what we learned from the emotions of Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 became the most successful animated film release in history, grossing US$295 million.

Most of the story takes place at hockey camp, a microcosm of the youth’s social world. There, the main character is about to transition to high school, where he hopes to become a member of the sport’s team.

The changes Riley faces They could very well be real life situations and, like her, observing our emotions can help us navigate them.

That is why in this note we offer you the vision of several experts on what we can learn from the new characters in this audiovisual production.

Inside Out 2 shows that anxiety is a normal feeling and that it can have a positive purpose, as long as it does not take over us.

In the film, it takes control and is shown as an emotion that Help Riley avoid harmful consequences for your future.

“A big factor in Riley’s anxiety is the fear of not having friends in high school. This is a reasonable thing to worry about. Relationships with our peers become increasingly important at this stage of life and adolescents’ friendship experiences are linked to our well-being,” says Alana James, professor of psychology at the University of Reading, in the United Kingdom, in a column of The Conversation.

But he adds that there are certainly anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety, that can develop from an early age. And currently it affects young people at high rates, so we should pay attention to it, he continues.

In the sequel, Riley confronts the emotions that humans feel intensely during puberty.

“There is evidence that anxiety rates in adolescents have been increasing and that these have a long-term impact with a variety of effects, from school performance to income in adulthood,” he says.

James makes it clear that there is a difference between the feeling of anxiety that we see in Inside Out 2 and an anxiety disorder.

Having worries is a typical part of growing up, just as it is a typical part of adult life, he notes.

For Tina Kendall, a film professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, while anxiety is intended to help us plan for the future, boredom is “a call to action, a signal to commit more or try something different”.

The expert states that, although it is commonly associated with a lack of commitment and apathy, social networks associate it with “boredom.”

That is why they seek to establish the link between using digital devices and stopping being bored.

“Phones are often touted as anytime, anywhere boredom-fighting tools,” notes Kendall in The Conversation.

“But research has shown that the more we use smartphones to distract ourselves from boredom, the more we are at risk of feeling bored,” he continues.

In recent decades, studies have shown a correlation between increased boredom and mental health problems, he maintains.

Inside Out 2 does not address these potentially negative aspects of boredom.

Instead, accentuates its positive role to help Riley handle the intensity of teenage life.

In total, the new emotions that appear in the film are five: Anxiety, Boredom, Envy, Shame and Nostalgia.

Throughout the film, Ennui, with a thick French accent, lies on a couch in a dark blue tracksuit, staring dispassionately at the screen of her smartphone.

While Anxiety burns the screen with his frenetic nervous energy, Ennui lurks around.

At key moments in the film, he takes control of Riley’s console, influencing her emotional experience by decreasing the girl’s intensity.

Envy, says pediatric psychologist Lyssa Haase to the specialized magazine Parentsoccurs when we see something desirable in another person.

“The height, the sense of humor or their artistic or musical talents,” he comments.

In the film, as with Tedio, we see how this emotion commonly considered negative in real life It has a beneficial result for the protagonist.

Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at Stanford University in California who consulted for the production of Inside Out 2he told the magazine time that envy can lead us to desire “a job promotion, an invitation to a party, or attention at the lunch table if you are a 13-year-old girl.”

“There is new research out of Europe that differentiates a type of malicious envy (maybe you undermine someone’s work or talk over them to try to bring them down) with a more benign form in which the envious person works harder to earn a reward.” , explains the academic in the publication.

In the film, precisely, the filmmakers took care not to draw Envy as a villain. She is small, sweet and big-eyed.

As a magazine review explains Peoplethis emotion helps Riley to Identify what you want in your life, including the desire to make friends in the new environments in which it moves.

Several psychologists are part of the saga’s production team. Pictured is director Kelsey Mann.

Shame is portrayed as a corpulent character, who always wears a sweatshirt that hides part of his face. He speaks very little in the film.

The movie director, Kelsey Mannhe said in an interview with the media USA Today that the intention was to project the “true feeling of being ashamed.”

In the film’s production process, the team questioned whether shame was an emotion, says psychologist Keltner in his interview with time.

According to the expert, this feeling has a “social context”, to the extent that makes us aware of other people’s judgment. That moves us in a certain way to respect social norms.

“If you violate social norms, you will blush, and that makes people forgive you. It tells others that you are aware of social norms and that you know you made a mistake and that you are sorry. It is a painful experience but essential for our life in society,” she comments.

In the film there is a fifth emotion that He only appears briefly in two scenes.: nostalgia.

She is depicted as a kind old woman.

For Javier Leñador González-Páez, professor of art history at the University of Seville, in Spain, in a certain sense the character “coincides with the review that has been made of nostalgia from psychology, placing it as an eminently positive emotion, despite the melancholic notes that we can experience.”

However, he says that by showing her as an elderly person and associating her with lethargy, it can make her go against the same research that gives her a beneficial character.

The researcher comments on how significant it is to see Ansiedad questioning Nostalgia in the film when the latter arrives at Riley’s control room.

Disgust, along with Joy, Sadness and Fury are the emotions of the first film.

“Anxiety is an emotion worried about threatening future scenarios that literally seeks to break with the past. She disowns him, knowing that he could frustrate her plans, since the memories can move Riley emotionally, calling for emotions that can help calm her anxiety. It is as if she knew that Nostalgia, despite her defenseless appearance, is capable of weakening her,” explains Leñador González Páez.

The professor maintains that This is the reality drawn by several studies both psychological and cultural.

And he adds: “Nostalgia can be understood as a natural response to the anxiety that an accelerated present full of changes produces in us, a kind of defense mechanism with which we give value to previous vital stages to continue looking to the future with a greater sense of control. . Maybe with Nostalgia everything would have been much easier inside Riley’s mind.”