About the Editors. Acknowledgments. Small Groups: An Overview. Part 1. Group Composition. Introduction. Reading 1. The Contribution of Influence and Selection to Adolescent Peer Group Homogeneity: The Case of Adolescent Cigarette Smoking. Ennett & Bauman. Reading 2. Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women. Kanter . Reading 3 Effects of Crew Composition on Crew Performance: Does the Whole Equal the Sum of Its Parts? Tziner & Eden. Part 2. Group Structure. Introduction. Reading 4. Status, Expectations, and Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review and Test of the Theory. Driskell & Mullen. Reading 5. Asymmetries in Attachments to Groups and to Their Members: Distinguishing Between Common-Identity and Common-Bond Groups. Prentice, Miller, & Lightdale. Reading 6. The "Friendly" Poker Game: A Study of an Ephemeral Role. Zurcher. Part 3. Conflict in Groups. Introduction. Reading 7. Effects of Group Identity on Resource Use in a Simulated Commons Dilemma. Kramer & Brewer. Reading 8. Status, Ideology, and Integrative Complexity on the U.S. Supreme Court: Rethinking the Politics of Political Decision Making. Gruenfeld. Reading 9. Being Better by Being Right: Subjective Group Dynamics and Derogation of In-Group Deviants When Generic Norms Are Undermined. Marques, Abrams, & Serodio. Reading 10. Does Power Corrupt? Kipnis. Part 4. Group Performance. General Introduction. A. Decision Making. Introduction. Reading 11. Collective Induction. Laughlin & Shippy. Reading 12. Social Transition Schemes: Charting the Group's Road to Agreement. Kerr. Reading 13. Pooling of Unshared Information in Group Decision Making: Biased Information Sampling During Discussion. Stasser & Titus. Reading 14. Threat, Cohesion, and Group Effectiveness: Testing a Social Identity Maintenance Perspective on Groupthink. Turner, Pratkanis, Probasco, & Leve. Reading 15. The Effects of Repeated Expressions on Attitude Polarization during Group Discussions. Brauer, Judd, & Gliner. B. Productivity. Introduction. Reading 16. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Latane, Williams, & Harkins. Reading 17. Impact of Group Goals, Task Component Complexity, Effort, and Planning on Group Performance. Weingart. Reading 18. Transactive Memory: Learning Who Knows What in Work Groups and Organizations. Moreland. C. Leadership. Introduction. Reading 19. Self-Monitoring and Trait-Based Variance in Leadership: An Investigation of Leader Flexibility across Multiple Group Situations. Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny. Reading 20. The Contingency Model: A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness. Fiedler. Reading 21. Self-Categorization and Leadership: Effects of Group Prototypicality and Leader Stereotypicality. Hains, Hogg, & Duck.. Reading 22. The Romance of Leadership. Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich. Part 5. Group Ecology. Introduction. Reading 23. Coming Out in the Age of the Internet: Identity "Demarginalization" Through Virtual Group Participation. McKenna & Bargh. Reading 24. Stability, Bistability, and Instability in Small Group Influence Patterns. Arrow. Reading 25. Socialization in Organizations and Work Groups. Moreland & Levine. Reading 26. Beyond Task and Maintenance: Defining External Functions in Groups. Ancona & Caldwell

Small Groups: Key Readings

This book demonstrates the relevance, rigor, and creativity of interpretive research methodologies for the social and human sciences. The book situates methods questions within the context of broader methodological questions--specifically, the character of social realities and their "know-ability." Exceptionally clear and well-written chapters provide engaging discussions of the methods of accessing, generating, and analyzing social science data, using methods ranging from reflexive historical analysis to critical ethnography. Reflecting on their own research experiences, the contributors offer an inside, applied perspective on how research topics, evidence, and methods intertwine to produce knowledge in the social sciences.

Interpretation and Method : Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

At the heart of attitudinal and strategic explanations of judicial behavior is the assumption that justices have policy preferences. In this paper we employ Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to fit a Bayesian measurement model of ideal points for all justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1953 through 1999. We are particularly interested in determining to what extent ideal points of justices change throughout their tenure on the Court. This is important because judicial politics scholars oftentimes invoke preference measures that are time invariant. To investigate preference change, we posit a dynamic item response model that allows ideal points to change systematically over time. Additionally, we introduce Bayesian methods for fitting multivariate dynamic linear models to political scientists. Our results suggest that many justices do not have temporally constant ideal points. Moreover, our ideal point estimates outperform existing measures and explain judicial behavior quite well across civil rights, civil liberties, economics, and federalism cases.

/pdf/dynamic-ideal-point-estimation-via-markov-chain-monte-carlo-39e3lfzyfr.pdf

Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953-1999

To sketch an institutional approach, this paper elaborates ideas presented over 20 years ago in The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life (March and Olsen 1984). Institutionalism, as that term is used here, connotes a general approach to the study of political institutions, a set of theoretical ideas and hypotheses concerning the relations between institutional characteristics and political agency, performance and change. Institutionalism emphasizes the endogenous nature and social construction of political institutions. Institutions are not simply equilibrium contracts among self-seeking, calculating individual actors or arenas for contending social forces. They are collections of structures, rules and standard operating procedures that have a partly autonomous role in political life. The paper ends with raising some research questions at the frontier of institutional studies.

Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”

It is commonly assumed that Supreme Court justices' votes largely reflect their attitudes, values, or personal policy preferences. Nevertheless, this assumption has never been adequately tested with independent measures of the ideological values of justices, that is, measures not taken from their votes on the Court. Using content analytic techniques, we derive independent and reliable measures of the values of all Supreme Court justices from Earl Warren to Anthony Kennedy. These values correlate highly with the votes of the justices, providing strong support for the attitudinal model.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400083374

Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Supreme Court decision making

While studies of public confidence in institutions have long been a part of the public opinion literature, systematic analysis of public confidence in America's lower courts has been missing. This is troubling, especially since support for the rule of law is integral to a democracy and support for courts essential to the operation of the rule of law. I offer an explanation of public support for lower courts, finding that experience with courts, perceptions regarding the fairness of court procedures, and choices made over institutional design all play a role in explaining the public's support for state courts.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00455.x

Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts

While past research has demonstrated widespread compliance in the Courts of Appeals with Supreme Court precedent (e.g., Gruhl 1980; Songer 1987; Songer, Segal, and Cameron 1994; Songer and Sheehan 1990), compliance is not automatic and is surely political. We examine compliance with Supreme Court overrulings of precedent-cases in which we might expect the lowest levels of compliance with Supreme Court policy prescriptions. We argue that several variables are relevant to the compliance decision and that those variables fall into two broad categories: characteristics of the Supreme Court precedent and characteristics of the circuit applying the precedent. In our event history analysis, we find that both precedent and circuit characteristics determine whether, and how quickly, a circuit follows a Supreme Court decision that overrules existing precedent; that is, unanimity, complexity, and the age of the overruled precedent, as well as the likelihood of Supreme Court review, are related to the compliance deci...

Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alteration of Precedent

Much work has been done on the correlates of confidence in the United States Supreme Court. However, very little research has been undertaken to discern the correlates of confidence in state and local courts. Using survey data from Louisiana, we examine confidence in state and local courts. We focus on the role of experience, arguing that the opportunity for wide participation in these courts makes the confidence calculation different from that of a remote institution like the US Supreme Court. We find that, indeed, experience matters and further, that type of experience matters. Those with more stake in the outcome of the court case and less control over it (e.g., defendants) are least confident in state and local courts, while those with little stake and substantial control (e.g., jurors) are most confident in them. Procedural justice concerns also loom large in the confidence calculation for these lower courts. Timeliness, courtesy, and equal treatment all affect public confidence.

Confidence in the courts: a comparison of users and non-users.

Existing scholarship on the voting behavior of U.S. Courts of Appeals judges finds that their decisions are best understood as a function of law, policy preferences, and factors relating to the institutional context of the circuit court. What previous studies have failed to consider, however, is that the ability to predict circuit judge decisions can vary in substantively important ways and that judges, in different stages of their careers, may behave distinctively. This article develops a theoretical framework which conceptualizes career stage to account for variability in voting by circuit judges and tests hypotheses by modeling the error variance in a vote choice model. The findings indicate that judges are more predictable in their voting during their early and late career stages. Case characteristics and institutional features of the circuit also affect voting consistency.

Sara C. Benesh

Papers

Supreme Court decision making

Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts

Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alteration of Precedent

Confidence in the courts: a comparison of users and non-users.

Change over Tenure: Voting, Variance, and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals