Juror's Injustice In 12 Angry Men

The second phenomena refers to a personality and social psychology trait that some people seem to be unconsciously aware of until an outsider, or outsiders in this case, confronts those people to the point they do become aware of their injustice. In 12 Angry Men, Juror 10 possessed and expressed this certain trait several times during the film. He was displaying his prejudices towards the defendant of the murder trial, who was an 18 year old male from the slums accused of killing his abusive father, because of where he came from. The first incident happened near the beginning of the discussion when the 12 jurors left the court room and began settling into the jury room to begin their voting of guilty or not guilty. They stated their votes

Juror 10 spoke of his prejudices by stating a fallacy of composition (Pope 2003) that he had lived his whole life amongst people like the accused and assumed he knew exactly the kind of people they all were. After being confronted the first time, Juror 10 still held onto his prejudice opinions as a means to his guilty verdict. It wasn’t until the near ending of the film that Juror 10’s prejudices became evident to himself. This is the second incident that happened after the vote where 9 jurors voted not guilty and 3 voted guilty. It happened during his speech about the defendant and the ‘dishonest’ people from the slums, how they don’t value life and how murdering someone is more of a sport to them. His prejudice was amplified to the highest level- but without physical destruction, to try proving his point. As many of the jurors disagreed with his statements and left the table, he began to realize that he was the only one with his beliefs. He left the table soon after that to contemplate his new realization, alone and silent. He had time to reflect on his life before he succumbed to the vote of not

No one is completely prejudice-free. Stress is something that everyone has and can deal with it or not deal with it in their own unique ways. A way of coping with stress is through use of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are normal to have and originate in our egos but they can also lead to extreme behaviors (Feist, Feist, and Roberts 2013). Usually defense mechanisms are in our unconscious and are there to help fight off negative thoughts or emotions when stressful events and situations arise. The third psychological phenomena is the defense mechanism to displace emotions or displacement. According to Feist, Feist, and Roberts (2013), displacement is a redirection of unwanted urges placed onto other people or objects to conceal the original impulse. Juror 3 had many incidents where he unveiled his displacement of anger towards his estranged son onto the defendant, who just so happened to be accused of murdering his father. The first incident takes place a good amount of time after the first vote where Juror 3 introduced his son to Juror 8 by showing him a picture and telling him a story about how he taught his son to become a man and that it