Deliberations

In an interview by Ben van Heuvelen at Salon.com, Cass Sunstein succinctly describes the Colorado experiment, which demonstrates the outcome of deliberation by like-minded rather than ethically-diverse citizens, which he calls ideological amplification:

The way our Colorado experiment worked is, we got people from Boulder, a liberal place, together in small groups to talk about climate change, same-sex civil unions and affirmative action. On the same day, we got people in Colorado Springs, a conservative place, to talk about the same three issues. We asked them to record their views anonymously first, then to deliberate on them in small groups, then to record their views anonymously afterward. What we found was that on these issues, the Boulder people, before they started to talk, were pretty liberal, but there was a distribution of views, a degree of diversity. After they talked, they were significantly more liberal and less diverse. So, deliberation among our liberal citizens of Boulder produced more extremism and less diversity. In Colorado Springs, after they talked to one another, they went far to the right. They started out somewhat open-minded on these issues, somewhat diverse, and after discussion the diversity was squelched and the extremism was increased.

Further reading: Sunstein C. (2007). Ideological Amplification. Constellations Vol 14, No. 2, pp. 273-279.

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