Massimo Bonanni

This essay examines the opportunities offered by the cognitive turn and its possible effects on political science. It focuses on the problem of group decision-making. After showing the existence of two different approaches to rationality, the bulk of this essay reviews how social psychology has analyzed group decisions: from experiments influenced by behaviorism, which employed concepts derived from economics (preferences, equilibrium...), to works with an increasingly autonomous approach (sections II and IV). A few researches that exemplify this turn away from economic concepts and the experimental logic are examined (section III). After defining the concepts of cognitive and rhetoric turn, the essay concludes underlining the risks and the opportunities of this new paradigm, usually defined as «deliberative democracy» (sections V and VI).