Polarization in Collective Deliberation

Student: zhazhin kirill

Supervisor: Egor Ianovski

Faculty: St.Petersburg School of Economics and Management

Educational Programme: Economics (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2022

Collective deliberative choice is often underpinned by polarization of beliefs. Even when information is abundant and disclosure is cheap, agents can still diverge in their perceptions of the world. However, conventional collective deliberation model does not allow for such dynamics. In this paper, we propose an extension to this model in an effort to highlight potential mechanism behind polarization process. Out setting is characterized by agents' bias toward outcomes that bleeds into belief updating procedure through skepticism and motivated reasoning. Given enough incentives, agents are to not only disclose evidence contrary to their own believes, but also over-infer from preferable signals. This results in an equilibrium, when full disclosure does not guarantee convergence of beliefs and optimal group choice.

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