At first glance, Pixar’s Inside Out seems to be your standard coming of age film. The film follows an 11-year-old girl, Riley who is forced to make a move from Minnesota to San Francisco with her parents. However, a deeper look at the film reveals how accurate it is to developmental psychology. The center of the story isn’t Riley and her family, but Riley’s primary emotions –Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. The five emotions are personified as characters that control her mind as she transitions from childhood to adolescence and deals with the challenge of adjusting to a new place. Inside Out uses Riley and her emotions function as a demonstration of the relationship between emotion and cognition. In doing so, the film reveals several important questions about developmental psychology. Such as, how do emotions color our memories of the past and what is …show more content…
As time goes on, more emotions are added and the control panel becomes increasingly complex. This demonstrates emotional development over time moving from childhood into adolescence. A great example of the exchange between cognition and emotion are Riley’s memory balls. Each memory ball has a central emotion that is felt in the memory. Riley has a set of core memory balls which shape the way Riley thinks and feels about the world. Joy prides herself in the belief that all of Riley’s core memories are shaped by joy. Joy is the leader of Riley’s team of emotions and allows most of the team to serve their function. Joy is in control of keeping Riley happy, fear and disgust keep her from making unsafe decisions such as ingesting poison while anger protects her from others and gives her an incentive to be a better hockey player. Inside Out disproves the common assumption that emotions disrupt our thought rather than organizing them. Emotions shape our perceptions of our environment, memories, and
Every single person on earth has gone through the stage of middle childhood in their lives; it is inevitable. This stage is an important time in an individual’s life as it provides them the opportunity to experience new challenges and to make new friends and relationships. Middle childhood is a time of slow yet steady growth of a person in the aspects of physical, mental, and emotional development. In the movie The Sandlot, the young boys show visible signs of school-age development which include the concept of self-esteem, showing interests in the opposite sex, and overcoming challenges. While there are many other things that imply development in school-age children, these three topics are the most prominent in the film.
Amy Heckerling’s movie Clueless focuses on an upper middle class 16-year-old girl, Cher, who lives in a nice neighborhood with her father and stepbrother, Josh. Cher and her friend, Dionne, take in a new girl, Tai, to help her fit into their high school. All of the major characters in the movie are in adolescence, which ranges from 10-19 years of age. In adolescence, teenagers undergo cognitive and emotional development. According to Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, adolescents are in formal operational period from 11-20 years of age. During this period, adolescents develop abstract thinking and rational decision making. They experience two aspects of adolescent egocentrism, imaginary audience
Bully (2001) is a movie based on a true story about a group of rebellious, yet naïve teens who conspire to exact ultimate revenge on a mutual friend. In a twist, unlike most, this movie highlights not only extent of bullying amongst peers, but details the ultimate revenge that would irrevocably change the lives of the entire group. The movie takes place in South Florida where Marty, a high school dropout, and Bobby are “alleged” best friends. As they set out to meet up with mutual friends Ali and Lisa for a double date the bully is immediately apparent as Bobby begins to verbally torment Marty, which quickly turns physical as he repeatedly punches Marty while he is driving for accidently swerving. Although, Marty stops the car and retaliates,
Inside Out, a movie produced by Pixar Animation Studios in 2015, follows the story of Riley Andersen, a young girl experiencing a move to a new city. In the movie, Riley exhibits symptoms of major depressive disorder Riley grew up with her parents in Minnesota, having many joyous childhood memories such as playing hockey and enjoying time with friends. At age 11, Riley’s family moves to San Francisco, California for her father’s new business. Already being skeptical of the move to begin with, Riley beings to have a series of bad first impressions with the move; the house they move into appears old and cramped, the moving van with all of their belongings drives to the wrong place, her father becomes very stressed from his new job, and embarrassing
The first section explores the “flat-brain theory of emotions, flat-brain syndrome, and flat-brain tango” (Petersen, 2007, pp. 2-45). All three are interrelated (Petersen, 2007). The flat-brain theory of emotions “demonstrates what’s occurring inside of us when things are going well, and how that changes when they are not” (Petersen, 2007, p. 11). Petersen’s (2007) theory “explains how our emotions, thinking, and relating abilities work and how what goes on inside us comes out in the ways we communicate and act” (p. 8). The “flat-brain syndrome” describes what happens when an individual wears their emotions on their sleeve. This “makes it
Communication is everywhere. We, as interactive human beings, spend the majority of our time corresponding with others to satisfy our physical, identity, social, and practical needs (Adler, Rodman, & Sevigny, 2011). Often, this is consciously done; we search our minds for the accurate linguistic means to express our experiences, and use them to communicate with those around us. However, communication is not as straightforward and effortless as we may believe. It is, in fact, often unintentional, with 65% of it occurring as a result of non-verbal cues (Matsumoto, Shibata, Seiji, Mori, & Shioe, 2010). As mentioned by Marta Dynel (2011) in a study done on nonverbal communication, “Non verbal signs and signals ... are prevalent practically in all social encounters, which entail at least two individuals, who need not even talk or consciously interact otherwise”. Examples exist in all mediums, including in the animated film ‘Up’, where one scene depicts transactional communication between a male and female character, all expressed nonverbally . The nonverbal communication in this scene, along with various other communication constructs, will be discussed.
Levine, L. E., & Munsch, J. (2011). Regulations of Emotions. In L. E. Levine, & J. Munsch, Child Development: An Active Approach (p. 371). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publishers.
Directed by Pete Docter, Inside Out clearly is a tool that of which may be used when describing mental disorders, such as Clinical Depression, Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD. The film gives grand visual aids to what emotions may look like through the Riley’s emotions’ personas. Inside Out also allows us to visualize what happens when one emotion is controlling. Also, the movie gives us the scenario of being void of emotion. Using these ideas in the film, most mental disorders can be visualized. One can say that the film allows us to disassemble mental disorders from the “Inside
More specifically, imaginative play is very important during this stage of development because it serves as a means of understanding the world. For example, imaginative play allows the child to comment and try to understand reality via an imaginary world that the child can control and manipulate. This in turn, allows the child to express their feelings in a pretend scenario without receiving the same responses if expressed in reality. As a result, this assists the child in the understanding of emotions and perspective thinking because during imaginative play, the child expresses strong emotions and must empathize with each other’s ideas and feeling (Davies,
Not many children’s movies show children how the brain develops, stores memories and works in day to day life, but Inside Out does just that. Within this hour and a half movie the psychology topics of long term memory, short term memory, emotions, and development is all include. Although it is very clear Inside Out indulges on these psychological topics throughout the movie, memory and emotions take the spotlight. Developmental psychology may not be as obvious, but is still in several of the scenes in Inside Out.
296). This is illustrated at the end of movie when Riley uses sadness to finally explain to her parents the feelings she’d experienced since moving to the new city. In the movie five out of the six basic emotions where present in Riley and her two parents. Contrary to what the movie depicted, by this time in both Riley and her parents development, they should not only have the basic emotions but they should also possess complex emotions such as shame, guilt, and embarrassment (Emerging Emotions, 297). Furthermore, I don’t think that the emotions should have directly influenced Riley in the manner the movie portrayed. I believe that children have choices and decisions to make based in part but not totally on their emotions. Once Joy and sadness got stuck outside of headquarters, it was clear that Riley lacked emotional control. For example, when “anger” became mad because Riley’s ex- best friend found another friend, Riley immediately became livid and as a result acted out of character. At Riley’s age she should possess the mental capabilities necessary to successfully regulate her emotions (Emerging Emotions, pg. 303). She has to learn that every time she experiences something she doesn’t enjoy, or feels abandoned she doesn’t have to fly off the handle. Instead she should exercise her language skills to effectively communicate to her parents that she doesn’t enjoy the new environment and wants to go home. Because she didn’t regulate her emotions in a positive way this affected her friendships, her attachment to her parents, and even caused her to run
As a result of the myelination of the limbic system, growth of the prefrontal cortex and a longer attention span, emotional regulation and cognitive maturation develop together, enabling one another to advance (Berger,2014, p.213). This type of development and level of maturation is most noticeable in children ages four and five because uncontrollable outburst of emotion, such as tantrums and phobias begin to disappear; however, I believe it’s possible for children younger than four to achieve this level of maturation and cognitive development much sooner based on external influences such as parents, friends and their environment. For example, not long after my daughter turned she began to speak in small but full sentences to express her needs and emotions. I’ll never forget the first time I told her no when she made a request. Her facial expression immediately changed and she burst into tears. I was completely at a loss for words, being a first time mother, because I could not understand why she had such a dramatic reaction to being told no. Finally, I realized that even though it was very apparent to myself my reason for saying no, she was not able to comprehend the why at this stage in her life. From that day forward I have made it a conscious effort to explain and demonstrate my actions and the reasons for them;
The many facets of how the human mind operates and controls human behavior culminates into what we know as psychology. Psychology isn’t a limited science as it applies to almost anything that a human thinks, does, or feels about any particular subject. Many principles of psychology are present in something as simple as a movie even though it is not consciously applied. In the film “Patch Adams” many principles of psychology are present from start to finish including intrinsic motivation, experimental design, and passionate love. Throughout the course of this essay all of these subjects will be examined in depth including the circumstances surrounding the use of each principle and whether or not it was accurately or poorly portrayed in this film.
Psychology Under the Sea Psychology is a term that humans usually associate with the mental state of other humans and or themselves, well what if Psychology could be used to determine the mental state of a fish? In 2003, the world was exposed to a new form of underwater species in bright animation and vivid picture. The scene opens and the sea life is calm and happy, Marlin and Coral go and look at all 100 of their babies, they name half Marlin Jr. and half Coral Jr., but Coral decides to name one Nemo. In the event of a devastating tragedy Marlin loses his wife Coral to a barracuda who also devoured 99 out of the 100 unborn babies. One baby survives, and we dive into the life changing experience of Nemo.
assist in the development of emotions in early childhood (Berk & Meyers, 2016). These different