Inside Out Psychology

In the 2015 Disney Pixar animated film, Inside Out, the life of Riley, an eleven-year-old girl, is influenced by the emotions working inside her mind. Director Pete Doctor consulted emotion experts, Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman, regarding the science behind the movie to provide a scientifically accurate depiction of Riley’s emotions. Thus, the science behind Inside Out thoroughly relates to emotion in social psychology. The movie begins with Riley as a baby, opening her eyes for the first time. At this moment, Joy fades into existence, and Riley creates her first memory orb, which is colored yellow due to the happiness associated with the memory. According to Keltner and Ekman, research shows that specific emotions define our

Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust control Riley’s emotions from “Headquarters” where they permanently reside. Headquarters is the movie’s representation of Riley’s short-term memory where all the day’s memories and experiences are encoded into small, glowing memory orbs and temporarily stored before being processed and sent to long-term memory for later recall. 5 of the most important memory orbs, referred to as the core memories, however, reside in headquarters and power Riley’s “personality islands.” These five personality islands symbolize Lewis Goldberg’s Big Five personality traits—neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion— which combine to create the most comprehensive picture of Riley’s personality (Diener & Lucas, 2018). When Riley falls asleep, the memory orbs created from that day are transported from her short-term memory in headquarters to her long-term memory for storage. This process supports the restoration theory of sleep arguing that sleep restores key mental and physical functions while repairing the day’s memories (Oswald, 1980). However, it appears in the movie that all the glowing memory orbs are sent to storage in Riley’s long-term memory when she falls asleep. Automatic processing would allow her to remember some of the details of the events that happened to her throughout the day, but without effortful processing, Riley would not be able to recollect every instance of her day initially stored in her short-term