"The Jury Process in Multi-Attribute Decision-Making."

The grand jury or the common jury share the mission of evaluating a wide variety of evidence presented by the plaintiff or the prosecutor and by the defendent concerning the details of a particular episode, whether law was broken, whether responsibility can be assessed, and what the penalty or redress, if any, should be. Legal counsel, judges, expert witnesses, casual witnesses, character witnesses, court reporters, court clerks, court police, media reporters, all play a vital role in the process. But none so vital as the actual process within the jury itself..

The jury must make one or more major decisions during a civil or criminal trial. The jury makes these decisions after hearing the evidence, and after hearing the law as explained by the judge. The jury is selected without obvious bias, is usually secluded from outside influences, and is continually required to turn its attention to the process of making a decision until a final verdict is reached. The verdict is the final decision, considered to be an optimal decision by the jury on the basis of the presented evidence. The range of possible verdicts constitute a range of potential solutions as offered by the judge. The evidence as developed by the plaintiff, the prosecutor, or the defendent are attributes of the event or problem, and thus constitute a multi-attribute system. The details of the multi-attribute system must be applied by each juror to the range of potential verdicts or decisions in order for the final optimal decision to be made. This jury process is often long, re-iterated, and tiresome, but the jury itself is often transformed during the process by the process.

It is suggested that this jury process is a paradigm of other multi-attribute decision-making systems, and that the change that occurs within each juror and among all jurors is a form of parallel thinking, thinking in which previously divergent thought patterns now assume a parallel pattern within the single individual or within the entire group. The court process overall is one closely resembling the techniques of matrix cognition, in which the data are presented for evaluation, ranked for importance, and matched to the requirements of each potential solution, resulting in the calculation of the final optimal decision (1).

Multi-attribute decision-making is characterized by the selection of one from many potential solutions on the basis of maximizing the satisfaction of  n  problem attributes, each of which is ranked in importance by comparison with the  n-1  other attributes in a series of two-point comparisons. These can be arrayed in a reciprocal matrix, and then solved for the principal eigenvalue and its corresponding eigenvector, which is then used in a matrix cognition system to calculate the optimal solution (1).

When only one user is involved in the decision, the matrix cognition system guides the user to each required comparison and to each estimation of satisfaction. Iteration of these processes imposes a certain repetition of approach upon the user, strongly favoring a parallel approach by the user in the series of comparisons and satisfactions. It is suggested that under usual response circumstances, the parallel approach by the user serves the purpose of creating conditions of equality of treatment in comparing each attribute and estimating its contribution to each of the proposed solutions, thus decreasing any variance of results upon repeated runs.(2).

Such parallel thinking within the single user during multi-attribute decision-making may find its counter-part in parallel thinking among the other users in the same run during group decision-making toward a group optimal decision. Clearly, once users have joined a group to effect a group solution, they can be expected to focus on the potential solutions and the problem attributes, and when guided by a matrix cognition system, appear to show increasing degrees of a parallel approach to solution of the decision. Such a parallel approach can only be achieved with difficulty within some groups, reflecting the original diversity of approach among the users before joining the group, and also perhaps reflecting antagonisms arising within the group after its formation. If the decision-making process is repeated anonymously within the group on the same problem attributes and potential solutions, an estimate of the external variance within the group and the internal variance within each member of the group for this decision can be made.

If external variance increases while internal variance decreases during group decision-making, it is suggested that each user is finding the matrix cognition system efficient, but the users are not resolving their mutual differences of approach. Conversely, if both external and internal variance are decreasing during group decision-making, it is suggested that each of the users is becoming both more efficient and more aligned to the approaches of the other members of the group. Finally, any increase in internal variance for any user is prima-facie evidence of fatigue and potential rejection of the matrix cognition system.

Initially, high internal variance within a single user reflects an initial ambivalent state of competing values for the attributes of the problem within that user, while a later decrease in internal variance during repeated runs suggests a parallelization of approach toward these attributes within this user. Similarly, high initial external variance among the members of a group reflects the initial diversity of the group for the values of attributes under evaluation, while a later decrease in external variance during repeated runs suggests a parallelization of approach toward these attributes among the group. Ambivalence and diversity may not initially speed determining the optimal decision, but may cause re-appraisal by the individual and the group, parallelization of approach both by the single user and by the group, and eventually may result in a more stable decision.

The neurophysiology of individual parallel thinking and the sociology of group parallel thinking are under intense study. It is hoped that the balanced polymorphisms of ambivalence within the individual and diversity within the group will not prevent the determination of optimal solutions by either the individual or the group. Undoubtedly, repeated runs can be very instructive and enlightening. Computer systems can be programmed to employ both multi-threading and multi-processing (3), both of which utilize forms of parallel processing analogous to parallel thinking. We will soon see how useful these systems can be in our quest for optimal decisions (4)

References:
1. Frenster JH, "Matrix Cognition in Medical Decision-Making", Proceedings of the AAMSI Congress on Medical Informatics, volume 7, pp. 131-134, May 11-13, 1989, San Francisco, California.

2. Frenster JH, "Expert Systems and Open Systems in Medical Artificial Intelligence", Proceedings of the AAMSI Congress on Medical Informatics, volume 7, pp. 118-120, May 11-13, 1989, San Francisco, California.

3. Miller PL, Factor M, Gelernter D, Sittig DF, Cohn AI, and Rosenbaum S, "A Parallel Process Lattice Model for an Intelligent Cardiovascular Monitor", Proceedings of the AAMSI Congress on Medical Informatics, volume 7, pp. 121-125, May 11-13, 1989, San Francisco, California.

4. Mazur DJ, "Judgmental Psychology, Law, and Ethics", Medical Decision Making, vol 17, number 2, pages 239-240, April, 1997.

parallelthinking: "The Jury Process as Paradigm."