Improving deliberations by reducing misrepresentation effects
Cyrille Imbert  1@  , Thomas Boyer-Kassem  2, *@  , Vincent Chevrier  3, *@  , Christine Bourjot  3, *@  
1 : Archives Poincaré, UMR 7117
UMR 7117
2 : Université de Grenoble-Alpes  -  Site web
CNRS : EA3699
38031 Grenoble Cedex -  France
3 : Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications  (LORIA)  -  Site web
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR7503, Université de Lorraine, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
Campus Scientifique BP 239 54506 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy Cedex -  France
* : Auteur correspondant

Deliberative and decisional groups play crucial roles in most aspects of social life. But it is not obvious how to organize these groups and various socio-cognitive mechanisms can spoil debates and decisions. In this paper we focus on one such important mechanism: the misrepresentation of views, i.e. when agents express views that are aligned with those already expressed, and which differ from their private opinions. We introduce a model to analyze the extent to which this behavioral pattern can warp deliberations and distort the decisions that are finally taken. We identify types of situations in which misrepresentation can have large effects and investigate how to reduce these effects by adopting appropriate deliberative procedures. We discuss the beneficial effects of (i) holding a sufficient number of rounds of speeches; (ii) choosing an appropriate order of speech, typically a random one; (iii) rendering the deliberation dissenter-friendly; (iv) having agents express fined-grained views. These applicable procedures help improving deliberations because they dampen conformist behavior, give epistemic minorities more opportunities to be heard, and reduce the number of cases in which an inadequate consensus or majority develops. 


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