Remember The Titans Psychology

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In this paper I will attempt to analyze the movie “Remember the Titans”, through a social-psychological perspective using examples that are shown throughout the film. In this paper I am to analyze “Remember the Titans” through the social-psychological principles of: Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon, group think, in-group bias, cognitive dissonance and conformity.
Within the movie, “Remember the Titans”, there are many examples of social psychology concepts. The movie is set in Virginia 1971, and it’s about a high school football team and how they come together as a team in order to try and win the state championship. This is a high school that has just been forced to integrate black & white students due to Brown v the Board of Education. The first
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Groupthink is when maintaining cohesiveness is more important than thinking realistically, or using realistic alternatives. Groupthink occurs in the movie when during the season the team starts to begin to feel a lot the stress because of their racial differences. For example, two of the star defensive football players, Gerry and Julius call a team meeting. At first the rest of the players on the team wanted to leave because they realized that Coach Boone wasn't there and they felt like they are wasting their time because they think they need him to be a group. After this pep talk they all see that they need to put their differences aside to function as a team, the team they were towards the end of their stay at Camp Gettysburg regardless of their differences, which is a (realistic …show more content…
This is shown when the team eats at separate tables based on whether they played defense and offense, this is after they all have blocked color from their differences. Gerry's best friend Roy asked to sit between him and Julius at lunch one day, which caused Gerry to look at him and say “Not at this table, this is for defense only. The offense table is over there.” This shows that these separate side of the team ate at separate tables and were prone to in group bias, even after they all bonded. This is shown following a scene aforementioned (foot in the door).
The second term demonstrated in the movie was Cognitive Dissonance. Which is the theory that people act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) that they feel when their thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent with their actions. When the white and black athletes began to play football with the opposite race, they thought in the beginning that it was wrong to do but they were forced to do so anyways. Over time they eventually start growing on you another. Which meant that they changed their attitudes to match their behavior. This part in the movie is a prime example of cognitive