; p < 0.00; MagreeChile = 0.11; MdisagreeChile = 0.87; p <
0.00). I estimate the effect of exposure to cross-cutting views on reflective
political reasoning with simple difference-in-means t-tests. Table 5 lists the
mean and standard deviations of reflective thinking in each condition by
country.
As the findings show, I cannot reject the null hypothesis that the effect of
political disagreement on cognitive complexity is different from zero.
Exposure to cross-cutting views per se exerts a null effect on the reflectiveness
of people’s political judgments, in both Chilean and UK samples. Although

Table 5 Reﬂective political reasoning

Mean SD N
UK
Placebo 0.00 1.00 106
Treatment (cross-cutting) −0.09 1.22 109
Chile
Placebo 0.00 1.00 104
Treatment (cross-cutting) 0.05 1.12 104

22
Their chosen response was generated by a piped text function of the Qualtrics.

exposure to cross-cutting views appears to decrease cognitive complexity

scores on average in the UK and increase them in Chile, neither effect is
statistically signiﬁcant. This provides an additional suggestive empirical
support for the idea that the reﬂection-inducing potential of interpersonal
deliberation may depend on its other, more affective dimensions.

6.5 Discussion
Study 3 (Belgium) shows that discussing legalizing assisted dying in small
groups has a within-subject positive effect on the reflectiveness of individuals’
political thinking. In a similar vein, Study 4 (UK) demonstrates that small-group
deliberation can enhance reflective political thinking. However, exposure to
information about the issue, along with a balanced presentation of arguments,
can also have similarly positive effects. Although the effect of deliberation is
greater than that of the information effect, the difference between these two
effects is not statistically significant. This may be due to the smaller size of the
sample. In Study 5 (UK and Chile), I isolate one element of small-group
deliberation – exposure to cross-cutting view – and study its direct effect on
the reflectiveness of people’s political judgments and find that it exerts a null
effect. To sum up, the first two studies show the potential of deliberation and
balanced information provision to enhance the reflectiveness of people’s polit-
ical judgments. The last study demonstrates that mere exposure to an opposing
perspective on the issue of universal basic income fails to influence political
thinking.
It is challenging to approximate the small-group deliberation designed at lab
settings or online to that of the real-world deliberative institutions. While the
presence of diverse perspectives is crucial for fostering high-quality interper-
sonal deliberation, individuals in laboratory settings often lack sufficient time to
form meaningful connections, engage in empathetic reflections, and build
rapport. This absence of a nurturing environment may inhibit their ability to
transcend biased political thinking, making it difficult for them to incorporate
and integrate opposing viewpoints into their reasoning. Without the opportunity
for these essential social interactions, the potential for deeper understanding
and more comprehensive deliberation may be significantly diminished.
Experiments with interpersonal deliberation of longer duration have been
demonstrated to yield more robust positive democratic outcomes (e.g.,
Fishkin et al. 2021; Grönlund et al. 2015). Future research should take this
into account in designing laboratory experiments approximating participation in
a deliberative institution.

7 Discussion and Conclusion

7.1 Contributions
This Element makes three main contributions to the relevant literatures. First, it
contributes to the long-standing academic debate about the nature of desirable
political attitudes. I show that one way of evaluating the quality of citizens’
political reasoning is to capture its reflectiveness – the extent to which people
actively consider and integrate diverse and opposing perspectives in their
thinking processes when forming their political beliefs. Understanding
reflection and the institutional and noninstitutional ways via which it can be
encouraged and nurtured has implications for the quality and resilience of
democracies. Reflection has been shown to promote democratic accountability,
by alleviating affective polarization, and partisan-motivated political attitudes
(Arceneaux and Vander Wielen 2017; Brader and Tucker 2018) and leading to
higher-quality political decisions (Fournier et al. 2011; Luskin et al. 2002).
Engaging in reflection on political issues – regardless of persuasion – can
motivate individuals to grasp the underlying rationales of policy decisions and
to appreciate the perspectives of those who support them, even when those
views oppose their own. As such, reflection can alleviate political conflict when
individuals would gain less out of a policy decision. Furthermore, the habit of
reflecting before forming political attitudes can make citizens more open and
tolerant to opposing perspectives in the future, with beneficial implications for
outgroup hostility and biases. Rather than outright dismissing the arguments
presented by our political opponents, we can cultivate a greater inclination to
pause and reflect on their viewpoints before assessing their persuasiveness. In
a context where populist and right-wing politicians are making increasingly
compelling appeals worldwide, it becomes normatively essential for citizens to
be motivated to reflect on diverse and opposing perspectives instead of merely
succumbing to them.
My contribution about reflection is also methodological. A significant portion
of the political science literature on public opinion has concentrated on attitude
transformation, the acquisition of factual knowledge, and information-seeking
behaviors as key indicators of “good political decisions.” (see also Druckman
2014). While it is much easier to measure them empirically, they fall short of
capturing the cognitive steps individuals take to contemplate and integrate
diverse and opposing perspectives in their thinking processes. Although not
a perfect proxy for reflective thinking, cognitive complexity of thinking can be
an interesting way of indirectly capturing the quality of people’s judgments (see
also Colombo 2018).

Second, I show that situational empathy for the other side can engender more
reflective thinking. While the potential of empathy for other political outcomes,
such as intergroup prejudice, altruism, affective polarization, intergroup sup-
port, and political ambition, has been studied, this Element theorizes and tests
the role of situational empathy in encouraging individuals to go beyond their
biased political reasoning and engage in reflection. My findings show that
empathy for the other side is a powerful emotion that can promote political
reflection. These findings have important implications for the literature on AIT
(Marcus 2010; Marcus et al. 2000). This Element challenges the previously held
belief that only negative emotions engender reflective political judgments.
I demonstrate that, in the context of political disagreement, empathy can help
individuals move beyond simply dismissing opposing views and engage in
thoughtful reflection. Elsewhere, in the context of correcting misperceptions
about climate change, I find the magnitude of the positive effect of empathy on
people’s accurate political judgments to be comparable to that of anxiety
(Muradova, Michalaki, and Tsakiris 2024). Both emotions enhance people’s
willingness to correct their misperceptions. This highlights the critical role of
empathy as an important emotion in understanding reflective political thinking.
This Element departs from previous studies that focus on the dark side of
empathy (Bloom 2017; Simas et al. 2020). In contrast to these studies, this
Element focuses on situational empathy instead of dispositional empathy. I build
on the premise that social contexts can either activate or depress people’s empathic
reactions, with certain environments exerting a strong influence on individuals’
inclination to empathize with others (Cheng et al. 2017). Research shows that the
activation of individuals’ empathy depends on various factors, including the nature
of interpersonal relationships and the motivations of the empathizer (Stüber 2019).
Moreover, in the existing political science literature, dispositional empathy is
typically measured through self-reported responses to a series of items. However,
prior research indicates that individuals often lack accurate meta-knowledge about
their own empathic abilities, making dispositional measures likely to be poor
predictors of actual empathic accuracy (Ickes 1993, 603; Ickes 2003). Third,
studies asserting that empathy negatively impacts important democratic outcomes,
such as political polarization, primarily concentrate on one dimension of empathy
(i.e., empathic concern). In fact, Simas et al. (2020) finds that the cognitive
dimension of dispositional empathy (i.e., perspective-taking) does not contribute
to increased political polarization. I demonstrate that empathy for the other side,
encompassing both affective and cognitive dimensions, fosters greater (not lesser)
reflective political thinking in individuals.
Third, I argue that when designed properly, deliberative institutions, such as
citizens’ assemblies, can cultivate an environment conducive to eliciting empathy

for the other side. I marshal a set of original qualitative, and experimental data to
test the plausibility of this theoretical idea. First, I rely on a real-world and
influential institution, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016–2018). My qualitative
data shows that citizens’ assemblies have the potential to nurture political envir-
onments where people spend time with different others, leading to the develop-
ment of affective bonds and mutual trust among participants. In these processes,
the presence of diversity of viewpoints and arguments is important.
Affective engagement encourages individuals to be more receptive to new
information and diverse, opposing perspectives, whether conveyed through
factual arguments or personal stories and testimonies, ultimately enhancing
their empathy toward others. It is the empathy for other side that motivates
individuals to engage in more demanding processes of reflection. My focus on
deliberative institutions here is distinct from prior work investigating reflection-
enhancing potential of interpersonal deliberation. An overwhelming majority of
prior studies have mostly focused on the cognitive causal mechanisms – such as
knowledge acquisition and persuasion through the Habermasian force of the
better argument – underpinning small-group discussion and their potentially
beneficial outcomes.23 Deliberative democrats have usually emphasized the
reason-giving and learning aspects of interpersonal deliberation in these pro-
cesses. This Element focuses on an affective mechanism. Learning, and delib-
erating are intertwined with deliberative institution’s capacity to create
emotional bonding and empathetic engagement both during and beyond small-
group discussions. My hope is that the theoretical argument presented in this
Element can serve as an inspiration for deliberation scholars to develop their
own testable and generalizable theories about the role of affect in deliberation.
Furthermore, I substantiate my argument about the relationship between
interpersonal deliberation and reflective political reasoning with laboratory,
and quasi-experiments. The findings relate to several different strands of
research investigating the effects of political disagreement and small-group
deliberation on individuals’ political opinion formation and intergroup rela-
tions. First, the results with regards to the reflection-enhancing potential of
interpersonal deliberation are consistent with recent experiments on deliber-
ation. For example, Fishkin and colleagues (2021) employ a field experiment –
America in One Room – to investigate the effect of participating in
a deliberative forum on political polarization among Republicans and
Democrats. Their findings reveal that interpersonal deliberation not only trans-
forms individuals’ policy attitudes but also reduces affective polarization.

23
But see Lindell et al. (2017) and Saam (2018) for different perspectives.

Second, in the context of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly, I find that one of the
necessary design features of a deliberative institution for its empathy-inducing
potential is the presence of diversity of perspectives. This finding relates to the
argument in political science and communication that cross-cutting political
conversations can enhance the quality of people’s political judgments
(Huckfeldt et al. 2004; Mutz 2002; but see Wojcieszak and Price 2010). In the
context of discussions about energy and health care policies in the US, Samara
Klar (2014) finds that heterogenous small-group discussions can exert a positive
effect on individuals’ political opinion formation by alleviating partisan-
motivated reasoning, while homogenous group discussions tend to have
a polarizing effect.
The findings of this Element give suggestive evidence that an affective causal
mechanism (feeling empathy for the other side) may be responsible for positive
relationship between cross-cutting political conversations and reflection. This
Element also broadens the empirical scope of this strand of literature by moving
beyond the predominantly studied country contexts, such as the US, to include
data from four different countries – Belgium, Chile, Ireland, and the UK.
The findings of this Element can also help practitioners of deliberative
minipublics design forums that enhance participants’ reflective potential.
Ensuring that empathy-sparking institutional features of deliberative minipub-
lics (e.g., affective engagement, presence of diversity of perspectives, instruc-
tions that encourage active imagination) are present when organizing such
institution can enhance the process of reflective political attitude formation
among participants in democratic innovation institutions.

7.2 Limitations and Future Research

I readily admit that more research needs to be done to make a stronger case for
the relationship between situational empathy and reflection, as well as delibera-
tive institutions, empathy, and reflective political thinking. For instance, critics
may wonder whether empathy would function differently in highly partisan
contexts. As I showed (with qualitative data) in the case of the ICA deliberations
on highly divisive and partisan issue of abortion, empathy has potential to
bridge the partisan divide and encourage more considered political judgments.
However, none of my experimental studies incorporate or manipulate partisan
context in their design. In Study 1, I don’t prime the partisanship of the target of
empathy. In the experiments involving small-group deliberation (Studies 3
and 4), individuals’ party affiliations are not made salient. Future research
should examine the relationship between empathy, partisanship, and reflection
with different study designs. Alternatively, could deemphasizing partisanship in

political interactions be a way to encourage empathy and reﬂective political

thinking in individuals?
This Element is not arguing that empathy is a panacea for politics. Empathy can
be biased, costly, and cognitively demanding, particularly when directed toward
strangers (Cameron et al. 2019). Under certain conditions, it may lead to in-group
favoritism, and enhanced stereotyping, and it can also be a risk factor for psycho-
pathic and manipulative tendencies among citizens (Ferguson 2016). Although
most of these theorized negative outcomes of empathy pertain to trait-level
dispositional empathy (rather than situational empathy), I believe future research
should explore which social contexts exacerbate and which alleviate the potential
dark side of empathy in political disagreement and conﬂict.
Other interesting questions remain to be answered. What happens when we
are motivated to empathize with someone who holds undemocratic political
beliefs and policy preferences? Or what if the opposing perspective someone is
trying to consider is factually inaccurate? For example, what if we are motivated
to empathize with a person holding strong misperceptions about the anthropo-
genic cause of the climate change? According to my theory’s predictions, this
may lead individuals to contemplate opposing perspectives, but it won’t neces-
sarily result in a transformation of their existing beliefs. Future research could
experimentally manipulate the source and nature of opposing perspectives to
explore these and other relevant questions.
Moreover, how durable are the reﬂection-inducing effects of empathy and
deliberative forums? Are these effects short-lived or do they persist? The
studies presented in this Element do not study the long-term effects of
empathy and deliberative forums on people’s political judgments. Another
important avenue is to examine whether individual characteristics, such as
dispositional empathy, moderate the effect of empathy and deliberative insti-
tutions on people’s political opinion formation (see, for instance, Clifford
et al. 2019).

7.3 Scaling Up Interpersonal Deliberation?

If deliberative processes can effectively bridge political divides and make
people more empathetic and reﬂective in their political opinion formation,
how can we extend such effects to a larger group of citizens? Some scholars
have been advocating for institutionalizing deliberative processes (Setälä
2017). There are different ideas among the scholars and practitioners alike.
Some advocate for radical changes, such as replacing conventional political
institutions with citizens-centered deliberative forums (Landemore 2020),
while others propose introducing new legislatures, like replacing the second

chamber of parliaments with citizen-centered institutions (Gastil and Wright

2019; van Reybrouck 2016).
A guide by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
proposes eight different ways of including representative public deliberation in
political decision-making processes (Chwalisz 2021). One of these ideas has
already been implemented in practice: the Permanenter Bürgerdialog (PBD)
(2019), a permanent citizens’ assembly established in Ostbelgien, the German-
speaking federal entity of Belgium. The PBD consists of randomly selected
citizens who discuss the issues on the agenda of the parliament and work in
collaboration with the parliament to implement them into public policy (Macq
and Jacquet 2023).
While deliberative institutions can undoubtedly contribute to democratic
processes, they are by no means a cure-all for the myriad challenges facing
contemporary democracies. When organized inadequately, such institutions
may have pernicious effects. One pattern that emerged from my ICA qualitative
data suggests that when there is a lack of a clear link with the political decision-
making, engagement in these processes may lead to frustration among partici-
pants, and the institution’s credibility may be jeopardized (e.g., Germann et al.
2024; see also Muradova and Suiter 2022). The French Citizens’ Convention
for Climate,24 an influential citizens’ assembly provides an interesting illustra-
tive case for it. Only 10 percent of its recommendations were taken up by the
French government with no modification, with the rest either being rejected
(53 percent) or modified (37 percent) (Courant 2021). The French president’s
backtracking on honoring the convention’s recommendations led to disappoint-
ments and a loss of political trust among participants (Courant 2021; Trian
2021). Hence, before embarking on ambitious endeavors with regards to organ-
izing deliberative minipublics, we must first garner a more comprehensive
understanding of the effects of these institutions through additional and more
systematic research.
Furthermore, it is also practically challenging to involve all citizenry in small-
group deliberations in large-scale societies. Some of my findings (i.e., Study 4)
show that under some conditions, provision of balanced information (both pro
and con arguments on the issue of legalizing assisted dying) can similarly
contribute to reflectiveness of people’s political judgments. Elsewhere, we find
that when members of the wider public – those not participating in interpersonal
deliberation – are exposed to statements for and against a policy issue emanating
from a deliberative minipublic, such as during the referendum on blasphemy in

24
The Convention was established following the “yellow vest movement” sweeping France in
2018 and lasted between October 2019 to June 2020.

Ireland, they report feeling more empathy for the opposing side (Suiter et al.
2020). To the extent that this way of providing information about the issue can
work well across different country and issue contexts, it could be a cost-effective
strategy for eliciting empathy for the other side in individuals.

7.4 Concluding Remarks

If we hope to meet the moral test of our times, we’re going to have to talk more
about the empathy deﬁcit, the ability to see ourselves when we choose to empathize
with the plight of others. It is time for a sense of empathy to infuse our politics in
America.
Barack Obama, December 04, 2006

[ . . . ] be really driven by empathy. [ . . . ] When you think about all the big
challenges that we face in the world. . . . We need our leaders to be able to
empathize with the circumstances of others . . . to empathize with the next gener-
ation that we’re making decisions on behalf of.
Jacinda Ardern, for Guardian, May 30, 2020

This Element is an attempt to advance our understanding of the emotional and

institutional ways of motivating more reflective political reasoning. Arguably,
its main lesson is that citizens are not inherently biased; given the right
opportunity and motivation, they are willing to transcend their biases and
make more considerate political choices. The current democratic institutions
may create little motivation for citizens to engage in reflective political reason-
ing. The lack of adequate structures and motivations, however, is not indicative
of inherent deficiency in individuals’ ability to reflect (Groenendyk and
Krupnikov 2021).
Empathy has been championed by scholars across different disciplines and
by prominent political figures, as illustrated by quotes from former U.S.
President Barack Obama and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern at the beginning of this section. Research shows that empathy is
a motivated response; under the right conditions, most people are capable of
empathizing with diverse others (Zaki 2018). This Element argues that empathy
for the other side can foster normatively desirable democratic outcomes, such as
reflective political thinking. In an increasingly polarized world, empathy for the
other can promote respectful and other-regarding political interactions and
political reasoning. If different environments and institutions can be designed
in a way that potential bias in empathy can be minimized or overcome,
motivating us to actively exercise our empathetic capacities, why not aspire to
attain this goal in our societies? As spaces for political bonding, and conversa-
tion, minipublics can provide institutional processes for eliciting political
empathy for the other side, with implications for the quality of political

judgments. Yet, how would we transfer the empathy-inducing beneﬁts of

interpersonal deliberation into institutions which are not predefined as delibera-
tive? I believe the scholars of institutional design should explore the ways via
which empathy can be institutionalized within existing conventional political
institutions. Crawford (2014) argues for the institutionalization of empathy in
world politics via empathetic diplomacy, and cultural interactions. Jennings and
colleagues (2019, 509) see museums as organizations that should possess
institutional empathy, which they define as “building awareness of and holding
space for the deep-seated needs and experiences of their surrounding
communities.”
Cultivating a sense of community, a habit of political conversation among
citizens, and creating opportunities for everyday talk between diverse others
could be a way of nurturing empathy for the other side and promoting reflective
thinking among individuals. Civil society can play an important role in such
initiatives.
The increasing appeal of extreme right-wing parties and candidates, coupled
with nascent populism, and the pervasive spread of mis- and disinformation
around the world accentuate the imperative to study whether societies and
institutions can be organized to provide citizens with opportunities and motiv-
ation to make more reflective political decisions. This Element represents one
such attempt.

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of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009643573
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This Element is dedicated to my empathetic, smart, and funny

teenager for the kisses and laughter.

Elizabeth Suhay
American University, Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth Suhay is Associate Professor of Government in the School of Public Aﬀairs at
American University, Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on political psychology and
political communication, with particular interests in the politics of inequality and the
politicization of knowledge. Her research has been published in political science,
psychology, and interdisciplinary journals, and she has co-edited three edited volumes.
Suhay will be Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Political Psychology beginning in 2025.

About the Series

Most political events and outcomes are the results of people’s decisions. This series
delves into the psychology behind these decisions to understand contemporary
politics. The publications in the series explain real-world political events by using
psychology to understand people’s motivations, beliefs and, ultimately, behaviors.

Elements in the Series

In Defense of Ideology: Reexamining the Role of Ideology
in the American Electorate
Elizabeth N. Simas
Issue Publics: How Electoral Constituencies Hide in Plain Sight
Timothy J. Ryan and J Andrew Ehlinger
Stronger Issues, Weaker Predispositions: Abortion, Gay Rights, and
Authoritarianism
Paul Goren
Empathy and Political Reasoning: How Empathy Promotes Reﬂection and
Strengthens Democracy
Lala Muradova

A full series listing is available at: www.cambridge.org/EPPS

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Empathy and Political Reasoning

Uploaded by

Empathy and Political Reasoning

Uploaded by

Muradova

How do individuals make up their mind about politics? This

Empathy and Political Reasoning

About the Series

Cover image: Mina De La O / Stone /

EMPATHY AND POLITICAL

How Empathy Promotes Reﬂection

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

How Empathy Promotes Reﬂection and Strengthens

Elements in Political Psychology

Abstract: How do individuals make up their mind about politics? This

Keywords: political reasoning, political polarization, empathy, deliberation,

© Lala Muradova 2025

2 Theory: Empathy, Deliberative Institutions, and Reﬂection 5

3 Measurement and Empirical Strategy 14

4 Study 1: Empathy for the Other Side and Policy Attitudes

5 Study 2: Political Institutions that Elicit Empathy for

6 Studies 3 to 5: Interpersonal Deliberation

7 Discussion and Conclusion 46

argument about the “insurmountable” divide may be overly simplistic, as

side enhances the reﬂectiveness of political judgments by motivating individ-

a political disagreement on the issue of introducing universal basic income and

2 Theory: Empathy, Deliberative Institutions, and Reﬂection

2.2 Empathy for the Other Side Engenders More Reﬂective

Third, empathy requires an activation of people’s affective empathic reac-

Figure 1 Schematic representation of the hypotheses

organizations worldwide have been on the rise. Citizens’ assemblies (herein-

face-to-face discussions in such settings inspire individuals to “identify with one

whether deliberation is “enclave” (deliberation with like-minded people) or

3 Measurement and Empirical Strategy

of thinking, a widely used construct by social and political psychologists

3.2 Measurement of Empathy

3.3 Research Methods

Table 1 List of empirical studies that test the theory

4 Study 1: Empathy for the Other Side and Policy Attitudes

4.1 Issue Context

4.2 Study Design

Figure 2 Experimental design.

I also measured the extent of affective empathy – feelings of empathic

Figure 3 Baseline support for UBI

Figure 4 Affective empathy elicited by the writing assignment

the placebo condition (M = 0.31; SD = 0.23). In standardized terms, the effect is

Table 2 Mean (standardized) cognitive

Control 0.00 (0.04)

Figure 5 The effect of empathy on reﬂective political thinking

Finally, I explore whether the effect of empathy translates into signiﬁcant

5 Study 2: Political Institutions that Elicit

To understand the potential of a deliberative institution to elicit empathy for the

5.1 Description of the ICA

with considering ﬁve high-priority socio-political issues: legalizing abortion,

5.2 Case Selection

The ICA (2016–2018) garnered signiﬁcant media attention, particularly for

5.3 The ICA and Empathy

identify recurring patterns in the expressions and behaviors of participating

The process is so engaging, [ . . . ], that you meet people, friends as well, [ . . . ].

Emotional engagement, nurtured within a safe, inclusive, and respectful setting,

[T]he most important thing [ . . . ] is people being respectful. It is just respect

perspectives. One interviewee, referencing deliberations on Ireland’s aging

[O]ther people’s experiences . . . sometimes we sit in these sessions . . . we

stories of some of the women involved. We heard the recordings of them. We

Personal stories enhanced individuals’ empathic understanding and concern for

An overwhelming majority of the interviewees reported that their experience

[W]hen I am in a discussion in a pub and outside of this, I would be a lot more

5.4 The ICA and Reﬂection

[M]y opinion on these topics did not change massively. [ . . . ] It evolved

Contrary psychological processes also emerged. For some, participation at

5.5 The ICA and Partisan Politics

5.6 Discussion and Limitations

reﬂective thinking. My qualitative data showed that institutional characteristics of

6 Studies 3 to 5: Interpersonal Deliberation and Reﬂection –

6.1 Three Experiments

6.2 Study 3: A Quasi-Experiment in Belgium

Figure 6 Pretest–posttest experimental design

Table 3 Effect of small-group deliberation

discussions with diverse participants on the issue of legalizing assisted dying

6.3 Study 4: A Laboratory Experiment in the UK

Cover image: Mina De La O / Stone /