12 Angry Men Essay Research Paper Social

12 Angry Men Essay, Research Paper Social Psychology The movie 12 Angry Men gives us an inside look at our system of justice at work. It portrays the roles of our peers in deciding our fate after a trial. In the movie, we see twelve men from very different backgrounds and occupations come together to decide on the guilt or innocence of an eighteen-year-old boy. If he is found guilty, he will be sentenced to the electric chair. Each of the individual jurors can be compared in some way to the subjects we studied in class. For starters, I noticed one thing in the very beginning of the movie that interested me. The very first vote was taken by a show of hands. Being a Criminal Justice major, I know that the first vote is usually taken by secret ballot, to reduce bias and to

increase the chances of honest answers. Nevertheless, the first vote was by an anything but secret show of hands. The part that interested me the most was the vote for guilty. When asked to raise their hands for guilty, some jurors raised theirs right away. However, I began to see some hands that were going up slowly, only after their owners had looked at the other jury members. This seems to have a resemblance to Asch’s line experiment, in which Asch tested levels of conformity. In Asch’s experiment, subjects were more likely to give the same answer that everyone else gave, even if it was obviously wrong. This seems to explain the behavior of the first vote in the movie. As more and more hands went up for guilty, jurors who had not yet voted observed those who had, and

timidly raised their hands to conform. The foreman starts off trying his best to do his job. He tries to do what he thinks is right and always asks if the others agree with him. He also seems to be in good spirits. However, at one point in the movie someone remarks on the order in which they were supposed to go, and said it was not important. This seems to upset him, and he suggests that somebody else try running things if they don’t like the way he is doing it. At the end of the ensuing argument, he sits down and looks away. When Henry Fonda asks to explain something, he says “Brother I don’t care what you do.” One thing worth noting about the foreman is that he says that he is a football coach. Coaches aren’t usually used to having their methods questioned. They give

out instructions to their players, and expect them to be followed. The idea is that he is the expert, and he knows what’s best for the “team” in the long run. But as our studies this semester have shown, experts should sometimes be challenged. Juror number two, the bank teller, is just the opposite. He is one of the conformists in the original vote. He is a soft-spoken man, and he gets picked on and pushed around a lot. At one point he discusses an incident he had with a coworker, and says he got “really mad and almost said something”. In the jury room too, he has an altercation with somebody when he tries to stand up for himself, the other participant walks away. His response is to mumble “loudmouth” very softly, as if to make sure the other man does not hear.

Juror two doesn’t seem to have much self-esteem either, and in our text we find that people who have low self-esteem are more likely to conform, because they fear rejection or punishment from the group. Lee J. Cobb plays the third juror, who is interested in the “facts”. He seems to be more susceptible to the central, or factual, route to persuasion, rather than the peripheral, or emotional, route. He is unconvinced by the discussion of the others, but does not give a reason why. He begins to talk about kids, and how you can’t teach them anything. We then find out that he has not spoken to his son in 2 years because of a fight they had. Cobb’s character exhibits how situational factors can influence one’s opinion on matters. He appears to be stereotyping the youth of