Deliberation, Empathy and Feelings towards Others

Abstract: In previous work, I have argued that the process of empathy is a requirement for successful deliberation, whether we define deliberation in Habermasian, Rawlsian, or Fishkinian terms. I have even argued that we can define democratic legitimacy by the degree to which deliberation embodies the process of empathy prior to the final, if contingent, collective decision. Research in political psychology suggesting the importance of emotions in politics has been one of the driving forces behind my work. In this paper, I put a twist on this research by examining whether deliberation itself can have a positive effect on people’s feelings toward others, even while controlling for the effects of individuals’ predispositions for empathy. The evidence from two experiments indicates that deliberation can have an effect on post-deliberation feelings towards others even when controlling for predispositions to empathy. While the effect is significant and positive, there are still factors my model cannot specify that affect post-deliberation feelings toward others.