Kristinn Már Ársælsson, John Gastil
Sociological Science June 30, 2025
10.15195/v12.a17
Abstract
Voters often show low levels of accurate policy information owing to misinformation and directional motivated reasoning. Extant research shows that participants in randomly selected deliberative groups—commonly called “minipublics”—can update their beliefs and deliver reasoned policy analysis and recommendations. When distributed to a wider public, such information can bypass motivated reasoning heuristics to improve policy knowledge across the electorate. However, critics posit that these benefits may spread unevenly across demographic, political, and other social subgroups. To investigate that claim, we analyzed survey experiments conducted across 13 realworld minipublics with more than 10,000 respondents and more than 60,000 knowledge scores. Results showed that advisory minipublics boosted policy knowledge evenly across many voter groups, but gains were slightly diminished for racial/ethnic minorities and some income brackets. Further analysis indicates that these differences did not stem from variations in deliberative faith or preexisting levels of policy knowledge.
Voters often show low levels of accurate policy information owing to misinformation and directional motivated reasoning. Extant research shows that participants in randomly selected deliberative groups—commonly called “minipublics”—can update their beliefs and deliver reasoned policy analysis and recommendations. When distributed to a wider public, such information can bypass motivated reasoning heuristics to improve policy knowledge across the electorate. However, critics posit that these benefits may spread unevenly across demographic, political, and other social subgroups. To investigate that claim, we analyzed survey experiments conducted across 13 realworld minipublics with more than 10,000 respondents and more than 60,000 knowledge scores. Results showed that advisory minipublics boosted policy knowledge evenly across many voter groups, but gains were slightly diminished for racial/ethnic minorities and some income brackets. Further analysis indicates that these differences did not stem from variations in deliberative faith or preexisting levels of policy knowledge.
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Reproducibility Package: Stata replication code and data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF), https://osf.io/rnpcq/.
- Citation: Ársælsson, Kristinn Már, John Gastil. 2025. “Who Learns from Deliberative Minipublics? Identity-Based Differences in Knowledge Gains across Thirteen Citizens’ Initiative Review Experiments” Sociological Science 12: 388-408.
- Received: April 18, 2025
- Accepted: May 15, 2025
- Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
- DOI: 10.15195/v12.a17