Inside Out Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology is a term that many people may not recognize. In short, cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mind and mental function, including learning, memory, attention, perception, reasoning, language, and decision making. In the movie Inside Out, there are numerous examples of cognitive psychology used to define Riley’s, the main character, emotions and actions. Throughout the movie, Riley struggles to find happiness in her life because of the absence of Joy, who is essential to Riley’s personality. Due to the move from her hometown, Minnesota , Riley’s joyful personality begins to deteriorate. Riley’s journey through her emotions and actions can be understood with the ABC technique of cognitive psychology: the activating

An example of this is when Riley begins to cry in front of her class on the first day at her new school. This is known as the activating event. She begins to feel embarrassed and her belief is that no one will want to be friends with her. Lastly, her consequence is that she sits alone at lunch. Riley could have also chosen a different belief which could have then led to a different consequence. An example, could be if she had chosen to believe that some of the kids would try to befriend her because they felt sorry for her due to the difficult changes in her life. The suspected consequence could have been that Riley would have had kids sitting with her at lunch. Another negative example is when Riley’s friend back in Minnesota calls and tells her about a new girl on the hockey team. Riley becomes jealous, believing that her friend does not like her anymore. The consequence is when Riley becomes angry at her and hangs up. This behavior would probably be considered to be unhealthy because there are consequences to her negative actions. But if she chose a more positive outcome, such as listening to her friend and openly talking to her, she would have had a more positive