Mean Girls Argumentative Essay Example

the situation is appropriate.Above the ego is the superego, judging whether actions are right or wrong. This is the individual’s representation of their morals and values. Cady writes that her teacher, Miss Norbury, is a drug dealer in something called the “burn book”.

Students at the school cut out pictures of other students and faculty and then write negative comments about them and express their hatred. Even though she writes this in the book due to peer pressure, she realizes that her actions are wrong and her superego makes her feel bad for behaving in this manner.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.

 Read an essay about a perfect girlShe later reflects upon her experiences that school year and realizes what she did was inconsiderate and wrong. The last psychological perspective of psychology to compare “Mean Girls” to is the behaviorist approach. This approach emphasizes the importance of environmental and situational determinants of behavior.

Simply because of the new environment that Cady is thrust into her entire behavior is changed. She acts completely unlike

her normal self, adapting and becoming an expert at backstabbing and manipulating.Through her manipulation she learns to control everyone around her, because according to this theory people and situations influence each other through the continuous interaction between personal and environmental variables. Another part of the behaviorist approach is operant conditioning, where a person learns an association between their behavior and certain outcomes.

Cady behaves in a way which will produce a positive reinforcement for her. She learns that if she lies to her friend Gretchen about what is going on then Gretchen will tell secrets she knows about people.Cady does this in order to find out information about Regina that could possibly damage her reputation. She learned through operant conditioning that she could be rewarded in this way.

As you can see this movie was perfect for relating the behavior of the main character back to psychological perspectives. There were too many examples of both Freudian and the behaviorist approach to include in this short paper. The drastic change in Cady’s behavior in high school could be explained in many different ways. One psychological theory simply cannot explain a person’s behavior, it requires a combination of several different approaches.