12 Angry Men: Art of Persuation Essay

According to the juristic system of the United States, every man put on trial is copeed innocent until proven censurable. In the beginning of the film 12 Angry Men, however, this theory can al about be considered false to the jurors mixed in a reach case. This 18-year-old Italian male child from a slum is on trial for piercing his father to death. It is apparent that most jurors sop up already decided that the boy is guilty, and that they plan to return their finding of fact quickly, without even taking time for discussion.However, one juror, juryman eight, stands alone against eleven others to convince them that the boy is non guilty, which means that he needs to deport 11 other jurors from all walks of life, each with his own agenda, fears, and individual(prenominal) demons. In order to do so, he essential prove with enough valid evidence that this boy is wrongfully accuse of killing his father. Although this sounds like an im manageable mission, he ultimately persua des the other 11 jurors to mixed bag their mind, with the sane doubts he finds during the argue, and more important, the superior persuasion techniques.See more Is the Importance of be burning a satirical play essayTo sum up, jurywoman octette uses incremental persuasion during the debate in the small private room. When persuading, he does so one small step at a time. He gets the rest of jurors to agree to a small predict, and then gets agreement on a come along smaller point. Then another and another until he has got them to his final destination. The brilliant part of it is that jurywoman Eight exculpates each small point very easy to accept and as logical as possible so none of the rest can really object to it. The debate starts with the first round of vote, in which all jurors except juror Eight vote for guilty.After the first round of vote, he calls into motility the accuracy and reliability of the only two witnesses to the murder, the rarity of the murder weapon an d the overall wonderable circumstances. He further answers that he cannot in good conscience vote guilty when he feels there is sensible doubt of the boys guilt. However, it catchs like Juror Eight has no way to change his particular at all unless he can obtain additional support from any of the rest, and it is obviously uncontrollable to persuade one juror to be the first one changing his vote.At that point, Juror Eight subtly use a persuasion method called final request. By doing so, he simply completes his argument, and asks the jurors to do just one more thing. He then takes a bold gamble that requests another anon. vote. His proposal is that he will abstain from voting, and if the other eleven jurors are still unanimous in a guilty vote, then he will acquiesce to their decision. The secret ballot is held, and a bleak not guilty vote appears. Juror Nine becomes the first to support Juror 8, feeling that his points merit further discussion. To continue, Juror Eight points out the first presumable doubt.Based on his argument, one of the witnesses testimony, which claimed to feature heard the boy yell Im going to kill you shortly before the murder in additionk place, could not be treated as sound evidence. In this situation, the persuasion technique beingness used by Juror Eight is Plain Folks. He tries to sell the jurors a message as an normal person, and the jurors are to believe that because they feel that Juror Eight is just like them and can be trusted. Juror Eight states that he used to live very close to the rail, and he cannot hear anything while the instill passes.Therefore the old man is unlikely to hear the voices as clearly as he had testified. Also, he stresses that people say something like Im going to kill you constantly at day by day life but never literally mean it. Eventually, he persuades Juror 5, who had grown up in a slum, to change his vote to not guilty. In addition, Juror Eight uses another scheme to question the witnes ss other claim. Upon hearing the murder, the witness had gone to the door of his apartment and seen the defendant runway out of the building. However, he had an injured leg which amputates his ability to walk.Juror Eight tries to persuade the jurors by exploitation evidence this time. In order to maximize the evidences effect, he lets the audiences engaged and involved in a walking look into. Upon the end of the experiment, the jury finds that the witness wouldnt have made it to the door in enough time to actually see the defendant running out. And come to the conclusion that, judging from what he heard earlier, the witness must have merely assumed it was the defendant running. At the same time, Juror cardinal, who looks irritated throughout the process, is about to explode.Juror 8 cleverly catches the chance and applies the persuasion technique called copy bind to it. Double bind is a situation where a person has a choice (typically mingled with two options), but whichever wa y they choose, they lose out, often with the same result. This situation may occur by chance, but in persuasion it is often carefully engineered by the persuader. He calls Juror Three a sadist, saying that he wants the defendant to die purely for personal reasons rather than the facts. This led to Juror Threes explosion.He cant help shouting out Ill kill him And Juror Eight calmly retorts, You dont really mean youll kill me, do you? Thus proving the point he mentioned earlier. This at long last turns Juror Two and Juror Six decide to vote not guilty, tying the vote at 6 to 6. This is absolutely a turning point in the film. At that time, every juror, no matter what his vote is, has started to realize Juror Eight might be eventually capable of changing the verdict. Furthermore, Juror Four states that he doesnt believe the boys alibi, which was being at the movies with a few friends at the time of the murder. Juror Eight then tests how well he can remember the events of forward days .Juror Eight uses a persuasion technique called logos here. He focuses on cool logic and rational explanation to concrete his argument. When Juror Four only remembers the events of the previous five days, Juror Eight can easily draw to a conclusion that even an clever person like Juror Four cannot remember every single detail in his life. He continues to set up another premise the incriminate has a huge fight with his father, and he was accused by the police soon after he finds out his father is dead. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that he is under great emotional stress.With that saying, the jurors should not attribute the fact that he forgets the movies name as evidence that he kills his farther. Another question by Juror Two is that whether the accused, who was to the highest degree a foot shorter than his farther, was able to stab him in such a way as to chit-chat the downward stab wound found on the body. Again, Juror Eight uses evidence by conducting an experiment to see if its possible for a shorter person to stab downward into a taller person. The experiment proves that its possible. This result probably is leading to jurors incline to guilty again.However, Juror Five then explains the correct use of a switchblade, that no one so much shorter than his opponent would have held a switchblade in such a way as to stab downward, as it would have been too awkward. With Juror Fives help, Juror Eight then continues to persuade the jurors by one of the most complex techniques in persuasion, reframing. This technique requires the person to step back from what is being said and done and consider the frame. Then he leads people to consider alternative lenses, effectively saying lets look at it another way. And finally he changes attributes of the frame to reverse meaning.In this case, With Juror Fives word, Juror Eight successfully reframes the outcome of the experiment as sound evidence that provides another reasonable doubt for the accused. This rev elation augments the certainty of several of the jurors in their belief that the defendant is not guilty. The last reasonable doubt is that the witness who allegedly saw the murder had marks in the sides of her nose, indicating that she wore glasses. To persuade Juror Four, Juror Eight tries to use the method called truth by association. He cannily asks Juror Four if he wears his eyeglasses to sleep, and Juror Four admits no one does.Here, in order to produce a convert argument that something is true, Juror Eight first associates it with something else that is already accepted as true. He proves that the witness must wear glasses, and then explains that there was thus no reason to expect that the witness happened to be wearing her glasses while trying to sleep, not to mention that the attack happened so swiftly that she would not have had time to put them on. According to these truths, Juror Four finally admits that there is reasonable doubt in the case and changes his vote as not guilty.Throughout the debate, Juror Eight always seeks to plus the significance of certain elements that he wants the jurors to take more seriously or see as oddly important. The persuasion technique applied here is repetition. He continuously repeats sentences such as We are deciding on a mans life. , It is possible. , People can be wrong. and Are you sure? , and so on The repetition of words not only causes it to become remembered (which is persuasive in itself), it also leads the jurors to accept what is being repeated as being true.With no doubt, by doing so, Juror Eight achieves the result he wants. In conclusion, this film shows how Juror Eights excellent persuasion skills can change others life. More important, while keeping his persuasion so effective, he has never done something unethical to persuade others, such as threating or lying. One of the insights that everyone should learn from this film is that one ought to stand up and hold his utmost efforts to fight for hi s point of his view. And with the powerful persuasion technique and the faith in ethic, everyone has the chance to make a difference.