Analyzing Psychology of Persuasion in 'Twelve Angry Men' Film

This essay delves into the psychology of persuasion, using the film 'Twelve Angry Men' as a case study. The analysis explores how persuasion influences beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, particularly within a trial advocacy context. It examines the application of systematic and heuristic persuasion, as well as the impact of social psychology principles like Tajfel's Social Identity theory and groupthink. The essay highlights how personal values, biases, and group dynamics affect decision-making, as demonstrated by Juror 8's successful use of logic and rationale to sway the jury's opinion from guilty to not guilty. Ultimately, the essay concludes that groupthink is the overarching concept influencing the jurors' initial decisions, emphasizing the importance of challenging assumptions and considering alternative viewpoints.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION
PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION
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Introduction
Persuasion is defined as the attribute that can help in changing or influencing the pre-
set beliefs and attitudes, intentions, motivations or behaviours (Gass & Seiter, 2015). In the
context of trial advocacy, persuasion can be used to sway the opinions of the jury either in
favour of or against the accused. In this essay we will be looking at the influence of
persuasion from the classic 1957 film ‘Twelve Angry Men’ where a trial session saw a major
shift in the final outcome for a case that could have possibly altered the course of life of a
young boy (Lumet & Rose, 1957).
Discussion
The film ‘Twelve Angry Men’ is a classic example of an incident where personal
values and opinions can often cloud sound judgement. The movie displays how the aspect of
persuasion, even on the part of a single person can significantly alter the impressions of a
person, group or even an entire organisation. Schacter et al. (2011) highlights two significant
types of persuasion that can be seen in play. Systematic persuasion, where logic and
reasoning is used to alter the beliefs and thought process of the concerned parties, and
heuristic persuasion, where the focus is given on appeal to habit or emotion, both play crucial
roles in the film where the 8th juror successfully alters the decisions of the remaining eleven
jurors from guilty to not guilty. As it happens, the 8th juror was the only one who was able to
see through the established system and identify instances that did not match with the official
reporting of the crime against an 18 year old bay accused of stabbing his father to death. The
8th juror conducted his own personal research on multiple aspects of the case and highlighted
key instances that showed major discrepancies.
One key significance of the film is that it highlights, inadvertently, how the social
psychology plays a significant role in the film. Some of the jurors held beliefs that because

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the boy belonged to a slum, it is not a matter of question whether or not he committed the
crime but rather a confirmed ‘guilty’ decision. This aspect strongly identifies with Tajfel’s
Social Identity theory (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) which instantiates that the pre-existing
prejudices that an individual holds against a particular ‘other group,’ monitors and shapes the
decision making process that drives the set holders of the prejudice to conform to the group
that shares the same opinions. This is where the persuasion strategy implemented by the juror
comes into play. Juror 8 has surgically removed the aspects of personal socio – emotional
biases that the people held against an individual by appealing to pure instances of logic and
rationale, clearly adhering to and implementing the systematic persuasion strategy to his
benefit.
Conclusion
In the entire film, all the instances that indicated towards the outcome has correlated
with the set concept of groupthink. Groupthink is identified as a phenomenon where
individuals of a group attempt to resolve conflict and aggression by suppressing possible
alternate viewpoints and ideas that could challenge their level of comfort and stability (Janis
& Janis, 1982). This is an instance that has been subliminally highlighted in the entire film as
the whole film revolves around the concept of groupthink where the 8th juror’s attempts to
bring about change in the system was met by hostile challenges from the other jurors. Thus in
conclusion, the aspect of groupthink can be identified as the head category under which every
other sub aspects lie in different categories.

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References
Ashforth, B. E., & Mael, F. (1989). Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of
management review, 14(1), 20-39.
Gass, R. H., & Seiter, J. S. (2015). Persuasion: Social Inflence and Compliance Gaining.
Routledge.
Janis, I. L., & Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and
fiascoes (Vol. 349). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Lumet, S., & Rose, R. (1957). Twelve angry men. Los Angeles: Orion-Nova Twelve Angry
Men.
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). The Accuracy Motive: right is better
than wrong-Persuasion. Psychology, 105-119.