PSYCHOLOGY IN

MOVIES

Designed by: Sarang Dev Saha

 Submitted by:

Team Members (Group 4)

◦ Sarang Dev Saha (20UCS173)
◦ Viraal Bambori (20UCS230)
◦ Payal Chhabra (20DCS006)
◦ Raghav Singhania (20UCS154)
◦ Abubakr Monazir (20UCS241)
Introduction:
The following presentation is an attempt at analysing movies and to understand how human emotions and
basic psychological aspects are portrayed in movies and media in general.
Topics covered include defence mechanisms, memory, emotions, phobias and cognition.
Impact of movies:
1. DEFENCE MECHANISMS
2. MEMORY
3. EMOTIONS
4. PHOBIAS
5. COGNITION
 Defence Mechanisms in movies:
Defence mechanism is an attempt to alleviate anxiety by using methods that
deny, falsify, or distort reality and that impede the development of personality

COMMON DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Denial Sublimation Displacement

Memory
Memory is today defined in psychology as the faculty of
encoding, storing, and retrieving information

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Memento

Emotions:
Emotions are mental states triggered by neurophysiological changes and are linked to
ideas, feelings, behavioral responses, and a level of pleasure or dissatisfaction. There is no
scientific agreement on a definition at this time. Mood, temperament, personality,
disposition, and inventiveness are all connected with emotions.
Mirroring and Mirror Neurons
Mirroring: : Mirroring is the behavior in which one person
unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of
another.

Mirror Neurons: A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an

animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by
another.
Examples of how movies make us feel
emotions:
Some films are able to affect us emotionally , push our buttons , we might be
shedding a tear in one scean and be laughing hard in next.

If you see someone smiling at you its not very appropriate to just look at them
with a blank stare... so its better to smile back at them. The same rule is applied
while watching movies

So if a character is smiling in a scene many of the people watching the movie

most probably will pop out a little smile too.

When we are smiling we tend to feel happier , when we are frowning we tend
to feel sadder and so on. Thus mirroring and this reading of emotion is enough
to produce emotions in the audience itself.
Phobias:
A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place,
situation, feeling or animal. Phobias are more definite than fears. They
develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger
about a situation or object.

1) Agoraphobia
2) Social Anxiety
3) Germaphobia
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia is a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or
that help wouldn't be available if things go wrong.

Phobia (2016 film)

Social Anxiety
Social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia, is a
long-term and overwhelming fear of social situations.

The King’s Speech (2010 film)

Germaphobia
Germaphobia is the fear of germs. In this case, “germs” refers
broadly to any microorganism that causes disease — for instance,
bacteria, viruses, or parasites.

The Aviator (2004 film)

Cognition:
What Is Cognition?

Types of Cognitive Processes

Perception:

Attention:

Memory
 Acknowledgement:
• A psychology of the film(abstract): By Ed S. Tan: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0111-y

• Memories of cinema going and film experience: An introduction: By Annette Kuhn, Daniel Biltereyst, Philippe

Meers: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1750698016670783

• Emotion and Film Theory: By Norbert Wiley: https://cdclv.unlv.edu/pragmatism/wiley_emo_film

• The Science of Eternal Sunshine: By S Johnson

• https://cdclv.unlv.edu/pragmatism/wiley_emo_film

• https://repository.usd.ac.id/37636/2/164214076_full.pdf

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10912-015-9363-3

• https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognition-2794982