Seeing the Other Side? Perspective-Taking in Deliberation: Evidence from the Irish Citizens’ Assembly

The ability of citizens to take the perspective of other individuals is commonly assumed to be crucial for a successful deliberation. By contrast, a growing number of skeptics challenge the suitability and feasibility of this claim. Both of these arguments have been mostly theoretical in nature. This article examines whether - and how – individual differences in perspective-taking ability is important for deliberation by using an original survey data from a nationwide exercise in deliberative democracy, Irish Citizens’ Assembly. I find empirical evidence for the claim that perspective-taking capacity, more specifically, the visual type of perspective taking (‘seeing things from the other person’s point of view’), is a strong predictor of the reflectiveness of citizens’ political judgements. However, a closer look at the data reveals the nuanced character of this relationship. When controlling for gender of the respondents, the association between perspective-taking capacity and reflective judgements stays strong, positive, and significant among female citizen deliberators, while the effect disappears for male respondents. Further, with an aim of gaining deeper insights into the challenges and limitations of perspective-taking in deliberation, I complement this finding with in-depth interview data from Assembly members. The patterns identified in these interviews suggest that taking diverse others’ perspectives is often challenging; and is contingent on a set of factors, among which the observer-target similarities is the most important one. The ability to listen is proposed as an interesting alternative for a successful deliberation when perspective-taking is impossible.