Suchergebnisse

Most Americans lack any substantial degree of ideological sophistication (Kinder 1998), yet they often manage to express coherent views across a range of issues. The conventional explanation for this is that people rely on judgmental shortcuts (e.g., Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991). These "heuristics" permit individuals with sufficient political sophistication to sort and filter incoming messages to form relatively consistent views that align with preexisting values (Zaller 1992).

Deliberative theorists posit that highly structured face‐to‐face policy discussions can transcend ideological differences. By contrast, cultural cognitive theorists argue that people's cultural orientations constrain policy‐relevant information processing and forestall the public's ability to reach consensus. Two studies examine whether deliberative processes can span divergent cultural orientations. The first assesses a prominent deliberative forum programme's capacity to frame policy solutions across the quadrants of a two‐dimensional cultural grid. The second study examines whether deliberation generates policy recommendations that transcend biases to yield cross‐cultural agreement. Results show that public deliberation can encompass multiple cultural orientations and encourage participants to look beyond their biases to discover common ground. When it comes to framing and implementing deliberative public forums, cultural orientations appear to be surmountable obstacles.