Social Psychology In The Movie The Breakfast Club

Social Psychology is the study of how we think and relate to other people. These psychologists focused on how the social situation influences others behavior. We see social influences everywhere we go, but might not notice it. Like when watching a movie for fun you do not notice it as much as when you are actually looking for the behaviors, like in the film The Breakfast Club. There are several examples of social psychological behaviors in the film. The Breakfast Club is about 5 high school students enduring detention on a Saturday. You first see the in groups and outgroups. An in group are people who belong to the same group as you, while the out group are people who belong to a different group as you. This was shown right off the bat in

Obedience is in the film as well. Obedience is the “behavior that complies with explicit demands of the individual in authority (King, 2013, p. 448). This is shown by the principle Vernon. When Mr. Vernon enters the room, everyone but Bender listens to him, but once he leaves everyone seem to do what they want. Mr. Vernon shows that he is in authority by giving Bender eight detentions for him talking. Another is when Mr. Vernon takes Bender in a closet and calls him names, threatening him by saying he will beat him up and just making him feel worthless. Another form of this mean behavior is aggression. Aggression is a “social behavior with the objective of harming someone, either physically or verbally” (King, 2013, p. 442). This is shown in the scene when Andrew shows aggression with Bender. Bender disrespects Claire and this frustrates Andrew, leading him to become aggressive and pin Bender on the

One of these is normative social influences, this is “the influence others have on us because we want them to like us (King, 2013, p. 447). Andrew shows this when he talks about how he got in detention. Andrew states he bullied a kid, so the kid would think he was cool. You see that Andrew does this disgusting action to this kid so he could be seen as cool. Another social behavior that is seen in the film is the fundamental attribution error, which is observers overestimate the importance of the internal traits and underestimate the importance of external factors when explaining others behaviors. We see the fundamental attribution error a lot in this movie. First we see it with Brian, everyone sees him as smart. But when Brian explains that he failed shop class people were surprised; they never thought this kid would ever fail, since he is so smart. Another is with Bender, they see him as disrespectful and aggressive. What they do not know is, at home, he is being verbally and physically abused by his dad and has to defend himself. This can bring us to conformity, which is a change in a person’s behavior to get more closely with group standards. We see this with all five of the students. Let’s start with Andrew, he covers up his hatred for him father so he wouldn’t be seen as abnormal. Then you have Brian who talks about contemplating suicide for failing a class. He did not want to