Intrinsic Motivation In The Movie, 500 Days Of Summer

500 Days of Summer is a movie about a boy named Tom and a girl named Summer. Tom fell in love with Summer, but she didn’t feel the same about him. Tom was left brokenhearted with a new view on life. Throughout the movie, there are plenty of examples of psychology terms. In the beginning, McKenzie was telling Tom that Patel tried talking to Summer, but she wasn’t really having it and came off as very rude. Tom tried defending her by giving a situational attribution, assigning her actions to the situation she was in (Procsal, 2016). Tom said maybe she was just rushing. On the other hand, McKenzie gave a dispositional attribution, suggesting that Summer replied rudely because she is a rude person and thinks she’s better than everyone else. Sternberg’s

He went to school to become an architect, but settled for his current job for financial reasons. Tom’s decisions were motivated by different factors. Extrinsic motivations is when one does something due to external factors such as expectations, consequences, and outside rewards (Proscal, 2016). Tom settling for his job as a greeting card writer is an example of this. He gave up his studying to get this job because he was in need of money, which is the outside reward. Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do something due to an internal reward (Proscal, 2016). His dream job as an architect, which Tom later pursues, is an example of intrinsic motivation. Tom likes to sketch buildings on his down time, so a job as an architect would be something he really enjoys to do and not for outside

She tells him that she flies in her dreams; she feels free and safe, but then realizes she’s alone so she wakes up. There are two specific dream theories that we learned about. The first one is Sigmund Freud’s view on dreams. According to Freud, dreams satisfy unfulfilled, repressed wishes in the unconscious (Procsal, 2016). He breaks down dreams into two categories; one is the manifest content and the other the latent content. The manifest content of a dream is what the dreamer actually experienced and recalls (Procsal 2016). In Summer’s case, this is the act of her running so fast that she begins to fly. The Latent Content of a dream is the underlying symbolic meaning (Procsal, 2016). Freud would say that Summer’s dreams mean that she longs for the freedom and safety shes does not have, and that is why she dreams of it. The other theory is the Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming, which says that dreaming is just a form of thinking while asleep; it reflects interests, personality, worries, and thoughts (Procsal, 2016). According to this theory, we can assume that Summer is worried about her freedom and safety so much she even thinks about it when sleeping so it reflects in her