Impression Formation in 12 Angry Men

Running head: Impression formation
IMPRESSION FORMATION

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Impression formation
12 angry men is an American film that belongs to the genre of courtroom drama. In the
film, one teenage boy was accused of murdering his own father and the responsibility of the
ultimate decision making fell upon the 12 jurors who were present in all the trials where two
witnesses claimed that the boy was guilty of murder (imdb.com, 2019). Now, irrespective of
many evidences in support of the accused boy, all the jurors decided to vote for the fact that the
defendant was guilty except one juror (juror 8). The formation of the collaborative judgment of
the 12 jurors was based upon their initial impression about the accused boy and not on any
rational set of arguments.
Impression formation refers to a psychological process that insists a person to give an
overall impression about an individual by integrating certain information about that person.
Among many aspects of this impression formation, one of the important aspect or effect is
stereotypes effect. In this study, it has been investigated how the stereotypes effect worked in the
movie to form an impression about the defendant that he was guilty of murder.
There was one particular scene when everyone, except one juror, voted that the accused
was guilty without going into any rational argumentations. Some of the jurors voted just because
they were either in hurry or so much bored that they did not want to think rationally about the
case (Marlow, Dabbish & Herbsleb, 2013). However, there were some jurors who came up with
the judgment that the boy was guilty on the basis of their deeply rooted social prejudices.
Social prejudice is a form of stereotyping where people perceive another person by
evaluating not their personalities but by judging where they come from. For example, in the film,
Juror 10 says people belonging from slums should not be trusted and that they can murder
anyone just for fun (Frasca, Ravazzi, Tempo & Ishii, 2013) Now, social prejudice is very much
visible here that hints at how stereotyping is formed based on personal biases or opinions.
Apart from that, social influence works as another factor that helps the process of
stereotyping to be initiated. This influence can be seen in the decision making of most of the
jurors that were manipulated by the judgment of juror 3. This happened because other judges did
not have any strong argument to hold on to and for that reason they decided to follow juror 3 and
join in the process of stereotyping.