Deliberation with An Open Mind: Rectifying Biased Perceptions in Preparation for Deliberation

Deliberation in everyday political process often fails to meet normative expectations due to individual's psychological barriers. The research on naive realism suggests that people have a tendency to impute biases to their opponents and interact with them in conflict-escalating approaches as a result. Taking this as a basic intrapersonal process at a pre-deliberation phase of interpersonal deliberation, this dissertation focuses on how people may prepare for an anticipated discussion with prospective deliberation partners. The central question is: Under what circumstances may individuals be motivated to rectify their biased inferences about disagreeing others, and in turn to engage them in more deliberative ways?;Based on the theory of lay epistemics, I argue that one way to rectify the non-deliberating effects of biased inferences is to work on one's epistemic motives. Specifically, inducing a heightened need for openness may (1) rectify one's tendency of forming a biased perception of bias in a disagreeing other, and (2) mitigate the effects of the initially formed perception of the other on deliberation preparedness.;Two experiments were conducted to test these possibilities. The epistemic motive manipulation was implemented before people had formed an initial judgment on their prospective discussion partner in Study 1, and after in Study 2. Results show that individuals tend to evaluate a disagreeing other as being more biased and such a perception inhibits their deliberative proclivity toward such a person as their discussion partner. But this relationship is weakened when participants are induced to have an elevated need for openness. Specifically, the epistemic openness (1) mitigates individual's tendency of imputing greater bias to the other person based upon self-other opinion incongruence, and (2) reduces reliance on the initially formed judgment on the person in contemplating the anticipated discussion with the person. In addition, a successfully induced need for openness is shown to spur a higher level of information consultation. Together, this dissertation suggests that while people's fallacious perceptual and cognitive tendencies may inhibit them from discussing with disagreeing others in deliberative fashions, inducing them to open their mind may diminish this effect.