Results of an experiment comparing face-to-face groups with anonymous and identified computer-supported groups challenged theoretical arguments (V. S. Rao & S. L. Jarvenpaa, 1991) that computer-based group decision support systems (GDSS) can increase group decision quality by facilitating expression of minority opinions. In groups working on a hidden-profile investment decision task, minority opinion holders expressed their arguments most frequently under anonymous GDSS communication, but the influence of the minority arguments on private opinions and on group decisions was highest under face-to-face communication. These results suggest that the conditions that facilitate the expression of minority arguments may also diminish the influence of those arguments. The implications of these findings for a normative view of social influence, for social presence theory, and for the effects of GDSS on participation rates in group discussion are discussed.

In a series of opinions in the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that juries smaller than 12 persons would be constitutional if they performed no differently than traditional 12-person juries. In a meta-analysis, we examined the effects of jury size on the criteria the court specified as the basis for making such comparisons. A search for all relevant empirical studies identified 17 that examined differences between 6-and 12-member juries. The total sample for the 17 studies was 2,061 juries involving some 15,000 individual jurors. Among other findings, it appears that larger juries are more likely than smaller juries to contain members of minority groups, deliberate longer, hang more often, and possibly recall trial testimony more accurately.

Two studies examined accessibility as the key construct in explaining people’s tendency to recognize prototypical forms of prejudice more than non-prototypical forms. Pilot studies suggested that for the present population, race and sex were highly accessible and age and weight were less accessible forms of prejudice. Both studies established that for the more accessible forms of prejudice, participants were more likely to label discriminatory actions as prejudice and were more likely to rate such prejudice as more severe than in cases of less accessible forms of prejudice. Study 1 indicated that explicitly priming participants to look for prejudice increased detection for less accessible forms of prejudice only. Increasing cognitive processing requirements in Study 2 significantly decreased participants’ ability to detect prejudice and this was most noticeable in cases of non-prototypical discrimination. The data support the notions that prototypical prejudice is more likely to be detected than non-prototypical prejudice and that accessibility is an important mediator of prejudice perception. The data are more equivocal regarding whether the perception of prototypical prejudice is an automatic process.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is the most comprehensive federal civil rights law addressing employment discrimination against potentially millions of Americans. The Human Genome Project (HGP) is a federally funded research effort that seeks to map and sequence every human gene. This article is meant to contribute to the emerging dialogue on the interplay between the HGP and the employment provisions of the ADA, set forth in Title I of the act. The relevance of the HGP to emerging legal questions, including those arising under Title I and recent EEOC guidelines, is described. Thereafter, empirical issues are discussed, and directions for future investigation of genetic discrimination under the ADA are explored.

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Near the outset of "A Multiple Values Model of Political Tolerance" the authors confidently assert that "values matter" (Peffley et al. 2001: 380). What social psychologist could disagree? But, how do values matter and to what end? Peffley, Hurwitz, and Knigge indicate that "the way citizens rank competing values should play a major role in conditioning political tolerance judgments." The authors continue: "Thus, while many researchers have paid lip service to the view that tolerance decisions resultfrom a competition of values, the failure to provide an explicit test of such perspective has, in our view, led to a truncated understanding of tolerance judgments" (emphasis added).' So this is how "values matter" according to the authors of "A Multiple Values Model of Political Tolerance" hereafter referred to as MVM.From basic democratic theory we know that tolerance is one of those rudimentary "values" forming a building block in the foundation of any stable democracy So where does this leave us at the very outset of MVM? Values matter to values? Surely there must be more content to this article than that? We are not so certain. We are concerned that the line of conceptual and measurement work reflected in MVM, and more broadly in similar, related work as summarized in MVM, borders on truism and measurement artifact. If we can convincingly support this contention, then the profession will need to reconsider not only the The use of the words "resultfrom" here can only be taken as a synonym for "caused by" Unless the authors were merely careless in selecting these words, they surely need to provide some theoretical and empirical justification for this causal claim. Perhaps "entail" would have worked better. Even so, the phrase then should be "may entail".

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