Some social mechanics of group decision making: The distribution of opinion, polling sequence, and implications for consensus.

The first study extrapolated earlier findings (Davis, Stasson, Ono, & Zimmerman, 1988) that the critical fourth voter in six-person mock juries evenly divided between guilty-and not-guilty-inclined jurors (3, 3) were significantly influenced by the preceding sequence (guilty or not-guilty faction voting first) and timing of a straw poll. Experiment 2 focused only on sequential voting in (4, 2) groups in which sequential voting by majority-minority factions first was again observed to influence critical individuals, although the effect was sharply mediated by the «leniency bias»