Cognitive Psychology In The Movie 'Inside Out'
In this paper I’m going to be writing about the cognitive psychology that takes place in the movie “Inside Out”. In this movie pre-teen Riley is forced to move from the life she knew in the Midwest; to San Francisco and it’s not an easy transition. Like us all, Riley is guided by her emotions. In the movie these emotions are Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness.
These emotions live inside of Riley’s brain which (in the movie) is referred to as the “Headquarters”. Joy, who is Riley’s most important emotion is also the leader of the headquarters. When things begin to get messed up in the Headquarters it also effects Riley, and Joy is no longer able to maintain the positivity that she feels Riley needs. That’s when the other emotions must help her. Riley then begins to tap into some of her other Cognitive emotions and must try to survive these bumpy times. Parts of …show more content…
this movie are fairly accurate, although humans have hundreds of emotions some that are more basic (happy, sad, angry) and some that are a bit more complex (shame, guilt, pride). They only showed five emotions because they are biological emotions and people from everywhere should be able to relate to having experienced these emotions.
In this movie, they portrayed the Headquarters as the limbic system which contains the amygdala, hippocampus, regions of the limbic cortex and septal area. These all have to do with how we process our emotions, store our long-term memory, process learning, and they effect how we behave. The way that they portrayed Riley’s brain is very similar to how our brain would function. There’s only one thing, when her emotions lay their hands on any of the flips and switches she all of the sudden projects that emotion. That is not how the brain works, just because one part of our brain wants us to feel happy or sad doesn’t mean we can just start talking to everyone and being social butterflies, or suddenly withdraw ourselves from society because sadness wants a turn.
The reason that we are not able to do this is because of our prefrontal cortex. This allows us to decide what we want to do with our emotions. We don’t just feel an emotion and become zombies. Rileys age and situation (her moving) does play a big part in how well she responds to the emotions that she is feeling since her limbic system is so overactive at that age and her prefrontal cortex is not. Regardless, we still wouldn’t act that way.
Our prefrontal cortex allows us to say, “Hey I’m feeling sad maybe instead of retracting from people I should do something productive”.
Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors maneuver the way we do things in what’s called a “cognitive triangle”. If this cognitive triangle did not work people would be committing suicides left and right over spilled milk. That is why it is so important.
As Riley’s life progresses she begins to form new memories which in the movie are depicted as being the same as her personality, when she begins to lose her memories she beings to lose her quirky personality as well. While memories and personality do affect each other drastically they are not the same thing. People who experience more positive memories do tend to be more outgoing and positive people, and people who experience bad memories tend to be shyer and stay to themselves.
However, when a positive or negative memory leaves our short-term memory and doesn’t make it to our long-term memory our personalities don’t instantly alter because we can’t remember that memory. A change in your personality tends to happen
when
you go through different events, such as moving, dating someone, losing someone close to you that you really cared about, your income, etc.
In the movie “Inside Out” Riley’s long-term memory is portrayed as these balls and they project her audio and visual functions. In a way, that is very similar to how we stream our audio and visual output. Long-term memories are groups of neurons that are primed to fire together in a very similar way to the experience that you had originally had and admit audio, visual and emotional information. But, the neuron groups that do this are consistently changing over time while the brain changes, the neurons all reassemble.
A lot of the time when you are trying to recall something you are remembering a reconstruction of the memory from when it was last remembered. When you don’t use a memory for a long time and try to remember it later it becomes harder to remember the details. Just like in the movie how the balls would fade out when Riley would lose a memory, our brain sort of does the same thing. It is believed that we can retain these “forgotten” memories if someone brings up the right cues or things to help us to remember what it is we “forgot”.
“Inside Out” showed that whenever Riley would try to retain a forgotten memory when someone was able to say the right thing to her, she was able to remember what it is that she had forgot. When the emotions in the movie would flip the switches, and restore the fading balls (memories) it was a correct depiction of how when your brain goes through encoding in the Hippocampus. Your brain goes through a series of different things to remember something and once a trigger word, event, or thing processes in your mind, you then go through encoding in the Hippocampus; like Riley.
Overall, this movie was a pretty accurate depiction of how the human brain works. Some parts of the movie are a little far stretched, but it was very unique how they allowed the other emotions in the movie to show through and how they interpreted Cognitive Psychology into the movie. The human brain is so huge and complex, to create a movie that can show the vast complexion of the brain would be extremely difficult, to nearly impossible.
The overall cognitive psychology portrayal in the movie “Inside Out” did a good job at showing how the Cognition of our brain works in a more simplistic manner. They found a way to show that just because you’re eleven years old doesn’t mean that the only cognitive emotion you feel is happiness. Even at a young age you still feel other emotions and should recognize them like showed in the movie. Everyone experiences cognitive psychology no matter how young or old.
You see in the movie the different situations that she goes through and how her cognitive emotions change with the change in situations. Which is exactly how human cognition works. We all go through different events which produce different results.
These emotions live inside of Riley’s brain which (in the movie) is referred to as the “Headquarters”. Joy, who is Riley’s most important emotion is also the leader of the headquarters. When things begin to get messed up in the Headquarters it also effects Riley, and Joy is no longer able to maintain the positivity that she feels Riley needs. That’s when the other emotions must help her. Riley then begins to tap into some of her other Cognitive emotions and must try to survive these bumpy times. Parts of …show more content…
this movie are fairly accurate, although humans have hundreds of emotions some that are more basic (happy, sad, angry) and some that are a bit more complex (shame, guilt, pride). They only showed five emotions because they are biological emotions and people from everywhere should be able to relate to having experienced these emotions.
In this movie, they portrayed the Headquarters as the limbic system which contains the amygdala, hippocampus, regions of the limbic cortex and septal area. These all have to do with how we process our emotions, store our long-term memory, process learning, and they effect how we behave. The way that they portrayed Riley’s brain is very similar to how our brain would function. There’s only one thing, when her emotions lay their hands on any of the flips and switches she all of the sudden projects that emotion. That is not how the brain works, just because one part of our brain wants us to feel happy or sad doesn’t mean we can just start talking to everyone and being social butterflies, or suddenly withdraw ourselves from society because sadness wants a turn.
The reason that we are not able to do this is because of our prefrontal cortex. This allows us to decide what we want to do with our emotions. We don’t just feel an emotion and become zombies. Rileys age and situation (her moving) does play a big part in how well she responds to the emotions that she is feeling since her limbic system is so overactive at that age and her prefrontal cortex is not. Regardless, we still wouldn’t act that way.
Our prefrontal cortex allows us to say, “Hey I’m feeling sad maybe instead of retracting from people I should do something productive”.
Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors maneuver the way we do things in what’s called a “cognitive triangle”. If this cognitive triangle did not work people would be committing suicides left and right over spilled milk. That is why it is so important.
As Riley’s life progresses she begins to form new memories which in the movie are depicted as being the same as her personality, when she begins to lose her memories she beings to lose her quirky personality as well. While memories and personality do affect each other drastically they are not the same thing. People who experience more positive memories do tend to be more outgoing and positive people, and people who experience bad memories tend to be shyer and stay to themselves.
However, when a positive or negative memory leaves our short-term memory and doesn’t make it to our long-term memory our personalities don’t instantly alter because we can’t remember that memory. A change in your personality tends to happen
when
you go through different events, such as moving, dating someone, losing someone close to you that you really cared about, your income, etc.
In the movie “Inside Out” Riley’s long-term memory is portrayed as these balls and they project her audio and visual functions. In a way, that is very similar to how we stream our audio and visual output. Long-term memories are groups of neurons that are primed to fire together in a very similar way to the experience that you had originally had and admit audio, visual and emotional information. But, the neuron groups that do this are consistently changing over time while the brain changes, the neurons all reassemble.
A lot of the time when you are trying to recall something you are remembering a reconstruction of the memory from when it was last remembered. When you don’t use a memory for a long time and try to remember it later it becomes harder to remember the details. Just like in the movie how the balls would fade out when Riley would lose a memory, our brain sort of does the same thing. It is believed that we can retain these “forgotten” memories if someone brings up the right cues or things to help us to remember what it is we “forgot”.
“Inside Out” showed that whenever Riley would try to retain a forgotten memory when someone was able to say the right thing to her, she was able to remember what it is that she had forgot. When the emotions in the movie would flip the switches, and restore the fading balls (memories) it was a correct depiction of how when your brain goes through encoding in the Hippocampus. Your brain goes through a series of different things to remember something and once a trigger word, event, or thing processes in your mind, you then go through encoding in the Hippocampus; like Riley.
Overall, this movie was a pretty accurate depiction of how the human brain works. Some parts of the movie are a little far stretched, but it was very unique how they allowed the other emotions in the movie to show through and how they interpreted Cognitive Psychology into the movie. The human brain is so huge and complex, to create a movie that can show the vast complexion of the brain would be extremely difficult, to nearly impossible.
The overall cognitive psychology portrayal in the movie “Inside Out” did a good job at showing how the Cognition of our brain works in a more simplistic manner. They found a way to show that just because you’re eleven years old doesn’t mean that the only cognitive emotion you feel is happiness. Even at a young age you still feel other emotions and should recognize them like showed in the movie. Everyone experiences cognitive psychology no matter how young or old.
You see in the movie the different situations that she goes through and how her cognitive emotions change with the change in situations. Which is exactly how human cognition works. We all go through different events which produce different results.