at one man judged by one criterion and
another by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacant
spaces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought immediate
attention to other criterions than those he used in his first
judgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly,
different jurymen would base their opinion on different aspects of the
case, and discussion would tend to draw their attention to other
aspects. The experiment also illustrated the relative weight given to
the opinion of different fellow-jurymen. I found that the statements
of a few of the older men who have had more extensive psychological
experience weighed more with me than those of the others. Suggestion
did not seem to be much of a factor. A man is rather on his mettle,
and ready to defend his original impression, until he finds that it is
hopeless." Again, another writes: "To me the experiment seemed fairly
comparable to the real situation. As in an actual trial, the full
truth was not available, but certain evidence was presented to all for
interpretation. As to the nature of the discussion itself, I think
there was the same mingling of suggestion and real argument that is to
be found in a jury discussion." Another says: "The discussion
influenced me by suggesting other methods of analysis. For instance,
comparison of the amount of open space in two cards, comparison of the
number of dots along the edges, estimation in diagonal lines, were
methods mentioned in the discussion which I used in forming my own
judgments. It does not seem to me that in my own case direct
suggestion had any appreciable effect. I was conscious of a tendency
toward contrasuggestibility. There was a half submerged feeling that
it would be good sport to stick it out for the losing side. The lack
of any unusual amount of suggestion and the presence of the influences
of analysis and detailed comparison seem to me to show that the tests
were in fact fairly comparable to situations in a jury room." To be
sure, there were a few who were strongly impressed by the evident
differences between the rich material of an actual trial and the
meagre content of our tests: there the actions of living men, here the
space relations of little spots. But they evidently did not
sufficiently realize that the forming of such number judgments was not
at all a question of mere perception; that on the contrary many
considerations were involved; most men felt the similarity f