Movie Report In the Intro of Psychology course, I learned many concepts that relate to the real world and what we do in our everyday life. The psychology concept that I learned was social psychology. Social psychology is the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate it to one another. We can relate to social psychology because we interact with others daily. We understand the behavior of our friends and families individually when in a social concept. The prime examples of social psychology are in-group, out-group, personal identity and social identity.
The in-group is known as “Us”, people with whom we share a common identity. The out-group is “Them”, those perceived as different or apart from our in-group. These factors are what people mainly based their social thoughts on one another. Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image. Social identity is the “We” aspect of self-concept, the part of our answer to “Who am I? ” that comes from our group memberships.
For example, if you have categorized yourself as a student, the chances are you will adopt the identity of a student and begin to act in the ways you believe students act. Personal identity is our sense of self, according to Erikson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. In the movie “Mean girls,” written by Tina Fey, the actor Lindsay Lohan plays the role of a girl named Cady Heron who has never known what high school truly meant because her parents were zoologists. She lived her first fifteen years in the African jungle in which she was home-schooled.
She lived her entire life with only her parents and the animals of the wilderness, knowing all of the rules of survival. However, when she moves out of Africa, she has to learn the rules of high school, a jungle itself. She instantly makes friends with two sweet teenagers, Damian and Janis, who, in the terms of the high school, were in the “out crowd” or part of the out-group. Soon she meets the “Plastics,” which can be referred as the in-group, the three beautiful and popular girls, consisting of Regina, the unofficial leader, Gretchen, Regina’s full-time follower, and Karen, “one of the dumbest people you will ever meet. They immediately let her into their group, but Cady, wanting to keep her first friends, is unsure of what to do. The first two friends that Cady met convince Cady to keep her relationship with the “Plastics,” only so that they can know their dark secrets. Events then turn for the worse when Cady falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels. When Regina finds out, she seeks revenge of Cady by taking Aaron back. When Cady finds out, what began as a game to discover secrets turns into a plan to destroy Regina.
Then Cady, Janis, and Damian make a plan together to bring Regina’s status down. However, as Cady spends more time with the “Plastics,” she begins to become one. This movie is a prime example of in-groups and out-groups, personal identity, and social identity. The story line describes the outcast, Cady, attempting to infiltrate the popular group called the “Plastics. ” The three members of the “Plastics,” Regina, Gretchen, and Karen are rich, beautiful, and of course popular.
Two of them have long beautiful blond hair and one with beautiful dark brown hair; they all wore fashionable clothes every day, except for their one-day-a-week sweat pants day. And then enters Cady who has un-kept red hair and wears flannel shirts, jeans, and sneakers. The “Plastics,” unconsciously followed one of the categories under social categorization. They saw Cady, although she did not wear the same clothes as they did, they saw that she had similar eye color, hair color and texture, skin tone, height, and body build. As Cady got to know the “Plastics,” a bit more they introduced her to “The Burn Book. The burn book is an absolute example of prejudice and discrimination which is a set of attitudes towards members of a group prejudice and negative behavior toward a person based on his or her membership in group discrimination. The three members of the “Plastics,” would single out a person in their grade, even teachers, and devote a page in the book to placing a picture of that person and captioning it with what was wrong with them. For example, they stated in the book that one of their newly divorced female teachers was selling drugs on the side and that certain girls were fat and ugly.
Anybody in the burn book was not considered to be part of in-group or the “Plastics. ” Cady realized her personal identity did not match with what had become her social identity and began to spill secrets of the “Plastics,” which then turned the ring leader of the “Plastics,” to destroy Cady by framing her as the owner of the burn book that just so happened to fall into the hands of the principal. Outraged and as a form of intervention, the principal staged a meeting with the female junior class in the gymnasium and had every girl stand on a platform and admit to saying something bad about another girl in their grade.
The girls would then turn around and fall backwards having the other girls catch them as a sign of support. The principal demonstrated Gordon Allport’s contact hypothesis in that he created “equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. ’ This intervention was successful in the movie. The “Plastics,” broke up and joined different groups. Although this is just a movie and not real life, it shows how people interact with one another. Cady found herself to be different from the “Plastics,” which led her to know that you feel more comfortable with people who are similar to what you like and what you do.
She also figured that her social identity was not the same as her personal identity and decided that the “Plastics,” weren’t who she was meant to be friends with. Cady played the role of a “friend,” in the movie and the concept of social psychology led that to be known as a way to test whether you fit in the in-group or not. Therefore, social psychology is a great way to test how comfortable you are with people you just met. Your actions defines who you are in your social identity as well as your personal identity, if you can to relate to both then you’re in the perfect atmosphere.
