12 Angry Men Essay examples

Comm 302
Professor Koteen
March 6th, 2013

12 Angry Men

Though the movie is out of date compared to the present day it can still relate to what occurs these days in similar group situations. The movie goes through the stages of group development as the plot unfolds. In the movie "Twelve Angry Men," twelve jury members were given the task to decide a boy's fate. The jury members, when beginning deliberation, were almost unanimous on a guilty verdict. All but one man was in favor of the death penalty for this boy. This was before the group of jury members had any interaction. Before the almost unanimous vote, the men were very polite to one another. They made comments on the heat, what they did for business, going to a ball game. They didn't say a word initially about the case. While the rest of the men were hasty and mad over the whole thing, he brings up the point of honesty and giving the boy a fair trial.
When the first vote was in, Juror#8 was the only man who voted not guilty, and while the rest of the men were hasty and mad over the whole thing, he brings up the point of honesty and giving the boy a fair trial. However, everyone had their stereotypes about the boy. They stereotyped him because he was from the slums, and because they didn't like his defense story. Juror#3 advocated that he was guilty and he initially rallied the other 10 jurors to vote his way. He made allegations on how the boy was up to no good and since he got into an argument with his father, he was the one who had motive to kill him. Jurorr#8 shined light on the testimonies since the rest of the jurors hastily came up with a verdict without discussing it.
The movie becomes a great example of how the roles of the group came about. Juror #8 brought up the new evidence to the rest of the jurors, which became a crucial part in determining a verdict. Juror#8 plays an informal role on the jury, which means the group didn’t choose him, but his actions and the way he handled himself characterized him as a leader. Although Juror #3 tried to use his aggressive persona to corral the group into voting the way he wanted, Juror#8 challenged him in an unspoken way by disagreeing with the general consensus on guilty. Hyper-competitiveness is one trait I’ve noticed in Juror#3. It’s the attainment of a personal goal without having to defeat another person. This can be translated into why he felt so strongly about the boy being guilty, little do we know he has underlying personal bias affecting his viewpoints. In addition, that scene can be compared and contrasted to role emergence. Being the jurors have no prior history with working with each other, roles will emerge among the group through deliberations. iIt is also important to look at the relationship of the communication process to the group process of this film. One example of this from the movie would be when Juror#3 discloses the situation with his son in the end; the ongoing events of the jury process led him to reveal this information. Juror#3 would not have revealed this without the build up to that moment, this later proves why he felt so strongly about having the defendant found guilty.
Tuckman’s stages of group development can be applied to the growth of the group in the movie. iiTuckman believed that these stages were the path to high-performance that most teams follow. Throughout the duration of the movie, the stage of storming was used. Storming is used to

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