Abstract
One of the more difficult aspects of teaching about perception and decision-making biases can be convincing students that they are not immune. One of the best ways of conveying this key knowledge is to ensure that the students experience a situation where they exhibit these biases and recognize that they have done so. In this article, we present an exercise based on the movie 12 Angry Men that creates just such an environment.
Two of the most important topics in management classes, particularly organizational behavior (OB), are perception and decision making. Differences in perception between individuals can lead to misunderstandings, even conflicts. Poor decision making can be the difference in success and failure for individuals and for organizations. Thus, making sure that our students learn these concepts is intrinsically important.
Perception and decision making are fairly easy concepts to grasp for most students. However, the associated biases and decision heuristics can be quite another matter. According to Tversky and Kahneman (1974),
People rely on a limited number of heuristic principles by which they reduce the complex tasks of assessing likelihoods and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations. In general, these heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors. (p. 1124)
Due to the self-serving bias (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004), we often have to convince students that they, too, fall prey to perceptual and judgmental biases. The most convincing method is to do so experientially – essentially by metaphorically hitting them in the face with it.
But how do we convince students of the biases that they, and all other humans, exhibit, even experientially? Our solution is to start with a well-known film that depicts a multitude of common biases and then allow the students to fall into the same traps as the characters in the movie. By experiencing the same biases in a nonthreatening manner, they learn that they too use similar mental shortcuts. Our choice for this exposition is the original version of the movie, 12 Angry Men.
The movie has been used as a vehicle for teaching many lessons in OB classes for decades. Indeed, our sister publication, the Journal of Management Education (and its predecessor, the Organizational Behavior Teaching Review), contains over 20 articles that make reference to 12 Angry Men, with over 100 in other Sage journals alone. Films, often full feature–length movies, have been shown to be a useful supplement in higher education (Champoux, 1999), and have even been used as the primary delivery mechanism for key course concepts (Smith, 2009).
Smith (2009) noted that the topics illustrated by the movie include teamwork, synergy, group-think, bias/stereotyping, attribution, conflict, leadership, decision making, and problem solving; Hackley (2007) saw the movie as a means for teaching about negotiations, leadership, communications, and critical thinking. Instructors we know have said that it is useful to show the movie as the basis for one key topic and refer to it throughout in the course. Thus, although showing the whole movie takes time, it can certainly be a very worthwhile investment, as its widespread usage indicates. And, as McCambridge (2003) notes, when using just clips of the movie, “undergraduates consistently become engrossed in the video clips and frequently express the desire to see the entire film” (p. 392).
Buchanan and Huczynski (2004) stated that contextual, temporal, social, emotional, and processual factors affect how individuals in a group (in this case a jury) go beyond rational consideration to make a decision, based on perceptual or decision biases. Thus, individuals (e.g., eyewitnesses) might see the same physical event occur yet perceive and report it in different ways to others, including juries and law enforcement agencies (Cynkar, 2007).
In this article, we present a new usage for 12 Angry Men—to set the stage for a powerful experiential exercise about perception and decision biases. Prior to watching the movie, students are told to look for course-related areas illustrated in the film and be prepared to discuss them. In reality, the focus of the postmovie exercise centers on the differences in the students’ observations and conclusions, which will come out in the debriefing. It has been used successfully in undergraduate, traditional MBA, and professional/executive MBA classes that feature perception and decision biases as topics. Apart from the movie itself, which is 96 minutes long, the exercise and debriefing take 30 to 45 minutes.
The key learning objectives for students are the following:
To be able to explain why people in the same place experiencing the same event do not necessarily perceive the same thing
To identify and explain the perceptual and decision biases they have experienced
To recognize that such biases are commonplace.
Exercise Procedure
The movie 12 Angry Men is presented to the students as a way to introduce, illustrate, or reinforce a number of the course topic areas covered in class through lecture, survey, small group discussion, or case study illustrations. The original (1957) black-and-white movie is our choice; it is slightly shorter and has fewer potential extraneous variables (different genders, races, and roles are noticeable differences in the 1997 version). In our experience, it has worked best if the students watch the movie at least 2 or 3 weeks into the semester; it can be viewed later if the movie is used as a review of concepts.
Students are instructed to watch the movie for examples of the different topic areas within the course domain and be ready to discuss these topics after its conclusion. If the class meets once a week in a 2½-hour or longer time frame, there will be enough time to watch the movie in its entirety and run the exercise and debriefing in one session. If the course meets twice a week for about 80 minutes per session, it is suggested that the movie be shown over two class sessions; stopping the first part somewhere after the 6-6 vote should work—around 60 minutes into the movie. This approach would allow for at least 45 minutes for the exercise and debriefing in the second session, with a summary of the biases presented in Appendix A being a core part of the debriefing.
On conclusion of the movie, students are informed that they will be asked to respond to the item on the sheet of paper being given face-down to them and to await further instructions before turning it over. After all the students have been given the sheet of paper, leave the classroom and move out of sight. Keeping the door slightly ajar, tell the students to turn the paper over and respond in writing individually and anonymously without discussion about what is asked. The students are requested to answer the following: “Describe in as much detail as possible, the professor of this course as if you were giving eyewitness testimony to a person (or group of people) who hadn’t seen him (or her) before this exercise.”
Expect to hear some uneasy laughter and shuffling around when students realize what they are being asked to do, so be ready to tell them to stay on task and remind them to not talk to other students when writing their responses. Instruct the students to put their completed responses face-down on the desk (table, podium) at the front of the room. It takes about 10 minutes or so for all the students to respond. Ask the students to call you back into the room when all have finished and handed in their responses.
When you reenter the room, shuffle the face-down papers and then turn them over, informing the students that you will now read them verbatim without any editing of their written comments. As you begin to read the students’ responses, you can expect further reactions of uneasiness, laughter, shock, and surprise, since they likely will contain many descriptions of you that students will wish they hadn’t written (e.g., “The professor has big teeth and walks with a slouch”). After all, they never expected the comments to be read out loud. Your facial and verbal expressions as you read descriptions can further shape the way students will capture the lessons to be learned. It becomes readily apparent that students can be less than tactful in giving anonymous feedback. Written comments likely will differ on age, height, weight, hair color, body shape, facial/head accessories (e.g., glasses, earrings, etc.) apparel, jewelry, and mannerisms of the instructor. Be prepared for unexpected descriptions that will have you looking in the mirror at yourself wondering how and why you were described as you were, given that the students would have seen you numerous times by the time this exercise is run.
Be ready to fully disclose accurate answers regarding age, height, weight, and any other descriptors that may have been mentioned in reading the written descriptions. If you are particularly sensitive about any of your personal characteristics, you may want to modify the initial request to the students, though it might detract from their honest responses.
Typically, the reported age range can run over three decades, there can be a 6- to 8-inch height difference, a 20- to 50-pound weight range can be reported, not many capture jewelry being worn, and clothing could run from casual to business attire in a range of colors.
Debriefing
As the first step after the professor reads out all the comments, ask students their thoughts about what they heard. Usually, they will energetically react and capture the essence of the exercise—that not everyone sees the same thing, even in everyday situations.
“Why do you think the members of the class have described me so differently?” is a good question to get the students to begin to think about perception differences. Typically, their responses range from “I don’t pay any attention to what the professor looks like” to “Not everyone is looking at the professor while taking notes or texting friends!”
Once this discussion has run its course, you can ask specific questions about particular perception biases. For example, a good opening question might be “What perception biases did you notice in the movie?” Follow up each response by querying where the student saw it in the movie, if it was not part of the student’s answer. The list of possibilities is long and detailed in Appendix A.
Alternatively, you can specify a particular scene in the movie and ask if they noticed any particular perception biases that the characters exhibited in that scene. For example, many are upset when listening to the overt prejudicial biases of Juror No. 10 toward the defendant with his rant, “I’ve lived among ‘em all of my life. You can’t believe a word they say. You know that.” Another prime example for worthwhile discussion is when Juror No. 3 tears through his wallet and rediscovers the picture of his estranged son, thus illustrating why he may have been so determined to convict the young defendant. Specific useful scenes are listed in Appendix B.
You might ask about what they expected versus what was reported, whether the exercise could be tied to particular parts of the movie, and what they personally might do differently in light of the exercise results. The last question generally brings out comments about the need to be more observant and to be aware of their potential biases.
Breaking the class up into smaller groups to discuss these questions might make it less threatening for the students to speak up about their observations (i.e., there may be a concern that the professor would be upset at their barrier-breaking comments). This technique can be very helpful and respectful of introverts and students from other cultures.
Conclusion
Ours is an easy experiential exercise to run. In our experience, it engages the students and demonstrates the real-world application of the course concepts.
The easy takeaway is that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, but going beyond that is necessary for purposes of the OB class. It is important to realize that perceptions of the same event will differ and, in organizational settings such as one’s job, to do reality checks to make sure that people are on the same page as they go through job-related experiences. Additionally, students in the class will, hopefully, come away with the feeling that the instructor is willing to break some barriers in getting the point across, and a classroom culture of being more open about one’s self will be reinforced.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Authors’ Note
The article has benefited from developmental feedback from the anonymous reviewers and Management Teaching Review associate editor Sandra Spataro.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.