Prior research by Kaplan and Miller (1978) suggested that juries are genera
lly influenced less by extralegal, biasing information than individual juro
rs are. A social decision scheme (SDS) analysis of this question by Kerr, M
acCoun, and Kramer (1997) suggested (a) that Kaplan and Miller's conclusion
should hold only for relatively extreme legal cases (i.e., cases where the
probability of conviction, without biasing information, was either very hi
gh or very low) and (b) that the opposite pattern should hold for moderate
cases (with moderate conviction rates) - i.e., juries should show even grea
ter sensitivity to biasing information than should individual jurors. An ex
periment is reported that compared juror vs jury sensitivity to biasing inf
ormation (viz., prejudicial pretrial publicity) for versions of a legal cas
e with a moderate and an extreme conviction rate. Consistent with the SDS a
nalysis, juries were more biased than jurors for the moderate-case version,
but the reverse was true for the extreme-case version. The implications of
these findings and the more general utility of the SDS model for studying
group processes are discussed. (C) 1999 Academic Press.