Psychological Concepts In The Movie: Inside Out

As I sat and watched this movie for the second time in my life, I could view it a little differently than I had before. The first time I watched this, I was with my roommate who absolutely loves this movie. She talked about how amazing it was and finally I gave in and I said, “Let’s watch it.” I watched it like I would watch any new movie, paying attention to the story, not knowing there was a real science behind it. This time when I watched it, I could see the story from a whole different angle. The movie was teaching us about the human brain and how it works with emotions, and most people just think it is a cute little movie with funny characters. Although some aspects of this movie were made up, many of the psychological concepts that are …show more content…
This movie captures some of the basic thought processes and characters of our everyday life. One thing in the movie that they mentioned was moving the memories that Riley had made throughout the day to long term memory. We learned about this process in class, and it is called consolidation. Not only did they picture this as the moving of memories into the long term, they also illustrated that it is done while sleeping. In the movie they showed this as “being the end of the emotions’ shifts.” Once Riley was asleep, the emotions moved the memories to long term and therefore, their work day was over. Throughout the textbook and also through the lectures in class, we learned that sleep is important for memory consolidation. “Inside Out” illustrates the process quite well in the movie and highlights the importance of sleeping during the consolidation …show more content…
I was very curious if this was in fact true, so I did some researching. Psychology Today states, “Unconscious fear-related memories can remain totally hidden from your conscious mind, yet they still have the ability to dramatically affect everyday behavior and emotions.” I took this as fears that you have that you may or may not be fully aware of. They could be hidden in your unconscious mind and not be brought out into the conscious unless you or something provokes them. For example, in the movie, Jangles the clown was a deep fear of Riley’s. She may not have been aware of it in her everyday life, but when he came into her dreams, he very quickly woke her up. I feel like to a great deal, the movie portrayed our deepest fears in a truthful