This paper looks at a problem where a group, made up of individuals from a
variety of different organisations but with similar technical backgrounds,
had the task of producing a forecast for their particular industry. The for
ecast was to be published by their technical institute and was therefore of
general interest in stimulating debate. The group members used a form of j
udgemental modelling to produce their individual forecasts. After these ini
tial outcomes, the group was split into three sub-groups based upon a metho
d of psychological profiling, with each subgroup repeating the exercise and
producing a group-negotiated forecast. The results presented here show how
group composition affects die way in which individuals negotiate towards a
final outcome. The conclusions reached have implications for decision maki
ng aids using decision support systems, both for systems that aim to facili
tate and for those that attempt to model the process. Although only a small
experiment, the results suggest that there is tremendous potential benefit
from this avenue of research when applied to the developing technologies o
f group decision and negotiation systems.