Pixar's Five Emotions In The Film 'Inside Out'

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Often times in modern media the truth is manipulated to be more appealing to the audience. For example, directors may ignore the laws of physics or misrepresent the cultures and beliefs they choose to depict in their film. That being said, most people would not expect Pixar’s “Inside Out,” a film directed at children, to have much psychological value. However, the film is, for the most part, accurate and recognizes many different theories of psychology. One of the first things viewers will notice is the 5 main emotions, which happen to be Paul Ekman’s five universal emotions, excluding surprise and contempt because those are more socially ground than psychologically. These five emotions, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, guide a young girl from Headquarters, which is comparable to the limbic system. The limbic system matches up well because memory, emotion, motivation, and …show more content…

For example, Anger is short, like short-temper, and red which is commonly associated with anger. His purpose, as mentioned by the movie, was to try to make things fair and go the way he wants. Another example is Fear who is portrayed as a pusillanimous and weak individual obsessed with keeping Riley safe, matching the purpose and social representation of fear.
Another vital element of the film is the memories that Riley makes and keeps. We first see that most of Riley’s memories are happy, which I believe to be caused by Rosy Retrospection. However, I could be wrong and her memories may be mostly happy because Joy is her lead emotion, something that is different for everyone. The state of memories is also important as they demonstrate mood congruent memory. Originally, memories were single emotions, belonging to one of the five main emotions. Albeit, at the end of the film the memories began to have multiple emotions woven into them, like secondary and tertiary

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