Convenience

Case Questions
1.
In your experience, have you found that decision-
making groups tend toward
groupthink
? If so,
what factors contributed to this tendency? If not,
what factors helped to prevent it?
2.
Review the steps in the
rational decision-making
model (especially Steps 1–4). This model, of
course, applies to individuals and might be diffi-
cult to apply to group decision-making situa-
tions. If, however, you were a juror, how might
Chapter 4:
Managing Decision Making
1 2 3
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you apply these steps to your own deliberations?
How might they give you some useful guidance?
What adjustments would you have to make
because of the context (a trial) and situation (a
group process)?
3.
In what ways might
bounded rationality
affect a
juror’s approach to a decision? How about
satisfi-
cing
?
Intuition
?
Ethics
?
4.
A recent study found that racially mixed juries
“deliberated longer, raised more facts, and con-
ducted broader and more wide-ranging delibera-
tions” than either all-white or all-black juries.
Why do you think this was so? Do you think
that “mixed” juries are more likely to avoid group-
think than racially homogeneous juries? Explain
your reasoning.
Case References
Twelve Angry Men
(United Artists, 1957); David H.
Mitchell and Daniel Eckstein, “Jury Dynamics and
Decision-Making: A Prescription for Group-think,”
International Journal of Academic Research
, Vol. 1
(September 2009), www.ijar.lit.az, accessed on May 1,
2012; Irving L. Janis,
Groupthink
, 2nd ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1972); Michael P. Maslanka, “The
Dirty Realities of Group-Think,”
Texas Lawyer
,
December 23, 2009, http://texaslawyer.typepad.com,
accessed on May 1, 2012; and Samuel R. Sommers,
“On Racial Diversity and Group Decision Making:
Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on
Jury Deliberations,”
Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology
, Vol. 90, No. 4 (2006), http://ase.tufts.edu,
accessed on March 5, 2011.