Twelve Angry Men

The objective of this paper is to relate the movie twelve angry men to the course book social psychology. The film is about twelve men who are on are deciding the fait of a young man who is accused of killing his father. In the jury room the discussions, reactions, and occurances that took place can relate to the course book Social psychology fifth edition in many ways. The movie demonstrates prejudice views, group think, normative social influence, minority influence, automatic and controlled process as well as the attribution theory.

First off one major concept that was apparent through out the movie is prejudice which in its slef has three components. There is evidence of prejudice because of the attitudes, actions and thoughts that some

of the jury members exhibit throughout there deliberation. Prejudice is defined as our negative attitudes towards people in a certain group soley because they are members of a particular group. there is evidence for this in the very beginning of the movie where we see a strong dislike for the boy on trail. We assume these types of attitudes are present because of the way some of the jurors speak about the boy in question. They use sayings such as “he is lucky he got a trial” or “we arn’t suppose to belive this kid knowing what he is” or “even these stuff kids should all be locked up”. They speak very negatively with out even knowing the boy. The book states along with attitudes prejudice also has a cognitive aspect which is called stereotypes and a behaviour aspect which is discrimination. Stereotypes are assumptions we make that all members of a group have the same characteristics. The moment we see stereotypes brought up in the movie is when we find out the young man in question is from the slums. Once this fact is know by the jury they start making generalizations saying “ the slums bread criminals”. The reason we can classify this as a sterotype is because one it’s assuming that everyone from “the slums” is a criminal. Even with new information it was hard to change certain assumptions jury members had. Also stereotypes can lead to discrimination which is wrongful action upon a person because of there membership in a certain group. The members of the jury were so quick to judge and convict the boy on trail based on there assumptions and attitudes, even if his sentence was death. Even though this cannot compare to real prejudice in our daily lives the movie did showcase some forms of prejudice. We see that just because this young boy was different than those on the jury they were not going to give him fair deliberation. If it was not for the one one juror who stood up for this boys rights he could have been given a wrongful sentence because of there jurors attitudes and assumptions.
Secondly we can relate the film to the theory called group think. Which is “ defined as a kind of thinking in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner”. This theory first came about from Ivering Janis. He belived there had to be certain criteria met for group think to be likely to occur. Some criteria are things such as group cohesion or having a distinct leader. Recen re-evaluate of janis’s has shown that group think occurs more often then original thought and all criteria does not have to be apperent for it to occur. The jury in twelve angry men did exibit signs that were common when group think is apparent. In the beginning majority of the men felt the young boy was guilty or it seemed they were to scared to voice there opinions. So we can assume the group was mostly unified in there opinions or didn’t “want to rock the boat”. As well the men were isolated from outside opinion. The group did have a leader who tried to organize and explain what the jury needed to do in order to come up with a verdict. to create groupthink there needs to be a supposed threat . while the majority voted guilty there was one man who voted not guilty. We can see as a threat because many of the jury members tried to convince him to conform to the groups verdict. The group was very hostile towards the man that disagreed with the majority. An indicator of groupthink is when someone brings up aposing points the majority trys to get them on ther side. An example of this indicator was when the eleven men on the jury who voted guilty felt it was there resposability to convinve the jury member who aposed there views to vote with the majority. The group was also very disorganized when it came to making a decision. They had no clear plan to come up with a verdict and took most of the evidence at face value. Looking at this evidence it is apparent that groupthink was a part of the juries decision making process because most of the criteria was met and some of the signs were there.
A third concept that relates to the movie is normative social influence which is “ the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them; this type of conformity results in public compliance with the groups beliefs and behaviours but not necessarily in private acceptance”. In the book a study was conducted by Solomon asch called “ the asch line judgment studies”. Her group members were given two cards and told to figure out which lines were closest in size on both cards. This is repeated multiple times each time the answer being obvious. They were then told to voice there answers outloud and some group members purposely gave the wrong answer. Even if the answer was wrong majority of group members would conform to the wrong answer because everyone else did. Most participants of this study didn’t want to look like an outcast by voting differently then the group. When the task was performed in private most of the answers were given correctly. There was a similar situation that occurred in the movie when the jurors were asked to vote weather the acused was guilty of killing his father. The other jurors hesitate and look around to see if they should raise their hands. In this moment you feel they felt pressure to conform because everyone else is voting a certain way. As the film goes on even though these men conformed to the group decision you feel they my have not necesaryly agreed with there original vote. Many of them men who hesitated to cast there vote did not have strong arguments on why they felt the boy was guilty and one didn’t even bring his opinions foraward at first. When asked to take a private vote later on one of the jurors ended up changing his vote. These men are all strangers and will face noreprocussion from there vote, but yet when it came to a public vote most of them conformed to the majorities verdict even though it was wrong. This showing us members of the jury comformed due to normative pressures can occur just because they did not face ridicual from there peers.
The next concept that relates to twelve angry men is minority influence.

This is when “the minority of group members can influence the behaviour or belifs of the majority”. It is said if we only go along with the marjority that we may never make change. It is a very hard to change a majorites view because there are many things that inhibit a person from seeing a situation cleary. As was stated earlier many people let prejudice cloud there judgment or feel pressure to comform to avoid conflict. But in some cases minorities of a group can make there opinions heard and sway the majority. The key factor is swaying peoples opinion is consistency. When you are arguing your points you need to stress them over and over. In the movie we have one man who stands alone and votes not guilty, so we can see him as the minority. Throughout the movie this man is consistant in his view, he is not sure the boy is guilty or not but wants to look at all the facts to give him a fair verdict. It is said if a person wavers on there view when in the minority group it is hard for others to see there points as valid or justified. In the text wendy wood and colleagues show how minority influences can overcome the majority view. It is unlikely that this group can sway opinions and views through normative views do to the fact they don’t have enough power or influence. Minority groups have to use informational social influence which is defined in the text as “conforming because we belive that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous event is more correct then ours and will help us choos an appropriate course of action”. In other words to get people on there side a minority group needs to come up with new and surprising information so there opositon can take a closer look at the issue being debated. When the majority takes a closer look at this new information they may see the minority view has value and mau change there view points. This is evident in the movie when the eleven jurors voted to

convict the young man of murder and the twelth juror voted not guilty. Through out the movie the majority tried to convince this man to change his vote, but he stood his ground and tried to get the other jurors to look at the evidence more closely and bringing in new information. An example would be when the jury brought in the murder weapon which was supposedly the only one of it’s kind. The man aposing the majority brought in new information by showing he bought a knife exactly like the murder weapon at a pawn shop. After the knife was brought out a secret vote was held and a one member of the majority changed his vote.