Group Influences In Disney's Finding Nemo

Disney’s Finding Nemo is a movie on the journey of a father, Marlin the clownfish, who travels the sea to find his son, Nemo, who was captured by a scuba diver and taken to Sydney, Australia (Walters 2003). On Marlin’s journey he meets other fish friends like Dory, who tag along or help him try to find his son (Walters 2003). Throughout his travels Marlin learns to not be as strict and serious all the time, and comes across multiple obstacles. But in the end the father and son are reunited (Walters 2003). There are many scenes in Finding Nemo that portray psychological principles including the mere exposure effect, the functioning of the hippocampus, and group influences.
The mere exposure effect is the idea that repeated exposure to someone

One of the most prominent scenes to demonstrate this is the shark meeting with Bruce and his followers Anchor and Chum (Walters 2003). Groupthink is when a collection of people are wanting to think and believe the same thing but they know it is an unrealistic belief (Myers 2011). Reasons for groupthink can be due to overconfidence, conformity, self-justification, and group polarization (Myers 2011). This relates to Finding Nemo in the shark meeting scene. During the meeting they take a pledge and repeatedly encourage each other not to eat any fish which is where the famous quote, “Fish are friends not food” comes from (Walters 2003, scene 8). This scene represents groupthink because a shark’s main food source are fish therefore it would be unrealistic for a group of sharks to cut fish completely out of their diet. The idea that this is unrealistic is supported when Dory and Marlin are fighting over the mask and it ends up hitting Dory in the nose making her bleed (Walters 2003). Bruce becomes entranced in the blood and completely forgets the pledge and his surroundings only focusing on trying to eat Dory and Marlin (Walters 2003). The idea that the sharks could bring a fish friend to the meeting and not eat them is similar to the Challenger explosion which is an example of groupthink. The Challenger was an American shuttle orbiter that was going into space with astronauts aboard when it suddenly blew up (History.com staff 2010). The launch had been delayed six days due to the cold weather so the people were eager to send it into space. The day it was launched, the weather was still cold which caused it to blow up because the two rubber rings that were suppose to separate the shuttle from the rocket did not work under cool conditions (History.com staff 2010). The launch crew had used groupthink similar to Bruce, Anchor, and Chum, by deciding to believe