The movie “ Mean Girls”, featuring Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey, is a comedic film about a girl in high school who has to deal with all the problems, pressures, and choices of growing up in American society in comparison to that of being homeschooled in Africa. This motion picture was the perfect platform for showcasing various types of behavioral psychology. When Cady first moves from Africa to attend a public school she is a nice, innocent, respectful teenage girl.
Her behavior quickly changes and these alterations can be explained through both the Freudian and Behaviorist perspectives. One major portion of Sigmund Freud’s perspective on psychology involves the personality structure of the id, ego, and superego. The id is the most basic part of personality, causing immediate gratification for the individual. It deals with basic biological impulses such as food, water, sex, avoiding pain, and in Cady’s case, acceptance.
The very first day of school she skips class simply because nobody else will pay attention to her and Janis said “ we’re friends”. She doesn’t question getting into trouble or any of the consequences she could face from making this decision. Cady goes along with Janis because it gives her instant gratification that she has found a friend and is finally being accepted by someone. In addition to the id, Cady also demonstrates the ego and superego. The ego, which is based upon the id, obeys the reality principle, delaying gratification until the situation is appropriate. Although she has the biological impulse from the id to eliminate wastes from her body, she cannot go to the bathroom because the lavatory pass is unavailable.
Her gratification is being delayed until the situation is appropriate. Above the ego is the superego, judging whether actions are right or wrong. This is the individual’s representation of their morals and values. Cady writes that her teacher, Miss Norbury, is a drug dealer in something called the “ burn book”.
Students at the school cut out pictures of other students and faculty and then write negative comments about them and express their hatred. Even though she writes this in the book due to peer pressure, she realizes that her actions are wrong and her superego makes her feel bad for behaving in this manner. Besides the personality structure, Freud also dealt with the conscious and unconscious of the mind. The conscious takes into consideration the mind’s current awareness while the unconscious is the impulses, wishes, and memories that have an effect on our thoughts and behavior without our knowledge of it. Cady ends up behaving in a way that she cannot believe simply due to the fact that she does whatever she can in order to fit in and belong. Her unconscious is driving her inappropriate behaviors, such as lying and underage drinking, so that she can be part of the popular crowd at her school.
Read an essay about aShe later reflects upon her experiences that school year and realizes what she did was inconsiderate and wrong. The last psychological perspective of psychology to compare “ Mean Girls” to is the behaviorist approach. This approach emphasizes the importance of environmental and situational determinants of behavior.
Simply because of the new environment that Cady is thrust into her entire behavior is changed. She acts completely unlike her normal self, adapting and becoming an expert at backstabbing and manipulating. Through her manipulation she learns to control everyone around her, because according to this theory people and situations influence each other through the continuous interaction between personal and environmental variables. Another part of the behaviorist approach is operant conditioning, where a person learns an association between their behavior and certain outcomes.
Cady behaves in a way which will produce a positive reinforcement for her. She learns that if she lies to her friend Gretchen about what is going on then Gretchen will tell secrets she knows about people. Cady does this in order to find out information about Regina that could possibly damage her reputation. She learned through operant conditioning that she could be rewarded in this way.
As you can see this movie was perfect for relating the behavior of the main character back to psychological perspectives. There were too many examples of both Freudian and the behaviorist approach to include in this short paper. The drastic change in Cady’s behavior in high school could be explained in many different ways. One psychological theory simply cannot explain a person’s behavior, it requires a combination of several different approaches.