What happened on deliberation day?

California Law Review

Volumn 95, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 915-940

  Schkade, David ^a   Sunstein, Cass R ^b   Hastie, Reid ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548629694     PISSN: 00081221     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (123)

1. See JOSEPH M. BESSETTE, THE MILD VOICE OF REASON (1994).
2. See JÜRGEN HABERMAS, BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS (1996) (elaborating deliberative conception of democracy);
3. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY (Jon Elster ed., 1998) (collecting diverse treatments of deliberative democracy);
4. AMY GUTMANN & DENNIS THOMPSON, DEMOCRACY AND DISAGREEMENT (1996) (defending deliberative democracy and discussing its preconditions).
5. See BRUCE ACKERMAN & JAMES S. FISHKIN, DELIBERATION DAY (2004).
6. See DIANA C. MUTZ, HEARING THE OTHER SIDE 46-48 (2006).
7. See id.; see also Bill Bishop, The Great Divide, AUSTIN AM.-STATESMAN (2004), http://www.statesman. com/greatdivide (showing increased uniformity within communities, defined in geographical terms).
8. David Leip, Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, 2004 Presidential General Election Data Graphs Colorado, http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ datagraph.php?year=2004&fips=8&f=0&off=0&elect=0 (last visited Mar. 5, 2007).
9. See Shanto Iyengar & Richard Morin, Red Media, Blue Media, WASH. POST, May 3, 2006, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050300865. html.
10. See infra notes 79-89 and accompanying text (discussing the treatment of James Fishkin's studies).
11. See ACKERMAN & FISHKIN, supra note 3.
12. Consistent with the general demographics of the two counties, 90% of respondents were white. In both counties, three of the five groups contained one non-white voter. There were no significant differences between groups with and without a white voter on any group or individual responses related to the affirmative action question. There was no significant difference in age between the samples (the median age was forty-six in both counties). Age did not have a significant effect on the willingness to change one's opinion - the correlation between age and the extent to which a person changed his or her opinion in the direction of the group was +.12, which is not statistically significant in this sample.
13. CNN.com, 2004 Election Results, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/ results/president (last visited Mar. 5, 2007).
14. Screening questions included the following: (a) "In general, would you describe your political views as very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal?" (b) "Suppose you were in the voting booth and you came across an office for which two candidates . . . were running and you had never heard of either one. Which candidate would you choose - the Democrat or the Republican - or would you just not vote for that office?" Participants were also asked to assign grades to various people, predicting how they would be as president. The conservative names included Dick Cheney, Wayne Allard (the Republican U.S. Senator from Colorado), Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson. The liberal names included Edward Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jesse Jackson, and John Kerry.
15. In the group sessions, the designated monitor was given five numbered envelopes, to be opened in order as soon as the previous envelope's task was completed. The first three each contained instructions for the group to discuss and reach a consensus, if possible, on one of the three focal issues. A fourth contained individual forms, identical to those they completed before the groups were convened, which asked for their private individual opinions on all three topics after the group discussions were completed. The other envelope asked the group to discuss an unrelated issue.
16. The filler items appeared in-between the three group discussion issues, and were: "Having family members nearby is an important part of a good quality of life," "It is better to live in the country than in the city or a suburb," and "The health care that I receive is worse than it was in the past."
17. See infra Table 1.
18. A repeated measures ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) showed that there were highly significant differences between the two samples in their pre-deliberation opinions on the issues to be discussed: F(1,61) = 234.3, (p < .001). This difference was separately significant for each of the three issues (each issue p < .001).
19. See supra Table 1.
20. See supra Table 1. See also supra note 12.
21. See infra Figure 1, top panel.
22. See infra Figure 1, bottom panel.
23. See infra Figure 2.
24. See Solomon Asch, Opinions and Social Pressure, in READINGS ABOUT THE SOCIAL ANIMAL 13 (Elliott Aronson ed., 7th ed. 1995);
25. Leon Festinger, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes, 7 HUM. REL. 117 (1954);
26. Muzafer Sherif, An Experimental Approach to the Study of Attitudes, 1 SOCIOMETRY 90 (1937).
27. A good discussion of the effects of conformity can be found in LEE ROSS & RICHARD E. NISBETT, THE PERSON AND THE SITUATION 28-30 (1991).
28. See Daniel Gigone & Reid Hastie, Proper Analysis of the Accuracy of Group Judgment, 121 PSYCHOL. BULL. 149, 161-62 (1997);
29. Reid Hastie, Review Essay: Experimental Evidence of Group Accuracy, in INFORMATION POOLING AND GROUP DECISION MAKING 129, 133-46 (Bernard Grofman & Guillermo Owen eds., 1986).
30. See TIMUR KURAN, PRIVATE TRUTHS, PUBLIC LIES (1995) (discussing general phenomenon of "preference falsification," in which people's public statements are systematically inconsistent with their actual private views).
31. See id. See also LEON FESTINGER, A THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE (1957) (giving more information on the complex relations between public statements and private views).
32. See ROGER BROWN, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (2d ed. 1986). Two of the present authors have discussed this phenomenon in other places.
33. See, e.g., Cass R. Sunstein, The Law of Group Polarization, 10 J. POL. PHIL. 175 (2002) [hereinafter Sunstein, Law of Group];
34. David Schkade et al., Deliberating About Dollars: The Severity Shift, 100 COLUM L. REV. 1139 (2000);
35. Cass R. Sunstein, Deliberative Trouble? Why Groups Go To Extremes, 110 YALE L.J. 71 (2000) [hereinafter Sunstein, Deliberative Trouble].
36. See BROWN, supra note 26, at 200-245 (studying group polarization).
37. See J.A.F. Stoner, A Comparison of Individual and Group Decision Involving Risk (1961) (unpublished Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (on file with Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
38. An interesting replication of Stoner's findings can be found in Lawrence K. Hong, Risky Shift and Cautious Shift: Some Direct Evidence on the Culture-Value Theory, 41 SOCIAL PSYCHOL. 342 (1978). Hong finds that Americans are more risk-inclined in groups than as individuals with respect to the decision whether to take a new job, have a heart operation, buy stocks, choose a risky play in football, invest in a foreign country, choose a risky move in chess, become a concert pianist, and run for political office. Interestingly, Chinese subjects showed a cautious shift for all these questions, with a single exception: choosing a risky play in football.
39. Stoner, supra note 28; Hong, supra note 28 (finding a risky shift for American subjects).
40. See Serge Moscovici & Marisa Zavalloni, The Group as a Polarizer of Attitudes, 12 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 125, 125-35 (1969). See also Hong, supra note 28.
41. See Moscovici & Zavalloni, supra note 30. See also Hong, supra note 28, at 344 (finding a cautious shift for both Chinese and American subjects with respect to the decision whether to marry).
42. See Moscovici & Zavalloni, supra note 30.
43. See id. See also BROWN, supra note 26, at 210-12.
44. JOHN C. TURNER ET AL., REDISCOVERING THE SOCIAL GROUP: A SELF-CATEGORIZATION THEORY 142-70 (1987).
45. Paul F. Cromwell et al., Group Effects on Decision-Making by Burglars, 69 PSYCHOL. REP. 579, 586 (1991).
46. TURNER ET AL., supra note 34, at 153.
47. Id.
48. See Schkade et al., supra note 26.
49. See id. (finding that in 27% of the cases, the jury's award was as high or higher than those favored by any individual juror before deliberation).
50. David G. Myers & Martin F. Kaplan, Group-Induced Polarization in Simulated Juries, 2 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 63 (1976);
51. Martin F. Kaplan, Discussion Polarization Effects in a Modified Jury Decision Paradigm: Informational Influences, 40 SOCIOMETRY 262 (1977).
52. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, DAVID A. SCHKADE, LISA M. ELLMAN & ANDRES SAWICKI, ARE JUDGES POLITICAL? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY (2006) [hereinafter SUNSTEIN ET AL., ARE JUDGES POLITICAL];
53. Cass R. Sunstein et al., Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation, 90 VA. L. REV. 301 (2004) [hereinafter Sunstein et al., Ideological Voting].
54. BROWN, supra note 26, at 224.
55. David G. Myers, Discussion-Induced Attitude Polarization, 28 HUM. REL. 699, 707-11 (1975) (finding increase in support for feminism among women inclined to show feminist attitudes).
56. David G. Myers & George D. Bishop, Discussion Effects on Racial Attitudes, 169 SCIENCE 778, 778-79 (1970).
57. See Bishop, supra note 5.
58. See id.
59. See ACKERMAN & FISHKIN, supra note 3.
60. See BROWN, supra note 26, at 210-12.
61. See Schkade et al., supra note 26, at 1140-41 (finding that the pre-deliberation median predicts movements, even when there is considerable internal diversity).
62. See E. Burnstein, Persuasion As Argument Processing, in GROUP DECISION MAKING (Hermann Brandstetter et al. eds., 1982).
63. BROWN, supra note 26, at 226.
64. SUNSTEIN ET AL., ARE JUDGES POLITICAL, supra note 41, at 22-24.
65. See id. at 62-63 (discussing decisions of three-judge panels).
66. See MUTZ, supra note 4, at 76-77.
67. Id. at 85.
68. Id. at 74-76.
69. Id. at 75.
70. See BROWN, supra note 26, at 212-22, 226-45; Robert S. Baron et al., Social Corroboration and Opinion Extremity, 32 J. EXPERIMENTAL SOC. PSYCHOL. 537 (1996).
71. Overlapping accounts are provided in Schkade et al., supra note 26, and Sunstein, Deliberative Trouble, supra note 26.
72. BROWN, supra note 26, at 217-22.
73. Id. at 219.
74. See Baron et al., supra note 58, at 557-59 (showing that corroboration increases confidence and hence extremism).
75. See id.
76. Id.
77. Id.
78. See Baron et al., supra note 58 at 541, 546-47, 557 (concluding that corroboration of one's views has effects on opinion extremity).
79. See supra Figure 1, top panel.
80. See supra Figure 1, bottom panel.
81. See Catherine Hafer & Dimitri Landa, Deliberation and Social Polarization, Jan. 25, 2006. available at http://ssrn.com/ abstract=887634.
82. Id. at 2.
83. See BROWN, supra note 26, at 213-17.
84. Id.
85. Id.
86. See Id. at 209-11; TURNER ET AL., supra note 34, at 159-70 (discussing evidence for the "self-categorization theory of polarization"); Joel Cooper et al., Attitudes, Norms, and Social Groups, in BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF GROUP PSYCHOLOGY: GROUP PROCESSES 259, 269-70 (Michael A. Hogg & R. Scott Tindale eds., 2001).
87. TURNER ET AL., supra note 34, at 210.
88. See Geoffrey L. Cohen, Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence On Political Beliefs, 85 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 808 (2003) (showing that identification of a political party's view greatly affects people's judgments on political issues, enough so as to press them away from the view that they would otherwise hold).
89. See id. (noting that the policy favored by the relevant party affected participants' views, even without supporting arguments); See also World Public Opinion.org, Global Warming, http://americans- world.org/digest/global_issues/global_warming/gw2.cfm (last visited Feb. 2, 2007) (noting that about 70% of Americans favor the Kyoto Protocol to curtail global warming but that figure drops to about 43% when people are informed that President Bush rejects the Kyoto Protocol).
90. Sherif, supra note 22. A good outline can be found in ROSS & NISBET, supra note 22, at 28-30. For demonstrations of the powerful effect of a confident confederate on the views of group members, See Robert Jacobs and Donald Campbell, The Perpetuation of An Arbitrary Tradition Through Several Generations of a Laboratory Subculture, 62 J. ABNORMAL AND SOCIAL PSYCH. 649 (1961);
91. Gregory Moschetti, Individual Maintenance and Perpetuation of A Means/Ends Arbitrary Tradition, 40 SOCIOMETRY 78 (1977).
92. See Wendy Wood et al., Minority Influence: A Meta-Analytic Review of Social Influence Processes, 115 PSYCHOL. BULL. 323 (1994) (exploring when minority has impact and when it does not).
93. See JAMES S. FISHKIN, THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE: PUBLIC OPINION AND DEMOCRACY 161-81 (1995) (hereafter FISHKIN, VOICE OF THE PEOPLE).
94. For valuable and up-to-date materials, See JAMES FISHKIN, CTR. FOR DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY, D ELIBERATIVE POLLING®: TOWARDS A BETTER-INFORMED DEMOCRACY, http://cdd.stanford.edu/ polls/docs/summary (last visited Mar. 5, 2007) (hereafter FISHKIN, DELIBERATIVE POLLING)
95. See FISHKIN, DELIBERATIVE POLLING, supra note 79.
96. Id. at 178-79.
97. FISHKIN, DELIBERATIVE POLLING, supra note 79;
98. See also FISHKIN, VOICE OF THE PEOPLE, supra note 79, at 22 (showing an increase, on a scale of 1 to 3, from 1.40 to 1.59 in commitment to spending on foreign aid; also showing a decrease, on a scale of 1 to 3, from 2.38 to 2.27 in commitment to spending on social security).
99. FISHKIN, DELIBERATIVE POLLING, supra note 79.
100. Id.
101. Id.
102. Id.
103. See ROBERT B. CIALDINI, INFLUENCE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION ch. 3 (1993).
104. See BROWN, supra note 26, at 220 (noting mere exposure produces significant shifts).
105. See id. at 210-11; Schkade et al., supra note 26, at 1140-41 (finding that predeliberation median is predictor of shift, whether or not there is internal diversity before discussion began).
106. See Gigone & Hastie, supra note 23.
107. See id. at 161-62 (summarizing findings that groups do not perform as well as best members); Hastie, supra note 23, at 133-49. To the same effect, see also Garold Stasser & Beth Dietz-Uhler, Collective Choice, Judgment, and Problem Solving, in BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF GROUP PSYCHOLOGY: GROUP PROCESSES, supra note 73, at 31, 49-50 (collecting findings).
108. Robert J. MacCoun, Comparing Micro and Macro Rationality, in JUDGMENTS, DECISIONS, AND PUBLIC POLICY 116, 127-28 (Rajeev Gowda & Jeffrey C. Fox eds., 2002).
109. Norbert L. Kerr et al., Bias in Judgment: Comparing Individuals and Groups, 103 PSYCHOL. REV. 687, 692 (1996).
110. William P. Bottom et al., Propagation of Individual Bias Through Group Judgment: Error in the Treatment of Asymmetrically Informative Signals, 25 J. RISK & UNCERTAINTY 147, 152-54 (2002).
111. See MacCoun, supra note 92.
112. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, INFOTOPIA: HOW MANY MINDS PRODUCE KNOWLEDGE 60-61 (2006).
113. See Mathew D. McCubbins and Daniel B. Rodriguez, When Does Deliberating Improve Decisionmaking?, 15 J. CONTEMP. LEGAL ISSUES 9, 27-29 (2006), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract= 900258. Note that when receiving information is costly, individuals did not do better with deliberation than on their own. See id. at 28-32.
114. Robert L. Thorndike, The Effect of Discussion Upon the Correctness of Group Decisions, When the Factor of Majority Influence Is Allowed For, 9 J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 343, 348-61 (1938) (exploring effects of both correctness and majority pressure on group judgments).
115. See supra text accompanying note 50.
116. See the discussion of minority influences in CASS R. SUNSTEIN. WHY SOCIETIES NEED DISSENT 30-32 (2003).
117. See Bishop, supra note 5; See also Alan I. Abramowitz et al., Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections, 68 J. POL. 75 (2006).
118. See Bishop, supra note 5.
119. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, REPUBLIC.COM 2.0 (forthcoming 2007) for discussion. The Internet also makes it very easy to encounter new and different positions. Ideological amplification might well be less likely if people use the Internet to find such positions.
120. See Raymond S. Nickerson, Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises, 2 REV. GEN. PSYCHOL. 175 (1998).
121. See Iyengar & Morin, supra note 7.
122. BROWN, supra note 26, at 220.
123. See THOMAS PYSZCZYNSKI ET AL., IN THE WAKE OF 9/11: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TERROR (2003).