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Twelve Angry Men

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The following play was written for television in 1957. The play was written by Reginald Rose and depicts a story about twelve jurors trying to determine if a young boy is found guilty of killing his father. The play starts out in the courtroom where the judge is giving instructions to the jurors on the murder case. It is stated that if the young man is found guilty, he will be charged with a mandatory sentence of the death penalty. It is now up to the twelve men to determine if this young man should be sentenced to death. The twelve men then file into the jury room and sit in exact order as given in court. They proceed to take a vote by stating whether they think the individual is guilty of committing murder. Starting …show more content…

Majority influence occurs when individual decisions within a group are influenced by others in the group. (Keyton, 2006) With members first group decision starting out with them openly going around the table stating the defendant was guilty could have initially changed the votes of some members to agree with the majority. Under majority influence, the decision making process showed symptoms of groupthink. Groupthink occurred within this particular group of men as the majority of the jurors overestimated their power and invulnerability. (Keyton, 2006) This therefore caused all eleven jurors who believed the defendant was guilty to not question any evidence or circumstances presented in the case. This was apparent throughout the film as the majority of the jurors were narrow minded coming into the jury room. This is found to be true as the jurors failed to critically examine and analyze the evidence stated in the case. All jurors except for juror # 8 took the evidence at face value and did not want to accept any other circumstances that could have happened that night the boy 's father was killed. Groupthink effected the groups cohesiveness as it was moderately high causing the group to not challenge any evidence. (Keyton, 2006) Group cohesion is an important factor of a group, which shows members have a desire to remain in a group. (Keyton, 2006) Presented in the play the initial reaction of the twelve men was through more of an individual

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