A Masterclass in Negotiation for all

Rating: 8/10 (12 November 2019)

12 Angry Men is a 1957 courtroom drama film telling the story of 12 jurors deliberating over the guilt of the 18-year-old defendant, based on the context of reasonable doubt. The film itself serves as an excellent testament to the power of negotiation, exploring a plethora of techniques in building consensus and how they can be used to overcome the difficulties that arise in this process of discussion. The setting is the perfect stage for negotiation, as by virtue of them being in a jury, none of them know each other and none of them have personal stakes in the discussion, making the ensuing discussion a battle of logic, wit and delivery. The film intentionally sets itself up in a manner to elicit introspective thought from its audience by not revealing the names of any of the characters until the exchange of dialogue at the end of the film, pushing the audience towards self-evaluation with regard to the traits displayed on screen.
The premise of the film places the fate of the defendant in the hands of the jury, a death sentence hanging over his head. The jury has been instructed to deliver a unanimous verdict, denying them the luxury of agreeing to disagree. While initially there is a near complete vote in favour of the defendant's guilt, by the end there is a consensus of the inverse, following discussions that span the length of the film. This begins with Juror 8 being the only one arguing for the defendant's innocence, setting in motion events that lead to a unanimous vote to acquit the defendant. Juror 8 is framed as our protagonist, with Juror 3 as our antagonist, and the major learning points lie in the differences between the two.
At face value, one might imagine that Juror 3 is the superior negotiator between the two. He's confident of his points, quick to refute counter-arguments and does not back down even in the face of a strong point made against him. This is in stark contrast to the far meeker Juror 8, who appears to not only seldom refute the points of the other jurors, but even comes across uncertain of his own position. His foil, Juror 3, utilizes what Fisher and Ury define in their book "Getting to Yes" as Hard Positional Bargaining. His ultimate goal at the end of the discussion is victory, his is distrustful of others and treats them as adversaries and is both rooted in his position and demanding in this battle of wills. With this frame set up, it would be easy to determine that Juror 8 uses the opposite approach with his gentler personality, a Soft Positional Bargaining, seeking agreement, trusting others and treating the other negotiator as friends. But this is not quite what he is actually doing, and therein lies the first hidden strength of Juror 8. What he does over the course of the film falls is change the rules of the negotiation. From the beginning, he avoids coming across as confrontational by conceding that he might not be sure if the boy is truly guilty or not. In a regular setting this might seem like argumentative suicide, but in the jury setting, this is an excellent framing tool. All jurors have the civic responsibility to ensure to the best of their ability that the verdict carried out is just. When the negotiations began, all of them were defensive against the disagreement and prepared to refute him, but in expressing that "I don't know whether I believe it or not, maybe I don't.", he changes the game such that it invites further deliberation from all parties, rather than drawing battle lines between two opposing positions. This is made possible as it is necessary to convince others that your mind can change in order to change their minds. By pushing away from the idea of bargaining for positions, he not only drives the other jurors to be more open to discussion, but also to make a wiser, less hasty decision over the life of another.
Juror 8 is also careful in his discussions not to yield to pressure. It would have been easy at the start for someone to give in to peer pressure simply due to an overwhelming majority against him, but he chooses not to. Holding fast to his interests, or in this case the interest of fairness and justice, was the first step in swaying the minds of the other Jurors. He utilizes the pressure to his advantage as "Under the pressure of a forthcoming negotiation, your critical sense is likely to be sharper." (Fisher & Ury, 32) and ensures that his points are all rooted in logic. This is unlike figures such as Juror 7, who succumbed both to personal interest and pressure of time when he switched his stance due to his urgency to attend the baseball game. Any insistence he puts forward in this setting was unconvincing and he additional managed to earn the disdain of the other Jurors for his lack of dedication to the topic. Juror 7 reveals in his actions a lack of objectivity which costs him his credibility, a trait which we will later see repeated with Juror 3. On the inverse, Juror 8 constantly takes action to make sure that not only he, but every other Juror is as objective as possible, reminding them that their role in the Jury might cause an innocent boy his life. Once again he changes the rules of the game, bringing them not to some other form of discussion, but rather realigning a discussion that initiated on a note influenced by personal factors with its intended execution. Doing so reinforces his credibility, as the other jurors see his points not as baseless argument, but spoken and driven by his responsibility to fulfilling his civic role to its upmost. This then pushes them to approach the discussion with the same attitude, one that in driven by justice and resolution rather than positions and confrontation.
By the end of the negotiations, Juror 3 reveals a fatal flaw in his argument, and that is his skewed vision towards the subject matter of the discussion. As he began to lose ground, his arguments became increasingly desperate and unconvincing. He ultimately reveals that his desperation to see the defendant be found guilty is driven by his strained relationship with his son, something that had been alluded to throughout the film. This reflects that his arguments while largely logical, were not driven by objective criteria. This introduction of personal stakes is an immediately penalizable point in the jury setting, and suggests that from the start he had already made up his mind without likely having truly considered all the facts. He was obsessed with what James Sebenius describes as "believing your own line", or rather, placing all his focus upon defending his position that he would disregard otherwise convincing points and arguments. His arguments thus took a form more akin to stating what he would and would not accept. Such an approach is costly in an argument as it inclines you against even the most logical statements. Refusal to acknowledge a reasonable argument makes an individual come across as unreasonable and Juror 3 is guilty of that time and time again.
The success of Juror 8 in convincing the others of his beliefs was fundamentally to acknowledge that he could not change their minds at all. Rather, the only person who can change a person's mind is themselves and he reframed the rules of the game to facilitate that. He had the upmost of respect for the views of the other Jurors, readily conceding when to them good points of arguments they had made, seeing them as part of the thought process. He displayed great awareness that simply because you disagree with a conclusion does not necessarily mean that you disagree with every thought that brought them there. While Juror 3 actively tried to pull the others to his side, Juror 8 pushed the others to re-evaluate the facts and then pick a side of their own. This is in no way implying that he does not make arguments to support his case, but rather he presents it as perspective and evidence to be considered as opposed to an undeniable truth. Even without a direct, relentless adversary like Juror 3, Juror 8 would have quite possibly brought the others to the same conclusion and in this context Juror 3 lost the war of attrition to Juror 8 by his own hand, gradually destroying his own credibility and ultimately dissuading the others of his cause.
These points, among many others, are among the reasons why 12 Angry Men is regarded as one of the most acclaimed courtroom dramas of all time, being seen by even the Library of Congress as worth of the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was and continues to be a paragon of the principles of good negotiation from which we can all learn.