Henry Fonda's Use Of Groupthink In 12 Angry Men

The movie 12 Angry Men depicts a typical scene today: twelve jury members meeting to discuss a case presented to them and determine guilt or innocence of a young man accused of killing his own father. Usually the jury room is a place for discussion and debate, but the evidence has swayed all but one of the jurors into voting guilty. The group in the movie is a jury of 12 men with various backgrounds and age groups. They were placed in a deliberation room where the entire move took place.
Soon after the men gather in the deliberation room the foreman suggests a vote. All of the jurors except Henry Fonda suggested the boy was guilty. Fonda, is unsure of the defendant's guilt or innocence himself, even though his fellow jury members all disagree
with him. Immediately after Fonda made his vote of not guilty the room was in uproar. The rest of the jury resents the inconvenience of his decision. After questioning his sanity they hastily decide to humor Fonda by agreeing to discuss the trial for one hour. The movie proceeds to tell the tale of how Henry Fonda uses excellent communication skills to sway the jury into actually thinking for themselves instead of thinking in the group's best interest and effectively voting that the young man was innocent. The group at the beginning of the movie seems to be very cohesive due to their overwhelming belief of the boy's guilt. In the beginning, all the jurors felt that the defendant had committed an immoral crime, something which all of them were prepared to send him to die for. They felt that he deserved death for his actions, and that they were acting completely right even though they still had doubts to his guilt, because they felt it was their job to keep the defendant out of society to the benefit of mankind. But as the movie continues the group loses that cohesive behavior because of one mans questions. Henry Fonda takes the jury form eleven to one in favor of a guilty verdict to the point where the votes are split right down the middle. Towards the end of the film the cohesiveness of the group returns with all the group members voting for acquittal. As the level of cohesiveness goes down so does productivity. There is a lot of fighting between the men in the deliberation room and it seems the entire group was in a stand still. In the movie at one point the proctor juror wants to give his position to someone else who can handle the fighting better. Another example is when two other jurors are carrying on a conversation about a baseball game because the group was not cohesive enough to keep his attention. The jury deliberation did follow in a OCER fashion during the movie. First is the Orientation. The jury was a group of men that had no idea about each other so they came into the room and everyone was unorganized. Most likely the men had never served on a jury duty before so everything was new to them. Next was the conflict phase. With all but one juror in favor of guilty it was difficult to avoid conflict. Henry Fonda caused friction with the other jurors because of his "reasonable doubt" when most of the other jurors felt it was a straight forward case. Next to follow in the movie was emergence. The group came out of the conflict to listen to each other and the fact to prove that the boy charged for the crime may not be guilty. Finally the reinforcement phase of a group happens when the jurors sit down and vote on the verdict to be not guilty.
When members of the jury were making arguments sometimes they took the central route. The central route is elaborating what you want to get across to a certain audience. Then the audience has to make a decision based on the fact given whether to be persuaded or not. Henry Fonda asks for a layout of the apartments in the complex where the murder occurred. With the facts of distance and time he proves that old man down stairs could not have made it to the door in time to see the boy flee the scene. This fact was processed by the jurors and some where persuaded by Henrys arguments based on the facts. Objective elaboration was also used in the movie. The jurors knew even if the already disliked the boy for any other reason the there was no way an old man could have made it to the door in time to see the boy. This shows how objective elaborations used facts to speak for themselves. As the talk proceeded Fonda slowly undermines their confidence by saying that the murder weapon is widely available to anyone, and that the testimony of the key witness is suspected. Fonda proposed arguments for every piece of evidence. He achieves this by often by using the word "supposing" meaning there is room for doubt. As Fonda questioned more and more, and what began as 11 jurors with guilty votes began to unwind to a level of uncertainty.
The stockbroker is a great example of this. His whole argument from the beginning was that the man was guilty. But slowly but surely, after testimony of people like the old man, the "L" train, the walking to the door scene, and many others began to change his viewpoints, although he was still convinced that the defendant was guilty. He was finally won over after the glasses mark on the bridge of his nose hit home to him, and he stopped rationalizing with the group and made his own informed decision. Some of the juror made peripheral route arguments. The easiest symptom to spot in the movie is the negative stereotyped views of the defendant. It was automatically assumed that the person was a horrible human being because what part of town he was from and because of this, everyone was positive that he committed the murder. They automatically assumed that the kid was not abused by his father because they where sure he was lying. The kid was also stereotyped as being young and immature, "just like all the kids out there today". It is pretty easy to vote guilty for someone when all you see and talk about are his negative aspects. Groupthink is one of the most common features in the movie.
The deliberation room is very hot and most of the jurors just want to get out of there without any arguments. It seems as though some of those who suggested the boy was guilty were reluctant upon raising their hand. This is an example of a fallacy. It is apparent that a few of these jurors weren't sure, but jumped on the bandwagon and went with the majority despite what they may have felt Everyone in the room had at least a little doubt in the fact that the kid was guilty, but only Fonda got up and said anything about it, also breaking the illusion of unity by not staying quiet and speaking his mind, openly declaring that there is no agreement in the matter and that he would have to be convinced otherwise. The messenger service owner and the garage owner, some of the elder men in the group, constantly try to bash Fonda and his points into the ground. Fonda is approached in the bathroom by some of the gentlemen, and they try to convince him let it go and just vote guilty so everyone can go on with their lives. Despite all this pressure, Fonda still continues to determine if there is a reasonable doubt. Also one of the jurors wants to make it to a baseball game so he went with the majority without and serious thought as to what he felt on the
case. Leadership is the design, creation, and management of group actions that direct the combined efforts of individuals in the group and their resources to a achieve a goal that the members of the group increasingly share, in large part because the more influential members of the organization (the leaders) clearly communicate their vision of the organization's identity, including a belief that the aspired to goal is achievable. There was one clear leader throughout the movie, Henry Fonda First, he establishes the fact that he knows that some in the group are letting others decide for them. He tells everyone what he thinks is going on and then begins to present his side of the case, which convinces the old man that he is right and the debate rages on. Second, Fonda concentrates on minimizing group differences. His big goal was to get the jury to stop listening to the messenger service owner and the garage owner, who basically told everyone he was guilty and wouldn't listen to anything else. These men began to get frustrated and cause disturbances within the group because they could not win and they had just as much power as anyone else. Eventually, he takes over as group leader because everyone seems as interested and curious as to what he is going to say next that they listen and eventually, after much hard discussion and review of the case, he gets people to think for themselves and prove the defendant innocent in each of their own minds. The group is set up with a leader or proctor but he has very weak leadership skills and cannot control the group. Also during the deliberations the old man sitting next to Fonda leads the movement to listen to what Fonda has to say.
In conclusion looking at the group I would recommend that more organization would have prevented some of the unnecessary conflicts between characters. A strong leader form the beginning controlling who talks during debates would have caused a much smother running deliberation. The jury might have reached a decision fast if there weren't as many distracting side conversations.