Remember the Titans

 The first psychology term demonstrated in the movie Remember the Titans, is ingroup bias, which is the tendency to favor ones own group. In the beginning of the movie everyone is outraged that the school is becoming integrated and will no longer only be white students. People are protesting outside the school, fights are erupting, and the two races want nothing to do with each other. Before boarding the buses to go to football camp, Gerry Bertier, one of the white players, goes up to Coach Boone and demands that him and his fellow white players get a certain amount of spots on the starting line up. When Coach Boone denies him and later on when some of the black students play before the white ones, many people become upset. They believe that the white students should come first and therefore play first. 

The second term demonstrated in the movie was group polarization. Group polarization is the enhancement of a groups prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group. This can be seen in two different parts of the movie. The first part is when the two groups dislike each other because that is the way society has taught them to think and believe. The players talk only to the players of the same race as them and talk of how they do not like the other race and how they do not want to cooperate with them in the slightest. The second time it can be seen is later on in the movie when the two groups of players have merged and become one, but must go back to their high school. All of the other students at the high school still have the same bias' against the opposite race. At first the players start to revert back into their previous stances but then they all meet in the gym. At the meeting in the gym, they talk of how they aren't different and how they shouldn't change the way they are thinking because of the rest of the student body. This meeting strengthens their beliefs.

The third term is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of out thoughts are inconsistent. This can be seen when Gerry Bertier yells at Ray. Gerry was use to believing with the ingroup bias and that the white players were always right in opposition to the black players. But as captain, he noticed that Ray was not blocking for Petey, a black player. So Gerry chose to reduce the resulting dissonance by changing his attitude.

Obedience is simply the act of following orders and it is seen a lot through out the movie. The players are constantly following the coaches orders. Whether it was to do something routine like run a play, or something they dreaded like when Coach Boone makes the players of each race get to know one another. The coach says to do something, and the players do it without arguement. A prime example would be when they are doing drills. The players desperately want water and to rest, but Coach Boone is telling them to do a drill and continuously blows the whistle. They only go get water when they have been given permission to stop and do so.

Another term found in the movie is foot-in-the door phenomenon. This phenomenon states that if a person starts their requests out small they can eventually get the person to do a larger act. A prime example of this is Coach Boone slowly desegregating the team. First, he makes the players sit on the buses by offense and defense rather than how they had seated themselves, black and white. He also makes the person they are sitting with their roommate. Next he makes the players get to know a player of the opposite race and continues this until the whole team knows one another. His actions eventually grow larger until both black and white students do not care about the different races and the team is a whole.

The Colony

In one of Discovery Channels hit shows, The Colony, peoples ability to survive is tested. A group of strangers with differing personalities, backgrounds and skills are stuck together and must attempt to coexist and hopefully thrive. The area that they must stay in is desolate and falling apart. To overcome all of the many obstacles the colonists must deal with both physical and mental challenges.

One occurrence that stuck out to me was where the colonists bathed in the rain. They had been in the colony for about two weeks, and even though they had managed to rig up a shower like structure, they were still very dirty. So when it was pouring down rain they decided to strip down to their undergarments and go out into the rain to get clean. In common society that would not happen. But because they had been in that situation so long the norms of society were gone and they had made their own. They were so comfortable with it that George got totally naked and didn't think anything of it. An evolutionary psychologist would say that all the colonists were worried about, is survival. There was a precious resource available and they didn't want to waste it. Furthermore, their minds were consumed with getting through each day they didn't have the extras to worry about what the others thought.

The second occurrence that stuck out to me was in the last episode we watched a colonist, Becka, was kidnapped. She had decided to go out and collect berries for food, when she was set upon by three men. As soon as the first man came running out Becka's initial response was to run. Again in the view of an evolutionary psychologist, they would say that her "fight or flight" instinct kicked in. She knew that she didn't stand a chance against these three large sized men, so she chose flight. In the view of a behavioral psychologist, it could be said that in past experiences she had witnessed only flight, or if she had seen fight it did not end well. So she learned from watching someone else that she should run and try to escape.