Psychosocial Dynamics of Twelve Angry Men Social-Psychology

¶ … Psychosocial Dynamics of Twelve Angry Men

Social-Psychology of Twelve Angry Men

As a portrayal of a microcosm of society -- enhanced by its drill-down into the 1950s era in which the plot unfolds -- few films are as excruciatingly accurate as 12 Angry Men. The story lends itself to analysis of team dynamics and conflict resolution techniques, with the promise of extending beyond explicit attributes, such as an all-male cast, and less explicit themes, such as ambiguous hints about ethnicity and race.

The film 12 Angry Men is a story about the deliberations of a jury in a capital murder case that takes place in New York City in 1957. An 18-year-old non-Caucasian male, who is apparently from marginalized socio-economic strata, has been accused of stabbing his father to death. A jury of 12 men will deliberate his guilt or innocence against a backdrop of an automatic death sentence for a guilty verdict. The stage play origin of the story is evident in the staging with all of the film action occurring in the jury room, representing a single afternoon and evening during which the deliberations of the jury take place. At the onset, the case is considered to be an open-and-shut matter, but all the jurors must believe in the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt -- the verdict must be unanimous. But as the prejudices, preconceptions, and disagreements of the jurors unfold, raw notions about legal trials, minorities, and the stark range of perspectives and opinions steer the jurors off a sure course.

The identity of two of the jurors is revealed at the end of the film in an epilogue when juror #8 (Davis) and juror # 9 (McCardle) introduce themselves on the courthouse steps. All of the jurors are identified by number, as follows: #1 high school football coach (also the foreman of the jury), #2 bank teller, #3 owner of a messenger service business, #4 stock broker, #5 hospital nurse, #6 painter, #7 salesman, #8 architect, #9 an older man, #10 garage owner, #11 watchmaker, and #12 advertising executive. In this manner, the jurors are both known to the audience -- and to each other -- and not known. That this is so adds a level of relevancy to the interactions of the members of the jury for whom socio-economic status and educational attainment may be assumed accordingly.

Analysis of Conflict and Dynamics

Identification of conflicts. Through the backstories of the characters in the film, the conflicts are illustrated. Jurors #1 and #2 don't want to ruffle feathers and are just eager for an expedient conclusion -- they want to escape this forced "hostage" situation with little to no pain. Juror #3 is self-made man and competitive to the point of trying to bully everyone he sees as being a potential competitor. Juror #4 believes in the power of objective deductive reasoning. Juror #5 can identify with the defendant as someone who has grown up on the streets, fighting to survive, but he is so desperate to distance himself from the painful associations that he asserts the defendant is guilty. Juror #7 and, to a lesser extent, juror #6 are mistrustful of people who differ from them -- people who are foreigners, say. Jurors #10 and #11 believe strongly in the infallibility of the legal system and hold to the idea that the defendant was arrested for the crime because of a preponderance of evidence indicating he was guilty -- though the two jurors will come to recognize that this is not the situation. Juror #9 would prefer to just go along with the other member of the jury. Juror #12 holds everything up to the light of capitalism and marketing -- he seems to have no frame of reference for the criminal case or the other jurors.

In summary, it appears that there are just a handful of conflicts in the overheated and claustrophobic jury deliberation room: There are those in the jury who only wish the process will come to a quick end and are not concerned with the rightness of the verdict. Some of the conflict between the jurors is strictly interpersonal and has more to do with establishing dominance than with collaborating to achieve a reasoned outcome. Several members of the jury put their conscience in conflict with both group dynamics and a deliberation process that could easily tack to some course that is devoid of true steerage. In other words, the institutionalized process can take on a life of its own with the jurors only going through the motions. A undergirding conflict is that between empathy and objectivity. This is the conflict that the jurors who are fearful of the other must face down, and that those who could most easily align with the defendant must deny. Objectivity acts like a shield for the members of the jury who feel they must protect their privileged status. And objectivity acts like a sword for the members of the jury who believe that reasoned discourse will uncover truth and establish justice -- or at least the best approximation of truth and justice that they can achieve -- a verdict of not guilty.

The elementality of a verdict. The verdict that a jury hands down is a thing composed of many elements. Each of these elements brings some level of conflict into the deliberations. The primary element is that a unanimous verdict must be handed down -- this is an inescapable fact. Early in the film, the jurors agree to take an informal vote to see where they stand. This preliminary count results in 11 jurors agreeing that the defendant is guilty of murder, and one juror hesitant to commit to the absolute certainty that the verdict requires. Juror #8 stands alone in his vote of not guilty.

At one point in the first act, the certainty of the jurors' deliberations comes unhinged when juror #8 presents a knife to his fellow jurors as a demonstration that the knife presented as evidence against the defendant is not such a unique implement. The "unusual-looking knife" submitted as evidence in the trial has been identified as an Italian stiletto switchblade with a Filipino-style Kriss blade -- a configuration that is not apparently that rare, as argued by juror #8 in his effort to induce reasonable doubt among the jury. From this point forward in the film, juror #8 successfully provokes other members of jury, though he does so through patient and low-key but relentless questioning of statements made, arguments posed, and evidence provided from the trial. The certainty of the members of the jury is further eroded by his efforts -- and the snowball effect that he creates -- until only three jurors maintain that the defendant is guilty and eight have changed their vote to not guilty. The jurors who are steadfast in their judgment of the guilt of the defendant include juror #3 (the owner of the messenger service), juror #4 (the stockbroker), and juror #10 (the owner of the garage).

Exploration of Intra-Psychic Processes

Thompson and Nadler (2000) put forth a theory of cognitive bias in order to provide a framework for resolving blocked conflict resolution processes. People are typically not aware of these cognitive biases, according to Thompson and Nadler (2000), since they tend to rely on their usual ways of thinking during under typical circumstances. However, conflict situations require less error-prone thinking and more objective judgments than do ordinary situations (Thompson & Nadler, 2000). In their words,

In conflict, bias is apt to occur because conflict often leads to inadequate communication between the negotiating parties; arousal of emotional tensions that constrict thinking to stereotypes and to black-and-white viewpoints; primary focus on opposed interests; and anxiety, which may propel one to deny the conflict or flee into agreement before thinking through the consequences (Thompson & Nadler, 2000, p. 214)

According to Thompson and Nadler (2000), there are four particularly common kinds of bias, and each holds the potential for certain related effects. The authors identify these biases as follows: (1) Tendency to simply the conflict; (2) tendency to exaggerate the level of opposition between the parties; (3) tendency to create a false dichotomy between competition and cooperation; and (4) tendency to favor one's own interests even while trying to be objective and fair (Thompson and Nadler, 2000).

The tendency of the jurors to simplify the conflict is apparent in their reliance on stereotypical information and their rejection of information that does not conform to their perspective (Thompson & Nadler, 2000). Oversimplification is also characterized by a knee-jerk defensiveness that distorts true cause-and-effect relationships (Thompson & Nadler, 2000). The strong emotional undercurrent of act one is testimony to power of this bias, in that, it curtails self-awareness and emphasizes a climate of blame and retaliation.

The third bias presented by the authors has an interesting application to the processes of juries in deliberation. Thompson and Nadler (2000) assert that the contesting parties have to adopt a position as completely competitive or completely cooperative, a situation that leads to escalation, unreasonable or excessive concession, and solutions that are less than desirable. Certainly the jurors are bound to an either-or situation that is bounded by their ability to cooperate or their insistence on competition. As with other conflict resolution situations, the strongest solutions can be achieved through a balance of these dynamics. Nevertheless, the position of the jurors in act one is fundamentally competitive (there has been no real negotiation at that point) and their position at the end of the film is fundamentally cooperative -- but it is grounded in their opposition and competition. The not guilty verdict was reached on the basis of the jurors agreeing to disagree -- the disagreement itself a hallmark of their inability to conclude that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Judgment bias. As the jury proceeds to take votes throughout their sequestered time, they resort to private votes -- where jurors secretly write their votes on paper -- and public votes, which enable the jurors to see where they must direct pressure on the holdout jurors. The power of persuasive argument begins to take a toll. The jurors move further away from their certainty of the defendant's guilt. The shift to a count of nine guilty and 3 not guilty votes by the end of the first act brings a wave of resentment, frustration, outright criticism, and challenges to the reasoning of fellow jurors. Two of the small business owners, juror #3 (the messenger service) and juror #10 (the garage), become especially vocal in their hostility and accusations.

Founded and Unfounded Attribution

Attribution theory is a dominant pillar of conflict resolution (Deutsch & Coleman, 2000). Peace researchers have long understood the influence that education can have on attribution. Juror #8 assumes this position, as well, attempting to provide and thoroughly examine information in order to dispel or foster doubts about the guilt of the defendant. Through a resistant logjam of prejudice and ignorance Juror #9 has the perspective of a long life to see the value of this approach and changes his vote in order to support the efforts of juror #8 to shine daylight on the biases and presumptions of a majority of the members of the jury.

Anger and other emotions. Anger typically occurs against a backdrop of attribution, or what Allred (2000) refers to as accuser / accused biases that bring about escalation of conflict. Interactions among the jurors often erupt in vented displays of anger, a situation that Allred (2000) asserts is counterproductive to conflict resolution since it does not effectively dissipate anger. Rather, Allred suggests that a display of vented anger typically brings about more (increased) anger and "is an exercise in rehearsing the very attributions that arouse anger in the first place" (Allred, 2000, p. 249). Part of the problem, as Allred (2000) views it, is that the parties relying on attribution are often lacking in real information about the other party. Providing this information in the form of education or reasoning encourages empathy, de-escalates anger, and assists with more accurate reconceptualization of responsibility and culpability (Allred, 2000). This view is especially relevant to issues of racial or ethnic bias.

Racial and ethnic biases. Pruitt and Rubin (1986) theorize that certain condition contribute to low-conflict groups or societies. The authors suggest that conflict is lower where trust is high, power is balanced, resources are ample, norms are shared for compatible aspirations, and there are integrative options. One especially relevant observation by Pruitt and Rubin is that low-conflict communities tend to devise social or structural arrangements that "inhibit invidious comparisons, often by creating myths that define certain groups as more or less deserving, or by forms of physical or psychological segregation between unequal groups" (1986). This type of divide and conquer approach was active in the 1950s in the United States -- a time when racial segregation had only just begun to respond to the social justice and civil rights initiatives that characterized the next several decades. What this meant for the white male jurors in film was a dearth or absence of contact with people from other ethnic backgrounds or races. Although the film never specifically identifies the defendant as a person of color, it certainly alludes that this is so. When juror #5 changes his vote to not guilty, the audience is led to believe that his experience growing up in a slum neighborhood and working as a nurse in a hospital in Harlem have influenced his changed decision. One or two at a time, the jurors find that they cannot hold to the highest legal standard in the land -- the can no longer assert that they believe the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The order in which the jurors come to align themselves with a not guilty verdict is as follows: Juror #8 (the architect, played by Henry Fonda), juror #9 ( played by Joseph Sweeney), juror #5 ( the nurse played by Jack Klugman), juror #11 ( the watchmaker played by George Voskovec), juror #2 (the bank teller played by John Fiedler), juror #6 (a painter played by Edward Binns), juror #7 (a salesman played by Jack Warden), juror #12 (the advertising executive played by Robert Webber), juror #1 (a high school football coach and the foreman of the jury, played by Martin Balsam), juror #10 (a garage owner played by Ed Begley), juror #4 (a stock broker played by E.G. Marshal) and juror #3 (the owner of a messenger service played by Lee J. Cobb).

The escalation dynamic. Deutsch (2000) argued that a perceived injustice might function as a source of conflict, and if the injustice is due to an unfair process, the commitment of participants to the institutions and policies that regulate the process will be undermined. Moreover, reasonable disagreements over basic principles regarding justice and injustice may deteriorate such that individual portrayal their positions as more just and themselves as morally superior (Deutsch, 2000). Under these circumstances, the conflict resolution is unlikely to be stable, individual positions are hardened, defensiveness is provoked, and the overall conflict escalates into a win-lose schema (Deutsch, 2000).

The role of trust. Conceptually, interpersonal trust, or identification-based trust, is seen as vulnerable to the influence of time and familiarity, but trust may also simply be a function of attribution, inasmuch as levels of trust are related to a commonly understood social roles or official positions. As Lewicki and Wiethoff (2000) assert, identification-based trust is difficult to manage as it has a strong emotion underlayment and is sensitive to the influence of non-logical variables.

The jurors in the film have very little time to develop interpersonal trust, but they have ample time to test the influence of their preconceived notions as it relates to trusting the other jurors. The jurors represent a wide swath of socio-economic strata. A summarization of the livelihoods represented in the room evokes a number of potentially contentious pairings. Juror #3 (the owner of the messenger service) expresses his distrust, and perhaps his resentment, of juror #12 (the advertising executive) by referring to him as "the boy in the gray flannel suit."

Theoretical Elements of Conflict

In their theoretical treatment of constructive controversy, Johnson, et al. (2000) suggest that people tend to confront problems by first forming an initial conclusion to which they attach rationale to support their view. This situation roughly describes act one in which most of the jurors are interested in accomplishing the deliberation as quickly and easily as possible. However, as the jurors face opinions that differ from their own -- particularly when the associated rationales are robust -- they begin to lose resolve (Johnson, et al., 2000). This change in the group dynamics, which is clearly demonstrated in act two, tends to motivate the jurors to seek more information and to validate the reasoning to which they are being exposed (Johnson, et al., 2000). When controversies are constructive, the perspectives in flux make room for positions presented by others and, eventually, creative solutions result (Johnson, et al., 2000). Juror # 8 (the architect) appears to be the most confident that calm and methodical reasoning will enable the jurors to come to a fair and rational decision. Juror #8 would seem to support Johnson, et al. In their assertion that "American democracy was founded on the premise that 'truth' results from free and open-minded discussion in which opposing points-of-view are advocated and vigorously argued" (2000, p. 83).