Conformity In 12 Angry Men

In this tense, conlfict-filled, voltaic film, a group of 12 jurors were featured who must decide the guilt or innocence of an accused murder of a kid. Initially eleven of the jurors voted “guilty” while only one juror believe the kid did not commit the crime. However, through heated discussion, the jurors gradually changed to a “not guilty” verdict at the end.
Conformity played a huge role in the beginning of the film. It refers to the tendency of people to align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those around them. It's a powerful force that can take the form of overt social pressure or subtler unconscious influence. The twelve sat down in a room complaining how hot it was without air conditioning and toke their initial vote publicly.

Gordon Abra TA: Lauren Keblusek Take Home Final Exam without providing any valid reasons why when the majority voted “guilty.” Therefore, it strongly suggests that there was strong pressure to conform to the majority.
The juror played by Henry Fonda was the only one who voted “not guilty," yet, deliberation was forced to continue due to the requirement of an unanimous jury. As a result, The jurors reacted violently against this dissenting vote by Henry Fonda because some of them wanted to get over with the case as soon possible since they have somewhere else to be. For example, Jack Warden (the baseball guy) said it out loud that he had a baseball game to catch. Therefore, they decided to convince and persuade him into complying to the majority decision by going around the table and explained why they believe the boy to be guilty. Ed Begley (the racist guy) referred to the boy as a slum kid and made stereotypical as well as racist remarks such as slum kids who belong to certain ethnic groups are inherently rotten. There was an internal attributions which lead to his verdict of “guilty”. This immediately put Jack Klugman (former slum kid) who was born and raised in the slum on rage and argued back that being a slum kid has nothing correlated with criminal acts. In the beginning, Jack Klugman was not very vocal about his option, and seemed to be unsure about whether or not the boy was guilty. However, after Ed Begley’s racists remake on the bot being a slum

For example, the jurors failed to notice that the old man who claimed to have seen saw the boy running down the stairs was lying because he walked with a limp which made it impossible for him to walk from his room to down stairs in 15 secs. Moreover, they also failed to realize that a noisy train would have made it impossible to hear the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill ya.” All of these details would have disconfirmed their expectations, but were overlooked, which suggests a confirmation bias occurred. It refers to the tendency of only seeking information that confirms one’s already existed preconception, opinions or expectations and ignore disconfirming