Panel peer review of grant applications: what do we know from research in social psychology on judgment and decision-making in groups?

The allocation of resources for scientific research is determined by panel peer review. To make funding recommendations, the reviewers convene to evaluate the quality of grant applications. Many research studies in social psychology have investigated what (undesired) phenomena (such as groupthink, motivation losses, and group polarization) can occur in group judgment and decision-making. In the research on peer review, however, these phenomena have not been examined up to now. This article describes the peer review panel with the help of features used in social psychology to characterize groups (such as entitativity of groups, group task) and presents phenomena from the research in social psychology that can have an (undesired) effect on the judgment of panel groups. Measures to counteract these phenomena are discussed. The necessity of research in this area is pointed out. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.