Analysis of the Movie ‘12 Angry Men’

After watching the movie '12 angry men' again, I found that through the movie, there are several organizational behavior lessons that are highlighted throughout the film and the interaction of the juries. Because when I watched it for the first time, I kept my focus on the plot of the film, and it was hard to observe the detail. I found out that there are different types of conflicts, the formation of a team, and the role of the leader and follower presented in the film.

The first lesson I figured out from the movie is the conflicts between the jury, which is the most obvious one. Beginning with jury number eight, who disagreed with other juries and started the simple conflict. The simple conflict occurred when there is a disagreement and this is the most common conflict in daily life. Almost every jury experienced a simple conflict with the rest of the jury. According to research, when 'perceived cognitive differences in a novel task may lead to a more thorough investigation of the task issues and hence better decisions' (Cosier and Rose, 1977, 388). If Davis, jury number eight, did not disagree at first then there would not have been a deeper discussion on whether the boy was guilty or not. An innocent life might be killed because of a lack of investigation. Therefore, sometimes when there is someone with a different opinion, it will be better to listen first before starting an argument. And there is also an ego conflict, which I find through jury number three who was the last person voted for not guilty. Jury number three had a deep prejudice against children who grow up in a slum. Plus, his trouble with his son made the disdain toward the boy on trial even worse. It was not until the very end that jury three finally realized that he was not being attacked personally and his ego was the only reason he was voting for guilty. When this kind of conflict happened in a small group, the best way to resolve it is not to make the issue personal.

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The second lesson I like to discuss is the formation of the group. The progress of the juries is cohesive with Tuckman's model of team development. The team has already formed when the movie started as they were selected to be part of the jury. The forming stage continued as the jury member started introducing themselves and guided the direction to form the goal of the team - deciding whether the boy was guilty or not. When the storming stage started, the conflict between the jury also began with the first round of voting. In this stage, the goal was clear since eleven out of twelve jurors believed that the boy is guilty. The goal now has changed to convince juror eight. In the norming stage, the deliberation became more effective, and started to see progress. Before this discussion was closed off, every other jury believed in there was no way that the boy was not guilty except juror eight. The norming stage took off when juror eight showed the identical knife with the murder weapon. For example, juror nine started to take it might be reasonable that the boy had not committed the crime into account. Based on Tuckman's group development theory, 'cohesiveness is a term that has often been associated with the development of norms in the group, and the stage of cohesiveness(norming) is always argued as preceding a stage of effective group functioning (performing)' (Clive & David, 2008) The performing stage started from more arguments are made in favor of the not guilty side. This is the part where I think the jury had an effective discussion and felt obligated to explore the facts in order to give a fair verdict. Jury members used their personal experience and knowledge to help each other to reach the not guilty verdict. And the adjourning stage is the final stage but was not go into much detail in the film about the follow-up after the team's decision. However, it could tell through the interaction between juries. The team walked out of a small room in peace and jury numbers eight and three had a little chat outside the court. Also, the rain stopped at the end which I think is the implication of a successful ending.

The third lesson is about the different types of power. According to the textbook, there are five different types of power: coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, expert power, and referent power. In formal groups, legitimate power is the most common power, however, the jury, in this case, is just a temporary team and juror one was the only one who was assigned as the leader but he cannot give the verdict on his own. Therefore, I don't see any formal power present in the movie. On the other hand, there was a lot of personal power I observe throughout the discussion. Expert power means influence exerted by experience, knowledge in a particular field, and special skills. The most impressive expert power I found in the film is juror nine, an intelligent, observant, and wise senior. I think he is an expert on 'senior' which is important because one of the witnesses is the elder. The juror used his experience to tell the rest of the jury that the lonely old man might just want to obtain the focus. This thought led the jury started to question the credibility of the testimony. Another expert power was juror five's knowledge about knives and juror eight knowledge about architecture. They demonstrated their power and nobody denied it since 'the extent of individual's expert power is relative to the expert power of those they are trying to influence' (Roy, 1978) and they were the only expert on the jury.

The last lesson but not the least one is the leader and follower roles. There was an interesting thing that I saw: juror eight was not only the leader who lead the discussion he was also the follower when he once said after the first-round debate 'Vote again. I'll sit this one out.' In the film, juror one was the team leader who tried to lead the team to make a consensus. He engaged in process leadership by attempting to keep the discussion running smoothly and giving suggesting rules. I think he really did a good job because he was 'the only person in the room who did not press his agenda as forcefully as many of the other jurors' (Stephen & Robert, 2005). It is common for people to put themselves first when they are making a decision. Especially for juror seven who kept telling about how he wanted to finish the discussion quickly and went to the baseball game. It was a difficult job to lead the team in which each of the members was first met and the team should make such an important decision. If I were the foreman, at the beginning of the discussion, I would let juror eight speak first. Because he was the only person who had the opposite opinion, to let the arguments later more to the point. Also, some of the jurors did not have a clear idea of whether the boy was guilty or not. They just follow the majority since the first vote was by showing hands. Having juror eight to sharing his perspective can make these no-idea jurors start thinking. Perhaps this can help the discussion go deeper and reach cohesiveness quicker.

Reference

1. Clive J. Fullagar &David O. Egleston. (2008). Norming and Performing: Using Microworlds to Understand the Relationship Between Team Cohesiveness and Performance. Journal of Applied Social Psychology,38(10), 2574-2593
2. Lanise B. (2018, May 22). Group Conflict in the Film 12 Angry Men. Retrieved from https://reelrundown.com/movies/Group-conflict-in-the-film-12-Angry-Men
3. Richard A. Cosier & Gerald L. Rose. (1977). Cognitive conflict and goal conflict affect task performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance,19(2), 378-391
4. Roy Martin. (1978). Expert and referent power: A framework for understanding and maximizing consultation effectiveness. Journal of School Psychology,16(1),49-55
5. Stephen A. Armstrong & Robert C. Berg (2005) Demonstrating Group Process Using 12 Angry Men, The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 30(2), 135-144