GEN-ERIC News

Why do some juries take weeks to reach a verdict, while others take just hours? How do judges pick the perfect beauty queen from a sea of very similar candidates? We have all wondered exactly why we did not win a certain award. Now, new psychological research explains how groups come to a collective decision. Jean-François Bonnefon, a University of Toulouse psychologist, conducted the first empirical investigation of the “doctrinal paradox.” This occurs when judges, say a hiring committee or a jury, must evaluate several factors about a candidate, (e.g. a possible employee or a defendant in a trial) and come to a majority decision. When different opinions arise, the way they conduct the majority vote can be more important than the opinions themselves. For example, a seven-judge committee must decide whether to promote a candidate to a position requiring a young, trilingual person. Each judge estimates whether the candidate is young, and whether she is trilingual. In the end, 4 out of 7 judges think she is young and 4 out of 7 think that she is trilingual, but only two of the judges think she is both. How should the committee proceed” They can all vote on the profile, and reject the candidate, or they can vote separately on each criterion and promote the candidate. Bonnefon investigated which voting procedure was preferred by judges, and how this preference could change in different contexts.