Twelve Angry Men

The objective of this paper is to relate the movie twelve angry men to the course book social psychology. The film is about twelve men who are on are deciding the fait of a young man who is accused of killing his father. In the jury room the discussions, reactions, and occurances that took place can relate to the course book Social psychology fifth edition in many ways. The movie demonstrates prejudice views, group think, normative social influence, minority influence, automatic and controlled process as well as the attribution theory.

First off one major concept that was apparent through out the movie is prejudice which in its slef has three components. There is evidence of prejudice because of the attitudes, actions and thoughts that some

This is when “the minority of group members can influence the behaviour or belifs of the majority”. It is said if we only go along with the marjority that we may never make change. It is a very hard to change a majorites view because there are many things that inhibit a person from seeing a situation cleary. As was stated earlier many people let prejudice cloud there judgment or feel pressure to comform to avoid conflict. But in some cases minorities of a group can make there opinions heard and sway the majority. The key factor is swaying peoples opinion is consistency. When you are arguing your points you need to stress them over and over. In the movie we have one man who stands alone and votes not guilty, so we can see him as the minority. Throughout the movie this man is consistant in his view, he is not sure the boy is guilty or not but wants to look at all the facts to give him a fair verdict. It is said if a person wavers on there view when in the minority group it is hard for others to see there points as valid or justified. In the text wendy wood and colleagues show how minority influences can overcome the majority view. It is unlikely that this group can sway opinions and views through normative views do to the fact they don’t have enough power or influence. Minority groups have to use informational social influence which is defined in the text as “conforming because we belive that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous event is more correct then ours and will help us choos an appropriate course of action”. In other words to get people on there side a minority group needs to come up with new and surprising information so there opositon can take a closer look at the issue being debated. When the majority takes a closer look at this new information they may see the minority view has value and mau change there view points. This is evident in the movie when the eleven jurors voted to