Middle East Technical University – Northern Cyprus Campus

Levent Doğan – 2020188

Reflection Paper Regarding the Observation of 12 Angry Men Movie

In the partial fulfillment of the requirement for GPC 254

Dr. Canay Doğulu

 In this essay, three concepts of social psychology are considered while watching one

of the best movie ever named “12 Angry Men” (1957). The movie is about a decision of a

death sentence has to make by the jury including 12 men for a young boy who is believed to

murder his father. After the courts, 12 men of the jury got together in a hot room. Most of

them think that it is going to be easy to decide since the evidences and comments of

eyewitnesses clearly show the reality which says that the boy is guilty and should be

executed. However, there is a man believing that the young boy could not be guilty depending

on the idea that both the evidences and comments of eyewitnesses are doubtful and what he

wants is only discussing about the issue before jumping to a decision. After they discuss on it,

everyone changes their vote to not guilty and I observe here many concepts of social

psychology such as conformity, acceptance, obedience, normative social influence,

informational social influence, group polarization, and groupthink. However, in this essay

only three of them which are conformity, prejudice, and informational & normative influences

have been chosen and explained by referring the example from the movie.

Starting with conformity which includes changed behaviors or beliefs depending on

the group pressure different from how one would act or think when being alone. At the

beginning of the discussion of the jury, they start talking about how to decide whether the

young boy is guilty or not. One of them offers that who thinks he is guilty raises his hand to

vote guilty. While they are doing that, some jurors raise their hands lately and they searched

for others to see if most of them raise or not. For those who decide delayed after seeing most

of the jurors vote for guilty, conformity occurs since they are affected by the decision of the

majority. In order to get rid of the conformity effect, one of the jurors offers an idea that

everyone should write his vote in a piece of paper and after that some votes for guilty change

to not guilty. It also proves that first voting with hands include conformity. The other concept

is prejudice in social psychology. According to Miles (2013), prejudice means “a

preconceived negative judgments of a group or individuals members” (pp. 309). In this

movie, the suspect is coming from Downtown where the crime rate is high and majority of the

members use drugs & alcohol and carry weapons. A juror called juror 8 does not think that

the young boy is guilty and he talks about how hard living in Downtown is. However, the

juror 10 does not like the people from Downtown and he believes that every people living

there like the young boy who is believed killing his father have committed a crime in his/her

life because his perception to this group is judgmental and negative meaning prejudice. The

last concept discussed on this essay is about informational and normative influence. People

can influence others by presenting persuasive arguments and thus informational influence

takes place. On the other hand, normative influence can be made by doing social comparison

which is boosted by group polarization and minority influence. In the movie, while juror 8

tries to show how the evidences are terrible juror 11 just wants to talk for the first time of the

discussion. He is close to the idea that the young boy is guilty but he wants to listen the 8th

juror’s arguments. After he listens, the uncertainty of his mind has gone and he changes his

vote to not guilty which is what social psychology called informational influence between 11th

and 8th jurors. In the meantime, other jurors saying that he is guilty influence each other by

comparing the number of votes for guilty and not guilty which is called normative influence.

To conclude, the movie named 12 Angry Man is a classic and includes many concepts

of social psychology including conformity, obedience, acceptance, prejudice, informational

and normative influence etc. The movie shows us how people can conform while making a

judgment about a young boy’s life while their beliefs are different than what they conform.

Also, in the movie, it can obviously be observed that a prejudice of a man towards a group

affects his decision about executing a young boy even being uncertain about whether he is

responsible for the murder of his father or not. Moreover, two types of influence

(informational vs. normative) take place in the movie. One man believing that the young boy
could not be guilty influence other one who thinks just the opposite by giving arguments and

information about what could be happened other than what is believed to be happen about the

murder whereas most of the jury members influence each other by just comparing the number

of votes for guilty decision. I have learned lots of things while watching the movie and

enjoyed watching even though I had biases about an old movie.

 References

Lumet, S. (Director). (1060). 12 Angry Men.

Myers, D. G. (2013). Social Psychology (11th ed.) New York, NY: Mc Graw Hill.