Deliberating through Perspectives: Evidence from Mini-publics Experiments in Japan

It has been often argued that deliberation can be an effective pathway towards better perspective-taking and eventually higher reasoning capabilities. Deliberation would arguably provide occasions to be exposed to different viewpoints and to review one’s perspective in comparison with others. Yet empirical evidence is still scarce as to the relevance of various perspectives offered in deliberations to the quality of their arguments and reasoning processes. In light of this lacuna, we have conducted an experimental study of mini-publics in June 2016 on immigration issues in Japan comprising of 40 groups with 331 participants. Five compelling perspectives ranging from background, employment, social security, language and culture, and to public safety were provided as basic information in all sessions and then discussed in details for each one of them. To half of the groups (i.e. 20 groups), we also provided a perspective of the general public based on our survey conducted prior to the mini-publics. For these groups, the distribution of public opinions including how the respondents changed their mind after reviewing the same five perspectives was also given as an additional piece of information. Through the analyses of transcripts and responses to the questionnaires, we compare these two different groups with and without the information of the general public. We also compare the levels and types of arguments made in the sessions before and after the discussions on each of the five perspectives. These comparisons allow us to rigorously examine to what extent perspective-taking exercises could lead to a higher reasoning.