A new study suggests that taking time to weigh up a political issue before you decide can boost how others judge your moral character, but only if your audience disagrees with you. The research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was led by Zachary N. Grey, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, who works with the Centre for Mind and Morality Lab and the Morality, Affect, and Politics Lab.
The findings come amid enduring tensions in democratic societies where political disagreement often fuels hostility. The study notes that a 2016 Pew Research survey found that 47 per cent of Republicans and 35 per cent of Democrats viewed members of the opposing party as more immoral than the average American, a trend that rose to 72 per cent and 63 per cent respectively by 2022.
The researchers connect these attitudes to a longstanding line of work suggesting that the speed of a decision signals a person’s inner moral compass. A 2013 study, they note, found that people judge someone who quickly makes the right moral choice more favourably than someone who pauses to deliberate first, since hesitation can imply doubt about what is right.
“We knew from some past work that when people think deeply about a moral choice, others would judge them less extremely,” lead author Zachary N. Grey explained, in an interview with PsyPost.
“If someone deliberated about whether they should return a wallet, then they would be seen as less of a good person if they returned it (the morally good thing), but they would also be seen as less of a bad person if they decided to keep it (the morally questionable thing),” Grey explained. “This was because deliberation signaled uncertainty. If someone does something wrong, then it’s better if they at least felt conflicted about doing it. If someone does something good, then it’s often best if they didn’t think twice about it.”
The study also notes that other findings suggest learning about an opponent’s reasoning can soften hostility. A 2020 study found that people tend to assume their ideological opponents lack good reasons for their positions, and that reading arguments for the opposing side led them to form more favourable impressions of those opponents.
Conversely, appearing torn on an issue carries social costs. A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 showed that expressing political ambivalence resulted in lower perceived likeability, particularly among participants who agreed with the target person’s overall position.
Grey and his colleagues designed the new study to connect these ideas. They reasoned that deliberating about a political issue might send two signals at once: that a person is thoughtful, and that they are uncertain. Thoughtfulness should count in a person’s favour no matter which side they take, but uncertainty might be welcome in an opponent and unwelcome in an ally.
“The catch is, this would imply that there would be some level of social risk to thinking things through when that process is observed by people who share your political views,” Grey said. “In their eyes, deliberating before landing on ‘the right position’ might make you seem less committed. Part of polarization might come from this pressure that people feel to display strong conviction in their political beliefs.”
“To us, however, the realm of politics seemed to be the sort of place where people ought to be more deliberative,” Grey added. “Doesn’t it seem praiseworthy for someone to ‘do their homework’ when it comes to politics? Wouldn’t it be great if people engaged in some perspective taking, or considered how other people might be affected by their political commitments? So, we wondered whether we could expect the original pattern of results for political deliberation, or whether something different might happen.”
In the first experiment, the researchers recruited 194 American adults to read 12 short descriptions of political issues, including carbon taxes, gun control, affirmative action, immigration, and universal healthcare. For each scenario, participants indicated whether they personally supported or opposed the policy or position.
Participants then read about a hypothetical person who either agreed or disagreed with their chosen position. This person was described as responding either “after long and careful deliberation” or “quickly and immediately.” Afterward, participants rated the person’s moral character on a 1-to-7 scale, assessing whether they viewed them as a good person who wants to do what is right.
The researchers found that participants consistently rated people who agreed with them more positively than those who disagreed. When the target person agreed with the participant, deliberating made no statistically significant difference: these targets averaged about 5.3 on the 7-point character scale either way. When the target disagreed, deliberation raised ratings from about 3.7 to about 4.1, a modest boost that still left opponents well below allies.
The second experiment involved 400 participants and used a similar design, but it added measures to examine what observers inferred from deliberation. Participants rated how thoughtful the target person seemed, assessing if the person had considered the issue deeply. They also rated how certain or conflicted the person appeared to be about their final decision.
This second experiment replicated the initial findings and shed light on why the pattern emerged. For targets who agreed with the participant, deliberation sent two opposing signals. It made the person seem more thoughtful, which was associated with improved character ratings.
At the same time, deliberation made agreeing targets seem less certain, which was linked to lower character ratings. These two influences pulled in opposite directions and cancelled each other out, resulting in no statistically significant total effect on moral character judgments for allies.
For targets who disagreed with the participant, deliberation again made the person seem more thoughtful, which was associated with higher character ratings. It also made them seem less certain, but in this experiment that uncertainty was not reliably linked to character judgments in either direction. Overall, disagreeing targets who deliberated averaged about 4.5 on the 7-point character scale, compared to about 3.9 for those who decided quickly.
In the third experiment, the researchers recruited 302 participants and adjusted the wording to ensure participants were not being nudged toward an interpretation of thoughtfulness. Deliberating targets were simply described as responding “after deliberating,” and non-deliberating targets as responding “without deliberating.” The researchers also added a control condition where no information about deliberation was provided.
The results largely mirrored the previous experiments, though the formal test of whether deliberation affected allies and opponents differently was not statistically significant this time. Disagreeing targets who deliberated were judged more favourably than those who decided without deliberating (about 4.0 versus 3.75 on the 7-point scale), and more favourably than targets in the control condition. Character ratings in the control and no-deliberation conditions did not statistically differ from each other.
For targets who agreed with the participant, deliberation again showed no statistically significant effect on character ratings compared to the control or no-deliberation conditions. This pattern suggests that the positive influence of deliberation on opposing targets does not depend on loaded wording. This time, the uncertainty signalled by deliberation was also linked to more favourable ratings of opponents.
“The main takeaway from this work is that, at least when it comes to politics, the benefits of appearing thoughtful can help to offset the costs of appearing uncertain,” Grey told PsyPost. “If you’re working through something like a political issue, there’s no need to rush through it: a little bit of cognitive effort might go a long way. You’ll likely come off as being a better person in the eyes of those who disagree with you, and those who agree probably won’t think any less of your character.”
Drawing on earlier research, Grey also distinguished the active process of deliberation from simply holding mixed feelings. “We emphasise within the paper that people do not seem to necessarily infer thoughtfulness from mere political ambivalence,” he explained. “Thoughtfulness has the benefit of being seen as a form of cognitive effort, which is pretty praiseworthy. On the other hand, merely being ambivalent (endorsing reasons that both support and oppose a given position) doesn’t seem to give the same benefit on its own.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study used brief, written scenarios to describe political disagreements. In the real world, political conversations involve body language, tone of voice, and other social cues that might change how a pause in conversation is interpreted.
Participants also rated both deliberating and non-deliberating people in quick succession, which may have made deliberation more noticeable than it would be in everyday life. A supplementary experiment in which each participant saw only one version largely reproduced the results.
Observers may have assumed that an opponent who deliberated held a more moderate version of the opposing view, and because the study did not measure how extreme people thought the targets’ views were, it could not separate that impression from perceived uncertainty. Future research could investigate how perceived extremity interacts with decision speed.
The research focused exclusively on American participants and American political topics, leaving open how these patterns play out across other political cultures. In addition, the scientists only measured judgments of moral character, meaning that traits like warmth, competence, or assertiveness might respond to deliberation differently.
The study, “Diverging Effects of Deliberation: How Perceived Thoughtfulness About Political Issues Affects Character Judgments,” was authored by Zachary N. Grey, Paul Bloom, Jason E. Plaks, and Yoel Inbar.
