Sociological Review Of My Best Friend's Wedding

A Social- Pyschological Review of “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

The film I chose to watch was “My Best Friend’s Wedding” directed by P.J Hogan in 1997. This movie was based on childhood friends Juls and Michael who made a promise to each other when they were younger, that they would marry each other if they were both 28 years of age and still single. Michael announces that he is marrying a 20-year-old named Kimmy, four days before Juls’ 28th Birthday. Juls, who is still single, suddenly realises that she is in love with Michael and vows to stop the wedding. Things become more complicated when Kimmy assigns Juls to be her maid of honour and Juls realises that Kimmy is competition as she seems to be “the perfect woman” for Michael. I watched this

Ideally, her 28th birthday would have come around and she would have married Michael just as their pact intended. One study investigated the “decision-based cognitive dissonance paradigm”, upon reading this journal article I believe that their findings further explain Juls behaviour as they focus on the mechanism that drive attitude change, to explain how cognitive dissonance, dissolves as rationalization occurs. (Jarcho, Berkman, & Lieberman, 2010) This study coined that our emotions, at the time of the event, drive us to respond but it is not until we reflect and reappraise the situation, can we look at the situation more rationally. They suggest that the emotional regulation process can cause us to reflect back on our actions. To acquire this new knowledge to explain Juls behaviour I conclude that, Juls frustration and jealously were the emotions that drove her to act aggressively and it wasn’t until the scene where Michael and Juls are seen to be having an in depth conversation about Kimmy does Juls begin to feel remorseful and guilty about her actions, she soon realises how much the couple love each other. This realization led to Juls apologising to the couple and agreeing to stop meddling with their relationship as she knew her previous behaviours were

Kimmy shows concern as she is aware that Michael is very passionate about his job and has no intention of changing it, even if it does mean he has to travel a lot and the pay isn’t good. Juls still pushes this idea on Kimmy saying that this is their best option and Michael would be “happy, settled and successful”. Kimmy listens to Juls, and Juls is successful in persuading Kimmy to follow her plan. This results in the couple having a massive fight over dinner and Michael threatening to call off the wedding. “The persuasive argument theory focuses on the persuasive impact of novel arguments in changing people’s opinions. People tend to base their opinions on a body of supportive arguments that they express publically in a group” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014). One study I came across investigated the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The study found that “the number of arguments in a message is what could affect agreement.” (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). This coincides with the persuasive argument theory and also further explains how Juls persuaded Kimmy to try and convince Michael to leave his job. Juls had multiple arguments as to why Kimmy should take her advice, this is how Juls successfully persuaded Kimmy to ask her father to give Michael a job and give