The movie, Inside Out, is about an 11-year-old girl, Riley, originally from Minnesota, who moves to San Francisco with her parents. The leading characters of the movie are Riley’s primary emotions, Happiness (Joy), Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. These emotions demonstrate what it might be like in the mind of an 11-year-old girl who struggles with having to move to a different city, away from her friends, away from her hockey league, and has a hard time pretending to be happy for her parents.

This movie is very accurate as it relates to cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychology. The 5 emotions used in this film are in fact 5 of the 6  universal emotions (the 6th one being surprise). Psychologist, Paul Eckman, is most known for his work with universal emotions as he traveled around the world and found that these were present in every culture and presented in the same way through the same facial expressions around the world.

Other concepts displayed in this movie included the conversion of short to long-term memory. When a memory is seen as relevant to us, or when it has been repeated enough times, the brain messengers, dopamine and glutamate, ensure the long-term encoding of that memory. Other concepts briefly covered in the movie include psychological changes of reaching/approaching puberty, psychological stressors, family psychology, inductive and deductive reasoning, and many others.

In conclusion the movie, Inside Out, is a cute and relevant adaption as it applies to human psychology and how the brain functions.  The information and scenarios in this movie are accurately displayed and well thought out.  It is a valid contribution to psychology and I give it 5 out of 5 stars as a great movie.