  In this study, groups who could not reach a consensus were investigated using
the group polarization paradigm. The purpose was to explore the conditions
leading to intragroup disagreement and attitude change following disagreement
among 269 participants. Analysis indicated that the probability of consensus
was low when the group means differed from the grand mean of the entire sample.
When small differences among group members were found, depolarization (reverse
direction of polarization) followed disagreement. These results suggested the
groups which deviated most from the population tendency were the most likely to
cause within-group disagreement, while within-group variances determined the
direction of attitude change following disagreement within the group.
