Breakfast Club Psychology

Movie Project #1: The Breakfast Club, An Example of Social Psychology

The movie The Breakfast Club provides excellent examples of social psychology throughout the movie. Even though this movie is over 30 years old, it still speaks to the life of high school and the struggles teenagers face. The movie illustrates the power of social standing and how often people will conform in order to make sure their behaviors fit in with their respective groups. I have watched this movie many times, and yet while I was watching it again for this particular project I noticed things I hadn’t noticed or thought about during previous viewings. I chose to focus on using Chapter 13 of our book, Social Psychology. The movie shows many of the topics discussed in

You can tell when his mom drops him off at school for detention that academics are important to her, she tells Brian to find a way to study during detention even though they aren’t supposed to. And the license plate on her vehicle is also “EMC2”, which is probably a nod to Albert Einstein’s famous formula ‘E=mc^2’. Brian appears to be eager to please the principal, immediately voicing that he doesn’t want to return to detention and tries to intervene when Andrew and John start to argue, telling them they should just write their papers. When Brian talks about the clubs that he is involved with, he doesn’t think the clubs that he is a part of are different from the clubs that Andrew and Claire are a part of. Claire somewhat condescendingly, says that his clubs are academic clubs, not social clubs. As the movie continues, you see there is more to Brian than meets the eye. In the scene where the five students sneak out of detention to go to John Bender’s locker, Brian is initially apprehensive to go, but follows the group in order to fit in. Brian further conforms when they are back in the library and John and Claire go into an adjacent room to smoke marijuana and he follows. Brian allows social influence to influence what he would normally do; he conforms to what John and Claire are doing

One of the not so obvious examples is a scene where John starts whistling a tune, and Brian joins in. Before long they are all whistling the song; whether or not they realize it they are following the group norm. More obvious examples are when Mr. Vernon leaves his office, John decides to make a trip to his locker. Again, the rest of the group follow him, despite the risk of getting caught. As well as, during the scene where they are smoking marijuana initially Andrew, Brian and Allison attempt to hold out and not smoke; but one by one they join Claire and John. Just as in our book says, in some groups, the need for conformity and consensus is so high that diverging ideas and differing opinions are strongly discouraged and excluded in the group’s decision-making process; this was dubbed Groupthink by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972). Chapter 13: Social Psychology. (n.d.). In Introduction to Psychology: A Top Hat Interactive Text (p. 13.3.1.1). I think that high school is the hardest time to not succumb to groupthink, to not conform to what others in your peer group are