Mean Girls Social Investigation The storyline centers around a young girl named Cady Heron, who has just entered the American school system. Cady is introduced to many different social groups, one of which is named the Plastics who includes Regina (Ring Leader), Gretchen, and Karen. They are the most admired girls in school. Cady decides to take down the group's leader, Regina by sabotaging the group with the help of some social outsiders. The film concludes with Cady realizing that these social concepts shouldn't matter, and that everyone should just be who they really are. By analyzing the movie, it helped me to understand society better when I relate it to the social concepts of sociology. There are a few different concepts that I have
…show more content…
It is important to get to know someone before you make a judgment about them. Attraction is another common concept in the movie. Attractiveness is having qualities that appeal to an audience. Attractions is dealing with teenagers leaning more into the phase of “he/she is cute so lets date” kind of thing. Guys and girls want to be in relationships, so they try to find who is cute to them and go out with that particular male or female, “Attractiveness also reveals that we are more likely to listen and be influenced by people we find attractive or likeable” (Myers pg. 233). Another example of attractiveness is when Cady pretends to be dumb in math, and gets help with math questions from a guy in her math class. She only pretends to be dumb because she wanted to become closer to the attractive guy. Conformity is the tendency to align your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those around you. Saul McLeod simply states that “The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the majority position, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct (informational), or simply to conform to a social role (identification)” (McLeod 2016). There are different scenes where conformity plays a huge role on how students interact with each other. In this scene, Cady is pressured to affiliate herself with the Plastics. There is a huge emphasis on these …show more content…
Group think is the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action” (Myers 290). There is a Mean Girls clip where the “plastics” are telling Katy all the rules they have in order for her to sit with them. These rules allow the girls to have a solid relationship with each other. They are building trust with Cady and allowing her into the group by following these rules. By creating rules like you can only wear ponytails once a week, only wear jeans and track pants on Fridays, asking the rest of the group if someone can sit with them, or asking what guys you can like is suppose to minimize the conflict between the girls in the group. As the sabotaging begins, these rules caused even more conflict. The rules made are not best for the group, “One symptom of groupthink is the tendency to perceive one’s own group as moral and strong, and the opposition as evil and weak” (Myers 491). This shows that groupthink causes many issues and can cause a group to separate from each
It is important to get to know someone before you make a judgment about them. Attraction is another common concept in the movie. Attractiveness is having qualities that appeal to an audience. Attractions is dealing with teenagers leaning more into the phase of “he/she is cute so lets date” kind of thing. Guys and girls want to be in relationships, so they try to find who is cute to them and go out with that particular male or female, “Attractiveness also reveals that we are more likely to listen and be influenced by people we find attractive or likeable” (Myers pg. 233). Another example of attractiveness is when Cady pretends to be dumb in math, and gets help with math questions from a guy in her math class. She only pretends to be dumb because she wanted to become closer to the attractive guy. Conformity is the tendency to align your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those around you. Saul McLeod simply states that “The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the majority position, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct (informational), or simply to conform to a social role (identification)” (McLeod 2016). There are different scenes where conformity plays a huge role on how students interact with each other. In this scene, Cady is pressured to affiliate herself with the Plastics. There is a huge emphasis on these …show more content…
Group think is the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action” (Myers 290). There is a Mean Girls clip where the “plastics” are telling Katy all the rules they have in order for her to sit with them. These rules allow the girls to have a solid relationship with each other. They are building trust with Cady and allowing her into the group by following these rules. By creating rules like you can only wear ponytails once a week, only wear jeans and track pants on Fridays, asking the rest of the group if someone can sit with them, or asking what guys you can like is suppose to minimize the conflict between the girls in the group. As the sabotaging begins, these rules caused even more conflict. The rules made are not best for the group, “One symptom of groupthink is the tendency to perceive one’s own group as moral and strong, and the opposition as evil and weak” (Myers 491). This shows that groupthink causes many issues and can cause a group to separate from each