Good display of negotiation techniques

Rating: 9/10 (25 March 2017)

12 Angry Men is a classic example of an effective case of negotiation. The movie tells a story about 12 juries deliberating a decision of either "Guilty" or "Not guilty" regarding a child defendant who is accused of murdering his father. Juror 8 starts the whole negotiation process by voting "Not guilty" due to his reasonable doubt and requesting the room to deliberate their decision before sending the defendant to the chair. The movie illustrates good negotiation practices and tactics that eventually led to a dramatic change of votes from 11-1 in favor of "Guilty" to a unanimous "Not guilty" by the end of the negotiation. I will write a review on "12 Angry Men" with reference to Roger Fisher's (1987) "Getting to Yes" and his four principles: separating people from problem (People), focus on interest rather than positions (Interest), generate variety of options before settling on an agreement (Options) and using the agreement made based on objective criteria (Criteria).
Fisher (1987) elaborates his principle on "People" by exploring three different factors that prevent a successful negotiation: perception, emotions and communication. The movie aptly illustrates this "People" issue with regards to perception and emotions.
Perception often proves to be the main problem during a negotiation process as people's past experiences may affect their way of thinking which then affect their decisions. In the movie, Juror 10 blatantly condemns the poor people living in slums and he negatively stereotypes them by claiming that "these people are born to lie", "they don't need any excuse to kill someone" and "human life doesn't mean as much to them as it is to us". Eventually, the rest of the jury turned their back on him and at that moment, he realized that he has let his negative perception took over him and therefore, is unfit to be a juror of a court.
The other factor that affects a negotiation is emotions. As Fisher (1987) puts it: "In a negotiation, particularly in a bitter dispute, feelings may be more important than talk". People often respond with anger or fear when they feel threatened and excessive emotions will cloud their judgment leading to greater conflict or bad decisions. One clear example is Juror 3 who is very emotional about the case as his relationship with his child caused him to declare that misbehaved children must be taught a lesson. He then turns a blind eye against all the logical explanations that the room has presented. Eventually, he breaks down at the end of the movie to finally give in to his reasoning and to acknowledge his flawed reasoning due to his emotions.
As I mentioned at the start of the review, as a classic, this movie is one of my favorite movie of negotiation and it displays all the essential elements of negotiation very well.