Psychological Theories In Mean Girls

The movie “mean girls” is about a sixteen-year old homeschooled girl named Cady Heron who lived in Africa for the last 12 years of her life. After 12 years she returns to the United States and is now going to High school. Attending public school for the first time in her life. The homeschooled girl entered girl world that is full of lies, drama, gossip, boys and rules. She started hanging out with the “Plastics” and become friends with. The movie showed many example of conflict management styles, it reflects on the American culture values and beliefs, and power style.

During the opening scenes of the movie Cady’s dad is shown handing her a brown paper sack lunch and telling her that there is a dollar inside so that she will be able to buy milk during lunch, he then tells her that she can ask “one of the big kids” where to buy the milk at. This sounds more like a dad talking to his kindergartner on the first day of school, not a sixteen year old on her first day of high school. This is showing the relationship between Cady and her parents. You always see that even though they are not directly controlling her they are still babying her, which is a part of balancing freedom and control (Santrock 395). A big part of adolescent develop is their need to become independent and their aversion to authority figures because of the mind set that are always right and they know best because they are now growing up. One thing that parents have to strive to achieve is the balance of supporting the child’s newfound independence and their desire to still have control over what is best for their child. Another time that you see Cady’s relationship with her parents is when she asks if she can stay home one weekend without them because they have tickets to a show but she wants to go to Janis’ art show. They protest telling her that she always comes, but then change their minds because they think she is responsible enough to stay home by

"Mean Girls", based on the book "Queen Bees and Wannabes" written by Rosalind Wiseman, was produced by Paramount Pictures in 2004. (Walters 2004, Wiseman 2002) The leading star, 15 year-old Cady Heron (Lindsey Lohan), recently moved to the suburbs of Illinois after being home schooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. During her first day of public high school, Cady befriends two teenager outcasts, Janice Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese). They supply Cady with a map of North Shore High School in order to educate her to the 21 different cliques within the school. Even more, warning Cady to stay away from the "worst people you will ever meet", The Plastics. Which was comprised of three girls: Gretchen Wieners, a girl who's rich because her father invented toaster strudel; Karen Smith, the "dumbest girl you will ever meet"; and Regina George, "queen bee" the unofficial leader and the meanest one. The Plastics take an interest in Cady and invite her to join them, Cady is very unsure of this. She discusses this with Janice and Damian and they convince

Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady who joins an elite social group at her new school known as the Plastics. While socializing with the Plastics, Cady develops a new, mean girl, personality and ends up sabotaging the group’s leader, Regina, and becomes the new leader of the Plastics. Regina retaliates by spreading the burn book, a book the Plastics filled with insults and gossip about other students, around the school leading to a riot and Cady takes the blame. Cady realizes that her new personality is wrong and apologizes to the school, makes amends with her old friends, and forms a truce with Plastics who disband and become regular students (Mean Girls, 2004).

The movie Mean Girls shows examples of many social-psychological principals. Three of the major social-psychological principals depicted in Mean Girls are prejudice, discrimination, and conformity. According to Social Psychology and Human Nature textbook, written by Baumeister and Bushman, prejudice is a negative feeling toward an individual bases solely on his or her membership in a particular group. Discrimination is unequal treatment of different people based on the groups or categories to which they belong. Lastly, conformity is defined as getting along with the crowd.

The scene that best represents this idea is where the Plastics are at the Old Orchard Mall when they see that Jason and Taylor hanging out. This is when Regina steps up for her cliques and decides to hurt Taylor’s reputation for hanging out with Jason because Jason should only be with Plastics. So, she could keep the status and power of Plastics. Following that event, the Plastics and Cady go over at Regina’s house where Cady meets Regina’s abnormal mother. They go to Regina’s room and this is when the Plastics judge their bodies while looking at themselves in the mirror and Cady seems to be shocked by the number of flaws they point out in their selves. At this point, the camera shows the social distance between Cady and the Plastics separating Cady from the Plastics as Cady finds it hard to believe that perfect girls like the Plastics can find flaws in them.

The story begins when Cady meets two friends, Janis and Damien, who show Cady the ways of high school. This is a very normal way in reality and most would not think much of it. Unconsciously, Freud would say, that there is some sort of motive behind this behavior and that there is no possible way that there doing it just to be nice. But as the story goes on we do find out that Janis used to be best friends with Regina (queen bee of “the plastics”) and that their friendship ended due to Regina spreading a rumor that Janis was a lesbian. When Cady is asked by Regina to hang out she is very hesitant to do so and tells Janis what is happening. Janis gets overly excited and instantly her id, the pleasure seeking principle, of her behavior jumps into play causing her to completely ignore

The movie Mean Girls is about this new girl Cady Heron who becomes friends with The Plastics. Cady befriends this group of clique as a way to spy on them with the help of her friends Damian and Janis. In the Plastics Regina George can be seen as the Alpha of the group, Gretchen Wieners can be seen as an insecure person and Karen Smith was portrayed as an airhead. In the movie Cady begins to have a crush on Regina’s-ex boyfriend, Aaron Samuels, Regina finding out about this Kisses Aaron Samuels and become his girlfriend again purposely hurting Cady. Throughout the movie Regina can be seen doing mean things or saying mean things to other. According to the DSM-5 Histrionic Personality Disorder is categorized as a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionally and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.

The culture, or characteristics that are within a group, at Northshore High School, where Cady starts attending, is based on material items of social status and popularity at the beginning of the film. The language the girls use towards one another is rude and meant to bring each other down. By the end, the culture has changed to more nonmaterial items, such as accepting people for who they are, and the girls address one another positively through compliments and smiles. This culture, along with other ideas, is something that Cady has to learn as it is different from what she experienced in Africa.

In our world today, there are many different types of cultures. In America especially, there is so much diversity within culture that it's what makes America what it is today. What is culture you may ask? Culture is basically a human’s way of living life through values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects. In the well-known movie, Mean Girls, there are a lot of different types and aspects of culture throughout the movie. The movie Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady Heron who lived in Africa and was homeschooled for most of her life, has to attend a public high school called North Shore. She is clueless at first and after a while she makes friends with a group of popular girls known as the Plastics. She fits in quickly and tries to adapt through high school. There are different types of cultures and subcultures at North Shore such as the Plastics, the Jocks, the Nerds, the Cool African Americans, the Cool Asians, the Foreigners, and the Losers. Everyone at North Shore high wants to be like the Plastics so some of the girls like to copy everything the Plastics do such as the way they speak and dress. In addition to that all the students are desperate to fit in so in order for them to do that they have to value sex, drinking, partying, makeup, and other typical teenage stuff. Mean Girls did in fact have a lot of different types of cultural aspects to it and there are strong examples to prove this.

The film that I chose to do was the movie Mean Girls. This movie is filled with many funny characters and an amusing plot, but even though this movie has earned the crown of being the official “chick flick” it has a lot of psychological concepts that people really do not realize. However, when you really think about it, the movie has a lot to relate with when it comes to teenagers going into a new school because every teen that enters high school goes though the emotional and social stages of development. In this paper we will be looking at parts of the movie that focus on Cady and her stages of development as she goes through high school and deals with the Plastics, and then the Plastics themselves as well as certain aspects and things that revolve around them throughout the movie.

This offense, along with the new level of morally acceptable behavior Cady formed once fully ingrained within The Plastics, finds revenge against Regina as reasonable. According to social identity theory, an individuals' behaviors are organized in terms of the social categories with which they identify, so that they are motivated to establish and maintain a positive self-image by viewing these categories as positive and distinct from alternative categories (Seta, Seta, & Hundt, 2001, p.19). As a Plastic, positive self-image is the ultimate goal, so an act of revenge as the result of an offense is considered rational and even expected within that social setting. Once Cady identifies herself as a Plastic, the idea of revenge no longer holds the stigma it once did when Cady could not follow through with Janice’s plan for revenge. Cady then follows through with an act of revenge, something she had previously found to be morally reprehensible in her previous social

Besides the personality structure, Freud also dealt with the conscious and unconscious of the mind. The conscious takes into consideration the mind’s current awareness while the unconscious is the impulses, wishes, and memories that have an effect on our thoughts and behavior without our knowledge of it. Cady ends up behaving in a way that she cannot believe simply due to the fact that she does whatever she can in order to fit in and belong. Her unconscious is driving her inappropriate behaviors, such as lying and underage drinking, so that she can be part of the popular crowd at her school. She later reflects upon her experiences that school year and realizes what she did was inconsiderate and wrong.

The story that Bully shares are about five youths who get heavily perpetrated by cruel acts, that end them up in unhealthy situations. The characters possess different qualities: racial backgrounds, sexual identities or medical challenges. Furthermore discussing the problem of the ongoing need to belong somewhere, yet not being truthful to oneself. This brings into consideration of the parents and school administration. School is tough as it is, yet a handful of people make it worse by unfairly treating someone based on superficial reasoning. Mean Girls tells a story of Cady Heron, who moves to North Shore high school after a twelve-year research trip in Africa, she is forced to assimilate into the American culture, one she is unfamiliar with. In the process of making friends, she gets involved with the problematic clique, The Plastics.

This will be an introduction to a few of the functions of education and how they relate to the experiences of Cady Heron in the movie “Mean Girls”.