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Psychology is known as the science of human behavior and mental processes (Griggs, 2017, p. 1). It is very diverse and can be seen every day. One may not realize how prevalent psychology is in their daily lives and the things around them. An example of where psychology can be seen is in movies. In movies, different concepts of psychology are important in the development of the story. The movie Get out, written by Jordan Peele, manifests different concepts of psychology to present its true meaning. Throughout the movie, Get Out, the psychological concepts on behavior perspective, the sympathetic nervous system, and classical conditioning are emphasized.
The movie Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele, can be described as a thriller.
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As the movie develops the hidden secrets are exposed and are very horrific. The movie begins with a black male who is lost and being followed by a suspicious car (Peele & Peele 2017). This individual is then abducted, and the movie begins in present time. In the movie, an African-American man named Chris Washington goes on a weekend trip to his girlfriend’s, Rose Armitage, parent’s house. Chris was afraid of the tension that would occur because he was dating a white woman. He feared that he would be rejected by her parents because of racism and prejudices. However, the truth was that he was wanted but all for horrible reasons. After Rose’s mother, who is a hypnotist, hypnotizes Chris the horrifying truth about the family starts to unravel. Chris was only a guest at the house because he was going to be auctioned to a group of of white people in their cult. Whoever bid the highest would receive Chris’s body. He was tricked by Rose because he was the bait they needed to fulfill the surgery that will be performed by her father Dean, a neurosurgeon. The surgery is called the Coagula procedure which means that neurosurgery and hypnosis are used to move Chris’s consciousness to the person who won the bid, body. Ultimately, Chris was not ready to let them take his body and his freedom, so he murders the entire family. Many psychological concepts were tied in with the rollercoaster of events. Racism was deeply rooted throughout the movie Get Out. The psychological concept that relates to racism is behavioral perspective. According to Richard Griggs (2017), “Behavioral perspective is when external events condition people’s behavior” (p. 5). This perspective relates to racism because it is a learned behavior. The first instance of racism seen in the movie is when Chris is asked for his ID by a cop. However, despite not being the driver in the accident he was confronted because of the color of his skin (Peele & Peele, 2017). Chris had done no wrong and yet the cop felt subjected to verbally harass him. The behavior of the cop must be something he has witnessed and learned from other cops. Another example that is important to the overall movie is the generations of continued racism seen in Rose’s family. The movie makes it clear that Rose’s grandparents were racist which has been passed down to Rose’s father, their son Dean. Dean’s learned behavior has been passed down to his wife and children which is why they seek in abducting African-Americans because they see them as different to White people for physical reasons. Lastly, the party guests at the Armitage’s party, the auction party, were racist towards Chris. An example is when one of the guests said, “Talking about sports, with your genetic makeup you can push your body and become a beast” (Peele & Peele 2017). This is an example of behavior perspective because this guest made a racist generalization, a learned behavior, about him and his ability to do well in sports because he is African-American. Likewise, to learned behavior, classical conditioning is also emphasized throughout the movie. Within the movie Get Out classical conditioning can be seen. Griggs (2017) states that classical conditioning is “acquiring a new response (the conditioned response) to a previously neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) that reliably signals the arrival of an unconditioned stimulus” (p. 151). Classical conditioning is learning that one stimulus signals the arrival of another stimulus. Classical conditioning was used by Rose's Mother, Missy a hypnotist, throughout the movie. Missy hypnotizes Chris to control his body in Get Out (Peele & Peele 2017). An example is when Chris arrives at the Armitage home for the first time Missy has a teacup with a spoon. The teacup and spoon make a ringing noise in which she uses to hypnotize the victims and puts them into the "sunken space". At first, when Chris sees the teacup and spoon, he has no response which made it the unconditioned stimulus. As the movie goes on Chris has a solo encounter with Missy where she attempts to hypnotize him by bringing up his mother's death. Overwhelmed, he began to cry, and Missy started to ring the teacup. He loses all sense of self and goes into the "sunken space" in which he cannot escape. The ringing of the teacup and spoon is the neutral stimulus which becomes the conditioned stimulus. The conditioned response, Chris becoming hypnotized, is elicited by the conditioned stimulus, the ringing by the tea cup and spoon. Consequently, Chris is now conditioned to go into the "sunken space" whenever he hears that ringing noise (Peele and Peele 2017). Chris realized that he had been conditioned when he was captured by the family and put in a solitary room. In the solitary room, Chris was strapped down to a chair and was facing a television. The television turns on and the coagula procedure he is about to undergo is explained. Afterwards, a video of the teacup and spoon making the noise is shown which hypnotizes him. The television turned on a few times showing the same video, so he could become hypnotized again. In a desperate attempt to stop being hypnotized, he plugs his ears with cotton that he scratched out, so he did not hear the ringing. This method allowed Chris to stop going into the trance and he was able to escape. However, when escaping, Missy runs towards the teacup and spoon to stop him from escaping. Ultimately, Chris reaches to get it on time and he destroys it. Extinction of a conditioned stimulus took place when Chris is no longer able to become hypnotized. Throughout the movie scenes the sympathetic nervous system was also a significant psychological concept. The sympathetic nervous system was significant to Get Out.
The sympathetic nervous system according to Griggs (2017) is “part of the autonomic nervous system that is in control when we are highly aroused” (p. 57). Arousal means that when encountering an emergency, a state of arousal, the body will prepare to defend itself. When it comes to the sympathetic nervous system, many different functions involved which can be seen in Chris. In the movie, Chris wanted to leave the Armitage’s home because he felt uncomfortable and had become suspicious of his surroundings (Peele & Peele 2017). Chris decided to go through Rose’s room. While he was snooping, he finds photos of all the African-American men that Rose has tricked and led to their abduction by the Armitage’s. The sympathetic nervous system is seen in the scene because Chris started to sweat because he aware that he is in danger. According to Griggs (2017), one of the functions of the sympathetic nervous system is to activate sweat glands (p.58). At this point of the movie, Chris tried to escape the Armitage’s home but is confronted by all of them. However, they were able to capture Chris (Peele and Peele 2017). Chris woke up strapped to a chair in a room and he began panicking. The sympathetic nervous system was in this scene because Chris was breathing fast, sweating, and his heart rate had increased which are functions of it. Finally, when Chris was able to escape, his body went into fight-or-flight mode in which a hormone called adrenaline is secreted by the endocrine system to help him survive (Griggs, 2017, p. 59). Chris was able to fight and kill each family in order to save himself from the danger he was
facing. The movie Get Out allowed for the group to reflect on many different aspects of the movie and work toward a common goal of the paper. In this experience, the group was able to learn how different scenes of the movie related to psychology. It led the group to strengthen their knowledge on certain concepts that were confusing before this project. A new skill that the group can agree on was better communication skills to do the paper. The group can apply this by informing others on how psychology relates to movies. Also, we can use what we learned in working in groups to encourage us to do better in future projects. The group can agree that we expected for this project to be easy which was surprising to know it was hard to complete. What impacted the group to view this project as an easy task is because the belief that all this information was common sense. What the group disliked about the experience was the inability to get together and do the group project at once because the schedules were conflicting. However, the group liked that we were able to creatively bring our ideas together to form a coherent essay. Our group would like to know more about different entertainments like movies, using psychology to capture the audience attention. If the group could do the project again we would be more organized and start the project earlier to cause less stress. Psychology is important to everything in daily lives. A movie where psychology concepts relate is Get Out. The behavior perspective related to the racism in the movie because it is a learned behavior seen in people. Another psychological concept was classical conditioning. Chris is conditioned to become hypnotized when he hears the teacup and spoon ringing. Lastly, the sympathetic nervous system was important because the functions of it allowed for Chris to fight and escape from being abducted. Through this project, the group was able to learn and experience the meaning of a group project. Overall, these psychosocial concepts brought the movie together and the group was able to take more knowledge out of it. Reference Peele, J. (Producer) & Peele, J. (Director). (2017). Get Out [Motion Picture]. United States: Blumhouse Productions. Griggs, R. (2017). Psychology a concise introduction (5th ed). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Psychology comprises of two words originally used by the ‘Greeks’, ‘psyche’, defining the mind, soul or spirit and lastly ‘logos’ being study. Both words define together the ‘study of the mind’. Psychology perspectives evaluate the normal and abnormal behaviour and how persons’ deal with different concepts of issues and problems. Psychology theories’ are based on ‘common sense’, but its scientific structure, everything needs to be evaluated and tested, therefore, promoting different psychological theories’.
The birth of psychology was in December of 1879, at Germanys University of Leipzig (Myers, 2014, p.2). In 1960, Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener defines psychology as “the science of mental health” (Myers, 2014, p.4). However, two provocative American psychologists, John Watson and B.F Skinner, redefined psychology in 1920. They redefined psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior” (Myers, 2014, p.4). The problem arose when psychologists realized people could not observe feeling or thought so they needed to come up with a new definition for psychology. We define psychology today as “the science of behavior and mental processes” (Myers, 2014, p.4). Psychology includes many subfields such as human development, social behavior,
Psychology can be broadly defined as the scientific and systematic study of people’s behavior and mental processes.
Social Psychology is the scientific study of how we influence, affect, and relate to one another. Social psychology is studied to see how the influence of others can impact how we act. This can be seen in many aspects in life. Most specifically, social psychology can be seen in movies. Recently, I have viewed the movie Shrek which was released in 2001. Shrek is a kid’s movie about an ogre named Shrek who rescues a princess from a castle for Lord Farquaad in order to regain his swamp and privacy. During this process, however, Shrek falls in love with the princess and discovers a secret about her. While watching Shrek, I have noticed that many theories and concepts from social psychology were apparent in the film.
While watching this movie I noticed many social psychology concepts throughout. I have never paid attention to these concepts when watching the movie before, so it was interesting to pay close attention and see how many came up. The movie displays foot-in-the door technique, social facilitation, deindividuation, ingroup, scapegoat theory, among many others. Being a very real and honest movie, it is easy to understand why so many social psychology concepts are present. Our textbook defines social psychology to be, “the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings and thought in social situation” (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). There are many strong characters within the movie, and they display these concepts.
In the movie The Breakfast Club, parents vs teens, drug abuse, and sexuality all play a role. The five main characters in the movie all of some issue or conflicts at home with their parents. Drug abuse takes part in the movie from hiding marijuana in lockers and getting high. Throughout the movie sexuality takes a role by the characters talking about sex and making girls feeling insecure. The Breakfast Club represents multiple adolescence development stages throughout the movie to show what situations were like in that time period.
Psychology is a social science that aims to study the mind and the behaviors of humans. It aims to understand what drives humans to act the way they do. It differs from sociology and anthropology in that it takes accounts the individual rather than society as a whole.
The film The Notebook offers not only a form of entertainment but also different psychology concepts throughout the film. The Notebook is told from the point of view of an elderly man reading to a woman around his own age. He reads the story of two young lovers that come from differing backgrounds but fall in love. The young girl, Allie, is from a well-off family from the city that is visiting Seabrook Island for the summer. While the young man, Noah, is a poor country boy and that must work to make a living. They quickly fall in love but Allie’s parents disapprove of Noah due to his economic status. Once Allie leaves Seabrook, Noah writes her everyday but her mother hides the letters. The young lovers wait for one
The field of psychology is a discipline, originated from many branches of science. It has applications from within a complete scope of avenues, from psychotherapy to professional decision-making. The flexibility and versatility of this field reflects its importance and demands in-depth analysis. Psychology was a division of philosophy until it developed independent scientific disciplines. The history of psychology was a scholarly study of the mind and behavior that dates back to the beginning of civilization. There are important details from previous theory psychologist, research have contributed to behaviorism approaches and have contributed towards specific current behavioral practices. Contemporary behavior therapy began to emerge into distinct practical and core learning theories concerning the needs and knowledge engaging cultural and professional differences.
Social psychology is a scientific study that studies how people think, feel, and how they behave under the influence of other people (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2013, p. 2). Thinking about what social influence really means, we tend to think of a person who tries to persuade another person to acting a certain way. It can be a form of peer pressure, like taking that first puff of a cigarette, or it can be conforming to popular societal views, such as obeying the law of the land. Fiction is a great way to learn about social psychological perspectives. Watching popular theatrical films is the perfect way to learn because it illustrates the application of many perceptions within the subject of social psychology.
While talking he begins to hold his chest, anxiously, he makes an excuse to step outside. He is distressed, breathes awkwardly, and wants to go someplace more comfortable. Soon, after this ordeal, they visit the emergency room where the doctor tells him he was not experiencing a heart attack that the episode was an anxiety attack or a panic attack. Paul gets angry and shouts to the doctor “Do I look like a guy who panics?” Anger is a common reaction to this kind of diagnosis. To him the diagnosis seems to imply that he is somehow a coward. Even though it was clear to everyone that Paul had a panic attack, his exact diagnosis is never made clear during the movie. However, I am very confident that the order displayed was Panic Disorder. As learned in class panic or anxiety attacks are physical responses to a psychological disorder distinguished by its brief and unpredictable emergence that arouses a number of visible and unpleasant sensations such as: sweating, shortness of breath, choking, and chest pain being among the common symptoms. Like any other anxiety disorders such as phobias or post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks can be triggered by an individual’s encountering of something that reminds them of situations in the past that caused them massive distress. Throughout the movie Paul portrays a series of attacks/problems that he faces and instantly seeks Ben’s help when they happen.
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
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.
The term psychology has many meanings to different people, even to those who work within the psychological field. The word psychology derives from two Greek roots; 'psyche' refers to 'soul' or 'mind' and logo refers to 'the study of'. A more update definition of the word psychology can be found from Atkinson, et al (1991) “The scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.” However on Google Definitions the definition of psychology is “the mental characteristics and attitudes of a person” [accessed 16 September 2011], which gives somewhat of a contradiction. In this assignment I will be outlining and evaluating four key psychological perspectives. The psychological perspectives I have chosen are the behavioural approach, biological approach, cognitive approach and the psychodynamic approach.
(2004) Psychology (2nd European edition). Essex: Pearson Education Limited Gross, R (1996).Psychology, The Science of mind and behaviour (3rd Ed). London: Hodder & Stoughton