Phoebe Lim

This movie was absolutely insane and I enjoyed it so much. Watched it for a class and was told to compare it to Roger Fisher's Getting to Yes. It was so chilling to see the points that Fisher brings up in his book being reflected in the movie. Here's a paragraph from my reflection about 12 Angry Men in regards to Fisher's book. The first point of Fisher’s idea of Principled Negotiation is to separate the people from the problem. As all humans have strong emotions, and often have different perceptions of things. Emotions are typically entangled in the objective merits of the problems, which not only blinds one from the root of the problem, but also when positions are taken, people’s egos become identified with their position. This can be seen in 12 Angry Men, mostly in Jury #3 and Jury #10. Jury #3 at the starts states that his stance had “no personal feels, just facts”, and shares about his kid who left him, however throughout the movie demonstrates how his ego was tied to his position by taking Jury #12’s switch over to his side as a victory, refusing to back down even though everyone else decided on “not guilty”. He often lets his emotions control him – being angry when anyone changes sides, allowing himself to be baited by #8’s arguments which leads to him losing his temper, contradicting himself and proving 8’s point (“He was an old man, half the time he was confused, how can he be positive about anything?”, “I’ll kill you!”). He showcases himself holding out to the argument simply because he does not want to back down like Fisher said. 12 Angry Men also depicts the how people have different values and backgrounds which make them prone to biases, partisan perceptions, blind spots, and leaps of illogic. Jury #4 showcases this early on in the movies, when he describes why he thinks the boy is guilty to be due to his background – growing up in the slums, as well as when he dismisses the boy’s lack of memory due to emotional stress. Similarly, Jury #10 highlights this with his bias for people from the slums as well as the younger generation. He constantly insults the younger generation, which led to him giving a shabby argument of why the boy is guilty, with his show of emotions leading to people turning away from him when they realise his views are highly prejudiced. This example as well as #3’s explosion that had him threatening to kill #8 also highlight Fisher’s point to not releasing emotions during a negotiation as it can be risky if it leads to emotional reactions.