Photo credit, photo credit, property of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, fair use
Upon its release in 2015, I enjoyed the animated film Inside Out. In particular, I appreciated how joy, fear, anger, sorrow, and disgust – five core emotions addressed in the research of Paul Ekman – were depicted in the movie.
Later in his work, Ekman added the sixth core emotion of surprise and he suggested seven facial expressions representing anger, contempt, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise. Concerning the 2015 film, one source summarizes the plot thusly:
Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.
While I appreciate Inside Out for its focus on core emotions, I disagree with the aforementioned plot summary in regard to the main character (Riley) being “guided by her emotions.” My rejection of this framing stems from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) literature.
The ABC model in REBT theory illustrates how when Activating events (“Actions”) occur and people maintain irrational Beliefs about the events, these unhelpful assumptions – and not the actual occurrences – are what create unpleasant cognitive, emotive, bodily sensation, and behavioral Consequences.
In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people use: demandingness, awfulizing, low frustration tolerance, and global evaluations. Addressing these, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unhelpful attitudes in order to explore Effective new beliefs.
From a psychological standpoint, people disturb themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.
As an example, after Riley’s dad received notification about his new job in San Francisco (Action), Riley’s family moved from the Midwest to the West Coast (Consequence). However, this A-C connection didn’t result in Riley’s self-disturbed experience.
Rather, using a B-C connection, Riley unhelpfully Believed about the move, “I shouldn’t have to relocate to a whole other state,” as this rigid narrative caused her sorrowful disposition (Consequence). Thus, contrary to popular opinion, Riley’s behavior wasn’t “guided by her emotions.”
Feelings (emotions and physical sensations), as well as behavior, fall into the category of consequences. These reactions are caused by one’s beliefs about events. As such, this is my main critique of Inside Out. The film illustrates an emotion-behavior consequence.
Granted, along the consequence continuum, emotions can influence behavior. However, according to REBT research that began in 1955 and which continues to evolve with the induction of new information, emotions are generally influenced by beliefs.
Given this proposition, an obvious question arises. What’s the difference between a core emotional experience and that relating to a B-C connection?
If I understand Ekman’s research, joy, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust, and surprise may exist without any indication of an assumption, attitude, belief, or thought. As an example, suppose you walk into your kitchen and smell rotting meat.
Instantly, your facial expression contorts, you experience nausea, and your gut feels as though it’s about to turn inside out. I’ve just described an instantaneous disgust response. This immediate reaction likely precedes the thought, “What’s causing that smell!?”
To provide another example, imagine that you’ve just awoken from a night of restful sleep. For some reason that you can’t explain, you’re angry. You don’t recall having an unpleasant dream and there was no precipitating attitude whereby you told yourself a self-disturbing narrative.
Growing up, I was told that this condition was referred to as “waking up on the wrong side of the bed.” As a core emotion, anger can exist without a logical or reasonable explanation for the feeling.
In consideration of the disgust and anger examples outlined herein, it makes sense that if you maintained contact with another individual promptly after core emotional presentation you may behave in an undesirable manner. This proposition supports the thesis of Inside Out.
However, from an REBT perspective, I argue that while core emotions may influence behavior – as is the case in regard to Riley’s adventures in the film Inside Out, it’s possible that people disturb themselves most often in relation to a B-C connection. Upon what do I base this claim?
Aside from functioning as a helpful method of mental, emotional, and behavioral health care that uses a philosophical approach to rational living, in order to help people get better rather than to merely feel better, REBT also utilizes scientific techniques to address self-disturbance.
With this understanding, consider the following hypothesis. I propose that you can anger yourself, experience joy, or even cause yourself to become sad in this very instant. How might we test this hypothesis?
We could use an imaginal exercise. This is accomplished through guided verbal or written prompts whereby you imagine, in great detail, an activating event that you associate with anger, joy, sorrow, etc.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s briefly focus on sorrow. Suppose you were to imagine the living person who you most love in this life. Perhaps this is a spouse, grandparent, child, convenience store clerk, or someone else. Do you have someone in mind?
Think about what this person means to you. Imagine the next year, five years, or 20 years with this individual. While thinking is merely mental noise, beliefs are states or habits of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.
What do you believe about the person you’re thinking of? Now, imagine that person suddenly dying and you no longer being able to interact with the individual in a similar manner as you were prior to this imaginal exercise.
Death comes to us all, and your loved one is visited by an inescapable end to life. Taking charitable consideration of your affection for this person into account, do you imagine that you would be saddened by your beliefs about the individual’s death?
“People shouldn’t die unexpectedly,” you may demandingly believe. “It’s terrible losing someone about whom I care so deeply,” you may awfulizingly assume.
“I can’t stand no longer being able to speak with people who’ve passed on,” you unfavorably conclude when using a low frustration tolerance narrative. “Life sucks if the only outcome any of us will ever experience is death,” you unhelpfully maintain while using a global evaluation.
Though this is merely an imaginal exercise, you can disturb yourself into a sorrowful disposition through use of a B-C connection. Along with the consequence of sadness, you may behave in an unproductive manner (e.g., distancing yourself from others while uncontrollably bawling).
Given acknowledgement of the possibility to experience a core emotive-behavioral connection, from an REBT perspective, people tend to upset themselves with unhelpful beliefs and are not merely guided by their emotions. This is my main critique of Inside Out.
In any case, I enjoyed the film and have invited people in my personal and professional life to consider it as a psychoeducational form of entertainment. Fairly recently, I was enthusiastic about watching Inside Out 2 (2024). One source summarizes a portion of the plot thusly:
In Inside Out 2, Riley turns 13 and Headquarters undergoes a sudden demolition to make room for new emotions, something Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust weren’t prepared for. The first new emotion they meet is Anxiety, who carries a lot of emotional baggage — literally.
Joy and the gang aren’t sure how to feel about Anxiety joining the crew, but they can’t possibly imagine a full house with the other new emotions, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Envy.
While I appreciated the first film quite a bit, I was less impressed by Inside Out 2. In particular, I don’t think depiction of anxiety, embarrassment, ennui, envy, and nostalgia was aligned with psychological literature in a similar fashion as the first feature. According to one source:
Psychologists pored over studies about whether experiences like embarrassment are an emotion and if there’s a physiological process involved.
Humans experience 20 emotions on a regular basis, but the Inside Out 2 screenwriters were told to focus on just the new ones and five primary emotions from the first film - joy, fear, sadness, anger and disgust.
I have little doubt that many behavioral health researchers, theorists, and advocates will disagree with my perspective. All the same, I maintain that aside from the core (primary) emotions, the newly introduced feelings of Inside Out 2 are at best secondary or tertiary emotions.
As well, some of these misrepresentations may actually be considered experiences and not emotive experiences at all. Allow me to explain.
Keeping with the prior example of sorrow related to beliefs about death, I illustrated how a B-C connection can cause an emotive response. Likewise, herein, I’ve conceded that sadness is a core emotion that may exist without cognition (e.g., waking up and feeling sad without justification).
Thus, sorrow is a primary emotion that can manifest with or without a mental antecedent process. Nevertheless, when one engages in the psychological activity of thinking or believing, an individual can produce secondary and tertiary emotive responses.
Suppose you wake up feeling sad, though you can’t explain why you feel this way. Then, you begin thinking about how life would be if you experienced sorrow for an extended period of time. Moreover, you start believing, “It would be awful to be sad for longer than usual!”
Because of your cognitive processes associated with the primary emotion of sorrow, you then experience despair. Some people may argue that this secondary consequence is more akin to an experience than an emotion, though I won’t quarrel with this distinction herein.
As you remain lying in bed, self-disturbed into despair, you further and unhelpfully consider how you couldn’t stand not to experience anything other than positive emotions. If use of awfulization resulted in the secondary emotion of despair, what tertiary feeling may arise with use of low frustration tolerance?
You could experience remorsefulness in regard to how disturbed you’ve made yourself. “Upon waking, I was just sad,” you realistically admit, “though with use of stickin’ thinkin’, I’m now in despair and it’s horrible that I’ve treated myself unkindly with thoughts and beliefs!”
Because of your self-disturbed condition, you remain in bed for the rest of the day. While bed rotting, you throw a pity party with a guest list of one, cry inconsolably, eat unhealthy nutrients, and experience a miserable condition to the point whereby you entertain suicidal ideation.
A secondary or tertiary emotive experience – brought on by unproductive beliefs – can influence behavior. However, in and of themselves, anxiety, embarrassment, ennui, envy, and nostalgia aren’t necessarily in control of one’s actions.
As a separate matter, when working with clients, I invite people to consider that fear and anxiety/anxiousness/worry are closely related feelings or experiences. For clarity, I stated in a blogpost entitled Anxiety About Freezing Weather:
Noteworthy, the APA [American Psychological Association] defines worry as “a state of mental distress or agitation due to concern about an impending or anticipated event, threat, or danger.” I don’t personally know anyone who has never worried at some point or another in life.
As well, I think it’s worth defining fear so that the reader can differentiate it from anxiousness. The APA defines fear as “a basic, intense emotion aroused by the detection of imminent threat, involving an immediate alarm reaction that mobilizes the organism by triggering a set of physiological changes.”
Furthermore, the APA defines anxiety thusly:
[A]n emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension in which an individual anticipates impending danger, catastrophe, or misfortune. The body often mobilizes itself to meet the perceived threat: Muscles become tense, breathing is faster, and the heart beats more rapidly. Anxiety may be distinguished from fear both conceptually and physiologically, although the two terms are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat.
Whereas fear is generally concerned with identifiable stimuli (e.g., I’m afraid of that clown), anxiety which is associated with anxiousness relates to stimuli which aren’t as easily identifiable (e.g., I feel anxious in crowds). Inasmuch as a clown may perceivably cause A-C harm, a person may not be able to recognize what about a crowd is associated with worry.
In the film Inside Out 2, Anxiety (as a main character) took control of Riley and caused significant distress. This depiction presents the viewer with the false notion that the experience of anxiousness somehow has control over a person.
However, from an REBT perspective which has been researched and carefully modified since the mid-50s, that’s not how anxiety actually works. Rather than an A-C connection – in which anxiousness serves as its own activating event – a B-C connection relates to anxious disturbance.
Despite claims of Inside Out 2 being “far more complex and neuroscience-rooted” than its predecessor, while keeping in mind that I’m merely an REBT practitioner and not a neuroscientist, I reject the premise of A-C rather than B-C connections in both films.
In any case, I enjoyed the 2015 movie more than the 2024 version, yet I didn’t fully dislike either film. I imagine that as Riley ages, for a projected Inside Out 3, there’ll likely be more focus on various secondary and tertiary emotions and experiences.
Never mind my subjective opinions; what did you think about either film? Similarly, what are your thoughts about an REBT perspective regarding self-disturbance? If you’d like to know more about the B-C connection, I’m here to help.
If you’re looking for a provider who works to help you understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply helping you to feel better, I want to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
References:
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