Girls the Psychology of Mean Girls: Group Essay

Girls

The Psychology of Mean Girls: Group Dynamics and Psychology

Everyone remembers the anxiety of high school. Group dynamics play a huge role in defining our selves and our behavior in those crucial developmental years. As we continue to gain autonomy and independence from our parents, peer groups become that much more influential, thus making social structures and relationships a crucial part to adolescence. The film Mean Girls takes this concept to an extreme, comically illustrating the complexity of group dynamics in American high schools, and how these intensely braided social structures affect self-worth and behavior in vulnerable adolescents.

Most of the psychology in the film is geared towards group dynamics and how those social structures impact the development of the teen characters. Essentially, "the protagonist is 16-year-old Cady, a newcomer to American high school after years of being taught by her parents in Africa -- i.e., a clean slate" (Edelstein 2004).She is a reliable outsider, at least at the beginning of the film, because she is not immersed in the complex culture of the school she is observing. This allows her to make reasonable assumptions about the psychology tied to the group dynamics. Her observations are an examination of teen rituals and how they are tied to developmental milestones within adolescents Through her initial observations, the film begins to categorize teen behavior in scientific terms based on an anthropological study of behavior. It is therefore a study of the psychology of behavior from a sociological perspective.

What these observations show is an intense network of groups that are interrelated, yet also constantly in conflict with one another. On the campus of the high school, there are various subgroups within the larger group. Membership to these groups is essentially based on teen behavior and sometimes physical characteristics, as….....