Can Organized Deliberation Reduce Confirmation Bias?

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article explores the potentialof deliberative mini-publics (DMP) for reducing confirmation bias, that is, thetendency to seek out information that confirms existing views over informationthat contradicts them. A deliberative mini-public exposes participants todiverse opinions in a constructive environment, which could potentially hinderbiased information searches. In this study, participants of a local-level mini-publicon the topic of transportation policies completed a survey before and afterparticipation. Measures of the participants’ opinions on the use of privatecars and a confirmation bias index were included in the survey. The confirmationbias index was based on the participants’ choices of news articles. Contrary toour expectations, confirmation bias was not reduced through deliberation.Moreover, those who held extreme opinions—independent of their position on privatecars—had higher levels of confirmation bias, and deliberation did not mitigate thisassociation.