View the movie, 12 Angry Men (1957), Orion-Nova Productions. Write a paper of 40
ID: 3458848 • Letter: V
Question
View the movie, 12 Angry Men (1957), Orion-Nova Productions.
Write a paper of 400-500 words in which you do the following:
Discuss patterns of persuasion, conformity, and minority influence seen in the film.
Analyze issues of prejudice observed while watching the jurors deliberate.
Determine if there was evidence of cognitive heuristics. If so, where/how did it occur?
Interpret the catalyst of change that resulted in the outcome of the film, based on your perceptions.
Discuss if the group in the film demonstrate group polarization, or if they were at risk for groupthink.
Include specific examples from the film to support your ideas/claims. Be sure to include proper APA citations for your examples.
You must include two to three peer reviewed scholarly sources to support your claims in you writings.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
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Explanation / Answer
Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.
(Answer) ‘Twelve Angry Men’, is a classic film that is shot in a single room with twelve characters that are doing their jury-duty. The case they are working one is one of those seemingly clear-cut cases. The alleged murderer was a young boy, found with a bloody knife in his had near the dead body of the victim that he had reasonable cause to murder.
The case itself is not particularly the focus of the film. The film focuses on this one jury member who chooses to stand for truth and how he convinces the others who are reluctant at best and obstinate at worst to join him in making the right decision. Their decision would be the fate of an innocent boy.
In the film, the men want to go home early and finish off their boring jury duty. To do so, they pick the lazy and easy option as opposed to weighing the details and extrapolating from the available evidence that the case might actually have more to it.
This film highlights the importance of details and extensive discourse. This is why the film has become fairly important in today’s world. Most issues have been reduced to an “all or nothing” or “yes or no” situation. These decisions involve the lives of people and mostly the lives of innocent individuals.
In the film, the protagonist begins to make the reasonable individuals understand that their decision might have been hasty and wrong. He then manages to convince the reluctant individuals to see the sensible and compassionate options. Towards the end of the film, he manages to convince the severely obstinate individuals that being prejudice is simply the hasty and lazy answer. He manages to convince the people around him that being prejudice is the lazy assumption one can make about a person depending on the ostensible information. There are times when even the information provided might be skewed by society or in the case of the film, the witnesses themselves.
It is up to the rational and responsible citizen to make the assiduous decision to be compassionate and just towards all individuals of society, even if the support might be scarce. This brilliance of this film is that all disagreement and fights are verbal, emotional and psychological. There are no hand-to-hand combats or any such scenes. Cognitive heuristics or presumptions about individuals are the real enemies that are fought in the film.
With prejudice as the enemy, the protagonist chooses to fight his cause with group polarisation. He does this by attempting to gradually convince the men, one after the other, to perhaps consider that this boy might actually be innocent. In doing so, the protagonist eventually gathers enough evidence to actually prove the boy’s innocence and convince all of the men to be impartial. The scene about the eye-glasses even makes the witness’ account – flawed. The older man who notices the mark’s on the nose of the witness, simply asks, “Could those marks be made by anything other than eyeglasses?” This makes them realise that the victim’s vision was impaired and might have given a false testimony.
According to the scholarly article titled, ‘Decision making and cognitive biases’, “Cognitively (and perceptually), we base our assessments on a limited amount of data, for reasons of speed, expediency, and sometimes data availability. Heuristics and other cognitive shortcuts thus function as a path to achieve a “good enough” assessment, as opposed to the optimal assessment that might result if one had unlimited information and time with which to make decisions.”
Ehrlinger, Joyce & Readinger, W.O. & Kim, Bora. (2016). Decision-Making and Cognitive Biases. Encyclopedia of Mental Health. 10.1016/B978-0-12-397045-9.00206-8.
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