Character Analysis: Inside Out

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Recommended: Psycho analytic theory of human development

In the film Inside Out, Riley is an 11-year-old girl who has been uprooted from her home in Minnesota, and forced to move to San Francisco with her parents. The move is a rough transition for Riley, and her emotions get the best of her. There are five characters in her head that represent her primary emotions; Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and most important of all Joy. Joy and Sadness get lost in her brain and leave Fear, Anger, and Disgust to control Riley. In this clip, Riley’s emotions affect her and her parents at the dinner table and their ability to have quality interpersonal communication..
Riley undergoes all four stages of emotions throughout the clip: physiological, a physical change; nonverbal, a change in behavior; cognitive interpretation, thinking and processing of the emotion; and finally, a verbal response. Ronald Adler in Looking Out Looking In, describes how “verbal nonverbal expressions of emotion are often interconnected” (141). Physiologically, Riley’s arms and shoulders begin to tense up when her mom begins probing her with unwanted questions. Next, she responds nonverbally by rolling her eyes, showing her
Earlier that day, Riley ends up crying in front of her class, embarrassing her and ruining her first day at her new school. Riley continued to dwell on these negative thoughts which in turn affected her mood.This exemplifies rumination which Looking Out, Looking In describes as “dwelling persistently on negative thoughts that, in turn, intensify negative feelings,” (159). This affected her parents and their conversation around the dinner table through emotional contagion. “...research reveals that emotions, both positive and negative, actually spread among [people] like viruses,” claims Sigal Barsade Ph.D from Psychology Today. Riley’s mood quickly spread to her parents which in turn ruined their family dinner. Our emotions deeply affect ourselves and those around us as shown in this

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