Measuring Enlarged Mentality: Development and Validation of the Enlarged Mentality Scale.

This article focuses on explicating and operationalizing Hannah Arendt's concept of enlarged mentality—also known as representative thinking—as a psychological orientation relevant to political communication. The authors developed and validated a 10-item Enlarged Mentality Scale (EMS), comprising two dimensions: imagination (the capacity to imaginatively represent others' perspectives) and sensus communis (a shared community sense). Validated in national samples from Singapore and the United Kingdom, the EMS demonstrated good psychometric properties and predictive validity for deliberative engagement and political participation, distinguishing itself from related constructs like perspective taking and social dominance orientation. The study highlights the scale's potential to enrich empirical research on deliberative democracy and political engagement by capturing individuals' readiness for broadminded reflection and public judgment.