Social Psychology Reflection #1

When I first laid eyes on the list of films we were required to choose from for this writing assignment, my attention was instantly captured by the addition of one of my favorite films, Fight Club. Can this be real? Am I really about to write a paper on a film I’ve seen approximately over a thousand times? Of course it all seemed a little too easy, and after reading chapter three I swiftly realized this assignment was going to be a little more intricate than I thought. However, after applying principles of social cognition to scenes throughout this film, this assignment actually refined my previous perspective and made me rethink the whole basis of the film entirely. Once I revaluated myself on topics such as how we perceive our social worlds I began to notice a lot about this film that I never realized before. One fact in particular I actually felt stupid for never discerning was that the narrator of the film (Edward Norton) never reveals his real name. I was always so attentive to the thought-provoking storyline and its unsystematic plot twists that it never even occurred to me. Nevertheless, I will refer to this character as the narrator. Early in the film the narrator has already undergone many instances involving social perception. The first notable perception shown in the film is belief perseverance. The narrator has implanted the belief in his mind that he has discovered a cure to his suffering insomnia by attending various support groups. Subsequently, he has developed the idea that going to these support groups has become an emotional release that relieves his stress an overall helps him sleep at night. The narrator eventually believes a woman who begins showing up to all the same support meetings as him will prevent him ...

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...ed that all that Tyler had done were actually his actions. This included starting a fight club terrorist organization throughout the country, destroying his own apartment, and having sex with Marla Singer who he was previously upset with for having sexual relations with Tyler who is actually him. So basically he is jealous of himself having sex with Marla. Nevertheless how weird that sounds, the point I’m trying to make is that the narrator reconstructed his past by using his current feelings and expectations to combine perceptions and information fragments. Thus, allowing the narrator to easily yet unconsciously revise his memories to suit his current knowledge. Overall the narrator’s misconception of his memories and reconstruction of his past behavior has to do with the idea that we all respond not to reality as it is but to reality as how we perceive it to be.