This week's topical blog will be devoted to your analysis of the movie American Beauty.
This movie has concepts from Chapters 7-9.
Watch the movie. Take notes.
Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook. This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.
BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.
The movie American Beauty demonstrates chapters 8 and 9 well, because most of the major characters’ behaviors reflect their desired goals; so the viewer gets to see how people react when their goals are fulfilled and when they are unfulfilled. The major plot of the movie is about a man named Lester who feels like he lost his free spirit, and has become a submissive weakling controlled by his wife and boss. However, Lester meets his daughter’s friend and becomes reinvigorated to obtain that freedom he once had.
The scene I chose to describe is the beginning of Lester’s new way of life. His wife Carolyn is tending to her roses when she hears loud music coming from the garage, and certainly not the kind of music she’s into. She looks into the garage window and sees Lester working out on a bench press he set up (without her permission judging by the shocked look on her face). She walks in and confronts him, expecting him to cower from past experience, but he replies to her scolding tone with careless sarcasm. He then proceeds to light up marijuana and smokes it in front of her, to which she condemns (but less confidently than before). Lester replies by directly insulting her for the first time in the movie, calling her a “bloodless, money-grubbing freak.” Carolyn’s face lights up with shock and dismay as she warns Lester his behavior won’t continue without consequences. The scene ends with Lester continuing his workout while shrugging off his wife’s threat.
This is a powerful scene for Lester’s goals, but can only be fully described with previous information. The beginning of the movie basically showed Lester as a loser without any sort of backbone (insulted by his wife, ignored by his daughter, snubbed his boss), but we notice Lester change when he meets his daughter’s friend Angela and wants to have sex with her. He later finds out that he has a chance of achieving this goal if he works out. This transition demonstrates both sides of the reactance theory, because Lester was initially stranded in an autonomy-controlling environment (helpless expectation of control), but once he sees a glimpse of hope for achieving a goal (have sex with Angela), he finds new motivation and strategies to set this goal to achieve his desire. Once he starts toward this goal, he realizes this short-term goal is just one step toward his long-term goal of reestablishing his threatened freedom (reactant expectation of control). This long-term goal is broken into specific short-term goals of increasing difficulty to help direct and energize Lester’s behavior to decrease his discrepancies (which are discrepancy creations, because he is setting goals to reach higher goals to satisfy growth deficits) and achieve his ideal state. Personally, I think the scene I chose demonstrates the effectiveness of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation as well. For instance, Lester has discrepancy creations which are satisfied by helping growth needs, and have an intrinsic component. However, Carolyn is fueled by discrepancy reductions (evaluated by environmental standards) which are satisfied by helping deficit needs, and have an extrinsic component. When the two clash, Lester (intrinsic) wins over Carolyn (extrinsic), demonstrating how intrinsic motivation is more effective in reaching goals that extrinsic motivation.
Lester begins supporting his autonomy, and is rewarded by establishing better autonomy (which also increases his competence). His perceived choice becomes more flexible, allowing him more volition (to engage with others in ways he previously couldn’t without the choice flexibility), and ensures him more of an internal locus of control (since he is able to effectively progress toward his short-term goals, i.e. working out, smoking pot, playing music). He slowly learns how to go about achieving his longer-term goals (i.e. standing up to his wife, being more confident) by initiating a behavior to see if he is capable of performing it (efficacy efficiency) and observing if the environmental reaction is what he desired (outcome efficiency). In this specific scene, he begins answering his wife with sarcasm (efficacy efficiency). Once he notices her power control was disrupted (outcome efficiency), he is more certain in this strategy and steps it up by insulting her (which establishes his own power). This provides Lester with feedback for his behavior; since he was positively reinforced by winning the confrontation with his wife, he is influenced to keep this behavior.
This behavior toward Carolyn could be used as an implementation intention (a way to handle anticipated future problems with his goal) for Lester to use in future scuffles with her, which demonstrates goal-striving. Breaking his long-term goal into smaller short-term goals also demonstrates goal-striving, which shows an effective way to strive for the long-term goal since he focuses on the strategies to achieve the short-term goals rather than the outcome of the long-term goal (which becomes tedious without any goals to pursue in the meantime). He continuously tests his progress along the way to his ideal life by comparing his life (at that specific point) to his ideal life, operates on his current life for changes, and retests it until he is satisfied that his current life matches his ideal life, and would then exit (TOTE model) (he gets there in the final minutes of the movie, then dies).
I actually own this movie, so needless to say I enjoy it. However, I have never noticed so many subtle little things with deeper meaning until I analyzed it for this class. For instance, the looks on Carolyn’s face whenever her ideal expectations are not met are not only priceless, but they show her weak resiliency. Overall, it was an entertaining movie, I learned more about the material in this class by applying it to the characters, and I have better insight into the movie itself, so I can enjoy more in future viewings.
Terms: reactance theory, autonomy control, helpless expectation of control, hope, goal-setting, reactant expectation of control, long-term goals, short-term goals, discrepancies, discrepancy creations, discrepancy reductions, ideal state, growth needs, deficit needs, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, autonomy support, autonomy, competence, perceived choice, volition, internal locus of control, efficacy efficiency, outcome efficiency, power, feedback, positive reinforcement, implementation intention, goal-striving, TOTE model
I had never seen American Beauty before but I found the movie to be very good. It sort of has a weird plot in the movie and had some very interesting scenes. The characters were very good and they demonstrated a lot of different concepts in the movie. My interpretation of what the movie was about is that it is about a lot of people that are unhappy in their lives that try to change so that they live a happier life. Each person had a different view of what is a happy or good life and each character does it in a different way. Overall I found it very good and in a way very weird.
The first concept that I want to talk about that I noticed in the movie is power. There is a character in the movie whose name is Buddy Kane. Buddy is a real estate salesman that is very successful and he takes great pride in his success. Throughout the times that he is in the movie he is always being talked up as being a powerful man. Success and power go hand in hand in this situation. An example of this in the movie is when Buddy is talking about how his wife left him because he was always at work. He didn't understand because he wanted the world to know that he was powerful and this social need was very important for him to portray. Like the book talked about he wanted to have an impact, he wanted to have control, and he was influence on people. Being powerful was obviously important to Carolyn because she cheated on her husband, Les, for not wanting success as much as she did. I would say that Buddy used his power to kind of control Carolyn and get her to sleep with him. Even though she was unhappy in her marriage, he kind of used his power to an advantage to get her to sleep with him.
There are many scenes in the movie that shows the concept of goals. Not only short term goals but long term goals too. The first scene that I noticed that showed goal setting was when Les quit his job as ad salesman. Les didn't have a goal of making a lot of money or being successful but he wanted to have fun. That was his goal short term. All this kind of came about when he met Ricky Fitts at the real estate supper. Les smoked pot with him and he kind of let loose after that. Back to Les quitting his job, he didn't want to make money but he said that he wanted to go back to a time when he worked as a fast food worker where he could "party and get laid". He didn't want a lot of responsibility in his job so thats what Les did. Les got a job in fast food so he could have fun. His goal for the time being was to smoke pot and do whatever he wanted to do. He pretty much told his wife and his daughter to do the same.
Another example of the concept of goal is when Les sets a long term goal to lose weight and gain muscle. The reason for this seems to be very creepy to me. He wanted to lose the weight because his daugher, Jane, brought a girl home from school one day named Angela. Angela is an attractive girl that knows that she is attractive. Les has a very weird obsession with her and thinks about her constantly throughtout the movie. At one point, Angela tells Jane that she wants to sleep with her dad. I sort of thought she was kidding but she wasn't. Les overhears this because he is standing out by the door to Jane's room. Angela says that if he lost weight and gained some muscle that she would sleep with him. After hearing this Les makes it his personal goal to go out and there get physically fit. He runs and many of his scenes include him in the garage lifting weights. This is a long term goal that he sets and achieves it. He strives to get to the goal and has mental simulations of what getting physically fit can get him.
There is another scene that shows many different concepts in Chapter 9. The scene stars Carolyn who is trying to sell a house. She shows the house to many different people throughout the scene and does her best job of trying to convince the buyers to purchase the house. In the scene, she sees a billboard of the "Real Estate King", or Buddy Kane, and she kind of envies what he does. He is obviously a big time seller and she strives to be that. Carolyn fails at selling the house and bursts out crying after everyone left. She is obviously broken up about it and wishes that she had some success that could parallel the "Real Estate King".
This scene showed a couple of different concepts that the book talked about. First of all, it showed what expectancy is. It showed efficacy expecation which is someone telling themself that they can do something which Carolyn says before she opens the house. She says to her self that she is going to sell the house. What kind of expectancy that she didn't show was an outcome expectation. Another thing that the scene shows is self-efficacy. Carolyn shows great self-efficacy for awhile in the scene until the very end which shows her pretty much giving up. I think that they may be another reason why she slept with Buddy. She had kind of given up her own hope of being successful and kind of wanted to piggyback on his successes. Carolyn didn't have much empowerment in this scene.
Overall, the movie was very good and very interesting. I will for sure watch it again sometime and found it to have many different psychological concepts that we have talked about. During the movie, I found many of them and could not stop thinking about them while watching.
Terms: Empowerment, Self-efficacy, Expectancy, Efficacy expectation, Outcome expectation, Goal, Short term goal, Long term goal, Goal Striving, Mental Simulations,
I had never seen the movie American Beauty before viewing it for this class. I found it to be entertaining at times, and very strange at others. There are two characters who really stuck out to me being Lester and his wife Carolyn. The relationship between them and the different struggles they encounter demonstrate many of the topics discussed in chapters 7-9.
Lester, the main character, begins the movie very unhappy with his current situation. He hates his job, resents his wife, and has basically no relationship with his daughter. His wife and daughter think of him a loser doing little to benefit his family. Because of the way Lester is feeling in his life he experiences incongruence. His present state is very skewed from what his ideal state is. Lester undergoes the process of using the TOTE method. He tests his current situation, which he is unhappy with. Then because of the incongruence he operates to make life changes. During this he quits his job. He is fed up with his boss and tired of being dissatisfied and unappreciated in the work place. He goes on to get a job at a fast food restaurant claiming to want little responsibilities. With encouragement from his daughter’s friend’s comments about his body he starts working out. He buys a new car and begins smoking marijuana. All of these life altering decisions are part of his operating that will bring him to the ideal life he dreams of. One significant long term goal Lester sets is getting back in shape to impress Angela, his daughters friend. Lester receives feedback along the way by seeing his body change. He becomes somewhat narcissistic by admiring his progress. Another goal of Lester’s is to have more control over his life. We see him transfer from learned helplessness, by believing everything was uncontrollable, to having self-efficacy. Before he decided to make changes in his life he accepts the bad things that happen to him, like losing his relationship with his family, as something he couldn’t help and he essentially gave up on making things better. Towards the end we see him forming new relationships with other people, such as him neighbors, and taking control into his own hands. Although to some his new life choices may seem destructive and irresponsible he is now taking responsibility for what happens to him. With his goal of improving his life he receives feedback from his wife’s negative responses. Lester gets pleasure from upsetting Carolyn. He comments that he is tired of being treated like he doesn’t exist. He wants to be noticed by her, but now not in a good way. He does things simply to irate her, like buying a new car. The feedback he gets from her, such as yelling and getting worked up, allows him to persist and to keep complete control over his decisions. Back to the TOTE model; after Lester leaves the operation mode he tests again to see if his present state is now in congruence with his ideal state. I believe towards the end of the movie Lester is truly satisfied with the way things are going. His body changed, he can get the girl he fantasized about, pissed off his wife, and has less responsibility. At this point he leaves the operating phase and exists. Although he is murdered and isn’t given the opportunity to continue his new lifestyle, I think eventually Lester would move back into the operating phase to fix his broken relationship with his family.
The next character I want to focus on his Carolyn who I believe in the first part of the movie demonstrates a lot of self-efficacy. Yes, she is dealing with emotional issues that hinder her self-efficacy somewhat, but those aside I think she fits the description quite well. First off, she uses her skills to cope with challenges and demands that come her way. For example, when Lester quits his job she steps up as the sole provider for the household. She gives herself pep talks, like when she is trying to sell the home early in the movie. She repeatedly tells herself “I will sell this house today,” boosting her self-efficacy through verbal persuasion. Those who expect to adequately perform an action, in this case it is selling a home, are more willing to put in effort, which brings us to discuss her persistence. Carolyn doesn’t give up. She tries to convince her potential buyers into the house even when they seem uninterested. She goes to real estate business functions that will promote her image and help her get more clients. She observes Buddy Kane doing the tasks she dreams of accomplishing (selling a large amount of real estate). This also boosts her self-efficacy through vicarious experience; seeing another peer do well in tasks she aspires to complete. Throughout the end of the movie we see Carolyn deteriorate and lose some of her self-efficacy qualities. However, in one of the last scenes we see her continue her verbal persuasion repeating to herself, “I will not be the victim.” This demonstrates her taking responsibility for her actions, but not necessarily blaming herself. We see a broken woman but with still a glimpse of confidence and self-efficacy.
Terms: incongruence, TOTE method, goal, long-term goal, feedback, learned helplessness, self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, persistence, vicarious experience
I have never seen American Beauty before today, but I really liked it. However, this is a movie that I can honestly say shocked me in its strange ways. This movie had many weird twists to it that I had not expected. American Beauty was a very good movie to show the concepts of chapters 7-9.
I first noticed in the movie, that Lester was not happy with his life. His wife, Carolyn was demanding and very overbearing while his daughter, Janey, hated and ignored him. Lester also hated his job and his boss. He was an unhappy man in his present state. This is an incongruent that was causing him such distress. This part of Lester's life, could be described as learned helplessness. Lester had over the years just learned to accept his invisibility in his job and family. He just stopped trying and let everyone walk all over him. He was a very pessimistic man. For example in the scene where Carolyn brings Lester to a work party, Lester says to the top relator "We've met actually, but if I were you I would forget me too." Hes a very defeated man due to the way he has let his life get out of control.
When Lester meets his daughter's friend Angela, he becomes almost obsessed with her. She is everything his wife is not, sweet, young, and sexually appealing to him. He realizes that if he works out it would increase his chances with Angela. This is just the beginning of him working to his ideal state. He then quits his job by threatening to expose his boss. He starts working out and speaking up for himself. In one scene he throws his plate at the wall after his wife has a moment where she freaks out over his quitting his job. Lester is living his life the way he wants to now and he is the happiest he's been. Lester has a discrepency creating and focuses on a higher goal. For him it is to acheive a better physcial appearance for Angela. He takes it very seriously and starts working out all the time. Towards the end, Lester gets feedback from Angela and how good he is looking. Angela and Janey even get into an argument because Angela calls Lester "sexy"
Another thing I noticed was the high self efficacy in Carolyn. In the scene where she is getting the house ready she continues to repeat "I will sell this house today." She says it over and over and over. This is her efficacy expectation. The part Carolyn doesn't show is the "will it work?" She doesn't think to the outcome expectency level, she just hopes if she says it enough she will believe it and it will happen. Carolyn doesn't ever give up, she just keeps persisting and putting in a lot of effort. She is taking an active approach in showing as many people as can the house instead of avoiding the house and getting a different one to sell. She uses many means necessary. This also means cheating. When Carolyn meets Buddy Kane at the party she tells him how she is envious of how well he sells houses and his success. This envious behavior leads to her having an affair later down the road.
The next thing that I saw was the Colonel's low self-efficacy. Ricky's dad came off very powerful and masculine. The Colonel had a high need for power and he beat his son and most likely his wife to acheive his superiority. He had influence and control over them. He did not like his homosexual neighbors, and ran a very strict household where everyone had to agree with him and follow his rules. What we find out later is that the Colonel had a very big secret that he shared with Lester, because he thought he was gay. However, the Colonel was not ok with his son Ricky doing homosexual favors because the Colonel still frowned upon and wanted to hide his own "probelm" The Colonel shows a good example of the reactance theory when Lester rejects him and he finds out Lester is not gay. He ends up killing Lester because in my opinion he could not live with other people knowing about his secret. He reacted in a very quick and rash way at the end of the movie, killing Lester.
Terms: Present state, Incongruent, Ideal state, Descrepency creation, Goals, Feedback, Learned helplessness, Pessimistic, Self-efficacy, Efficacy expectation, Outcome expectation, Persistence, Approach vs. Avoidance, Coping, Reactance Theory, Power
The movie American Beauty has so many different examples of things that can be related to class when it comes to motivation, emotion and many other topics we have discussed, especially in chapters 7-9. American Beauty is about a man named Lester who is going through something we like to call and mid-life crisis. Lester’s relationship with his wife is not going as well as he would like, and his wife, Carolyn is feeling the same, but pretends that she is in control and knows what it going on. The couple has a teenage daughter, Jane, who is having self-confidence issues, and is going through depression, and it doesn’t make it better that he best friend is highly attractive and is trying to become a model. Also, the neighbors are having issues as well. Colonel and his son Ricky are thinking differently as well, and Colonel does not encourage his son to be an aspiring film producer. Throughout this little blurb we have already seen how there are examples of motivation and emotion, and how it relates to what we have been learning in class, as well as the textbook.
One of the first instances that caught my eye during the movie was the relationship between Lester and Carolyn. This is obviously something that is not going over well, which shows they are having problems when it comes to their affiliation and intimacy towards one another. It shows how they do not talk to each other very often, and the fact that they do ‘not make love.’ We see Lester had to pleasure himself in the shower. Also, it is obvious during the movie that Lester is attracted to Angela, who is young, blonde, petite, and attractive… not to say he doesn’t see his wife as attractive. We can not only blame Lester though, we see later in the movie that Carolyn cheats on Lester. This also shows they are having many issues that need to be resolved. I think that Lester believes his needs are not being met, and this could relate to acquired needs, quasi needs, as well as social needs.
Another scene from the movie that caught my eye was when Carolyn looked through the garage window and saw her husband lifting weights and listening to music that she would have problem not have chosen. Also, when Carolyn walks in she sees Lester smoking weed and he was kind of sassy and had a harsh tone of voice towards his wife. First off, I thought this scene was pretty entertaining because it would seem like this family has the ‘perfect little life,’ it’s a sunny day, it’s a nice neighborhood, and you see a wife tending to her garden, yet no one understand what is going on inside that house. This scene shows several different examples of what we have discussed in class. Autonomy would be something I took from this scene. It seems like Lester wants more autonomy, and wants to have more control over his life. This is probably why he is listening to interesting music and smoking pot. This could also increase his competence as well.
Also, this shows a sign of intrinsic motivation. Lester wants to do this for him. Yet, you could also argue that it is extrinsic motivation, because maybe if he changes the way he is, his life would get better. These new activities are things that are involved in his short term goals, which later on progress into his long term goals, such as standing up to his wife, or maybe finally getting to be with his daughter’s best friend (weird!).I think power can come into play with this as well. Not necessarily when it comes to his relationship, but his life in general, and especially work. In the scene at the dinner table, Lester says that he is blackmailing his boss for money. This is definitely a sign of power control, and goal pursuit.
Another character that showed many signs of motivation would be Ricky. Ricky is aspiring film producer. I would say his hopes and dreams definitely relate to goal setting, and goal striving. Ricky knows what he wants in his head, and even though his dad is not okay with it (as we could see throughout the movie) he is still persistent and has a plan in mind. Even though Ricky’s goal were making not entirely specific, I think he really knew what he wanted to do and that no one was going to stop him. Also, I thought it was interesting that Ricky still did not give up on his goal even though he received negative feedback from his father. Usually negative feedback would make the desired goal decrease, but not in this case. Ricky’s situation also relates to long term and short term goals. I would say that right now Ricky likes videotaping things here and there, which is a short term goal. In the end, his long term goal is to become a movie filmmaker. Ricky also seems high in self efficacy. He knows what he wants, and he thinks he can do it. He seems extremely confident and is not afraid of the negative feedback from his father. Ricky also seemed to not care what other people think, and was an outcast.
Overall, I thought this movie was very interesting and entertaining. It was pretty easy picking out things that related to the class, and with each movie it seems to get a little easier, which is great!
TERMS: Motivation, Emotion, Intimacy, Affiliation, Needs, Acquired Needs, Quasi Needs, Social Needs, Autonomy, Competence, Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, Short Term Goals, Long Term Goals, Power, Goal Pursuit, Goal Setting, Goal Striving, Plans, Goal Specific, Feedback, Self Efficacy, Persistent
Another great movie - as warped as it is, I love the very dry humor in this film. American Beauty focuses on a "typical" suburban family, Lester, Carolyn, and Jane Burnham. What we see in the movie is kind of the behind-the-scenes look into this family's lives. They have several problems: Lester hates his job, his wife Carolyn controls every aspect of his life, Carolyn sells real estate and projects the image of having everything under control, and Jane is a teenager struggling with her identity and unhappy with her self image. There were many examples of chapter 7, 8, and 9 materials within the movie - so many that I had to pick and choose what I should talk about in more depth.
To begin with Lester, the main character. In the opening scenes we see Lester working as a magazine writer and is clearly unhappy. The job is monotonous and he has no motivation to achieve anything at this point. His self efficacy is also very low as we see with his relationship with Carolyn and Jane. Both criticize him as they as running late for the day and he drops his briefcase contents flying everywhere. Lester's desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence is extremely low because he no longer feels competent. Carolyn is constantly on his back so Lester has learned helplessness; a psychological state the results when the individual expects that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. Lester isn't good enough anymore because nothing he does works anymore. As an effect of this he suffers from motivational deficits and emotional deficits. He doesn't want to do anything but the bare minimum: go to work, shower, jerk off, eat and sleep, and then do it all over again. Emotionally, he doesn't feel much because his relationships with others are severed or damaged because of his present state. He isn't empowered either because he doesn't feel he can control his life. He is just living to live and die someday.
Carolyn on the other hand, is a very interesting character. She is the complete opposite of Lester. She is very motivated as small business Realtor. The scene that really caught my eye was when she was preparing the house to be sold. As she was cleaning up the property she kept telling herself, "I will sell this house today." She showed it to several couples and totally over-glamorized the house, and unfortunately did not sell it. This really disappoints her, but she doesn't let herself be down too long. When she is leaving the house she notices Buddy King's advertisement. He is a very successful realtor and Carolyn aspires to be as successful as him. Several things here - first, Carolyn is using verbal persuasion when she tells herself she will sell the house, moving her into action. This boosts her self efficacy helping her cope with the demand she faces. Carolyn also evaluates her present state (mediocre realtor) and dreams of her ideal state (successful like Buddy King). She also goes to real estate functions to promote her image. You have to sell an image of success and live it; this will help your total success. Carolyn uses this as a form of empowerment possessing certain knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow her to control her life. This could also be an example of Carolyn trying to satisfy her social needs. These arise and activate emotional and behavioral potential when the need satisfying incentives appear.
I also want to touch on goals in chapter 8. Lester suddenly has goals after seeing his daughter and her friend, Angela, do a cheer/dance at a high school basketball game. Lester is infatuated with Angela because she is very attractive and also knows it. When Angela spends the night with Jane, Lester overhears Angela say she would sleep with him if he just worked out a little bit. That sparked something in Lester. He immediately starts working out in the garage. This is probably due to Lester's lack of intimacy and affiliation with Carolyn. There is no passion or sex in Lester and Carolyn's relationship let along any affiliation (reject anxiety). Matter of fact, the relationship is full of anxiety and negative emotions. We also see later that Carolyn sleeps with Buddy King. This is probably due to some of the same reasons Lester felt the need to sleep with Angela (almost). There wasn't any intimacy or affiliation. But where Carolyn differs is she uses it as means to become more successful. She was living by vicarious experience when she slept with Buddy - it was that much closer to her ideal state of being a successful realtor. If she was successful in that aspect that she would be happy in all aspects of her life. After Lester and Carolyn's fight in the bedroom (after she catches him masturbating in bed) Lester realizes what he is still capable of. He all of the sudden has incentives like money, pleasure, Angela, weed to push him to do what he wants. He quits his job, starts working at a fast food restaurant, buys the car he always wanted, starts talking back and fighting for himself against Carolyn and Jane. Lester's behavior is energized and that enhanced his performance toward all these goals he had of living his life to make himself happy again. The feedback he received for all of this wasn't necessarily great - Carolyn didn't like losing control of him. Jane also found out she couldn't talk back to him anymore either.
TERMS: motivation, achievement, goals, self efficacy, learned helplessness, effects of helplessness, motivational deficits, emotional deficits, empowerment, verbal persuasion, coping, social needs, need for intimacy, need for affiliation, incentives, vicarious experience, psychological state, outcome expectation, behavior,
The movie American Beauty was had a lot of good examples of what we have learned in motivation and emotion so far. The largest concept I noticed throughout the movie was the character’s desires for social needs. The social needs are: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. I also noticed efficacy expectations and outcome expectations during the movie. Efficacy expectation is represented by the question “Can I do it?” and outcome expectation is represented by the question of “Will what I do work?”
There were many different stories happening throughout the book. The main characters are: Carolyn Lester, Ricky, Angela, and Jane. Carolyn is a busy-body and works very hard for achievement at her work place. She is working towards achievement so hopefully she can have more power in her job. While she is wrapped up in her work Lester is becoming a low life. He doesn’t really care for his wife anymore and becomes very attracted to Angela. He starts making bad choices with his life, like smoking weed and quitting his job. The only productive thing he does is work out. He wants to find intimacy with someone and he wants it to be Angela. Angela was my favorite character because she seemed really ridiculous to me. Angela is a virgin but tells everyone that she has sex a lot and makes them believe she is very promiscuous. She is searching for affiliation with others. Jane is a quiet girl who seems to have low self-esteem. But one of her neighbor guys starts to pay attention to her and she really enjoys it. So she feels she is getting intimacy with him and affiliation in her life. Ricky, I felt terrible for him, gets beaten by his father because he thinks Ricky is gay. Ricky’s father is showing power over Ricky by physically beating him and making his feel worthless.
Every character in this movie was lacking intimacy in some form. Lester and Carolyn were lacking intimacy in their marriage, which led Lester to long for Angela. Angela was lacking intimacy because she wasn’t being intimate with anyone and didn’t have a lot of close relationships because all she did was lie about herself to others. Jane was lacking intimacy because she might have felt like a loner, but then she received attention from a boy. Ricky was lacking intimacy with his father and others around him. It was hard for him to be gay and not be able to share it with others and get hurt by his father. Everyone is searching for social needs so they can feel good about themselves.
One thing Lester does to make himself feel good is start working out to impress Angela. At first he decides to use his goal-directed behaviors to lose weight and look good. But after a while that isn’t good enough for him so he uses goal specificity to work out to look good naked instead of losing weight. He wanted to get feedback from others, especially Angela on how great he looked. When he gets the feedback he wants it continues to motivate him to keep working out.
Going along with Lester’s working out he used efficacy expectation. He wondered if he could make himself look good and make Angela want him. After setting goals he experienced outcome expectations. He wondered if by simply working out and making his body look better if he could get Angela. Carolyn also experienced efficacy and outcome expectations. She wondered if she could be more successful at her job and then questioned whether her hard work and long hours would pay off in the end.
Terms: Social needs, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, goal striving, short term goal, feedback, goal setting.
American Beauty has many examples of the material we have gone over in class. Lester, the main character, is a man who is unhappy with his wife, job, and relationship with his daughter. He experiences learned helplessness, which is where a person thinks they have no control over what happens to them; everything happens because of other people or things. He views him situations as life just handed him bad outcomes. However, realistically, he and impact or change them. He could put more effort in to help connect better with Jane, his daughter. He could remind his wife why they are in love also. As for his job, he could quit. He does actually quit his job in the movie, where he fulfills his need for power. He makes himself seem powerful when he becomes intimidating by threatening to release risqué information, which will ruin the company, about a co-worker. Lester ends up getting what he wanted out of it. Lester has the overall goal to have Angela to sleep with him. To achieve this, he starts to work out to look attractive for her. This is when he decides to change, and stop being a push-over. Lester yells at Carolyn and stands up for himself. He intimidates her here, therefor gaining more power. Lester experiences efficacy expectation here because he is telling her how he is going to change, so he thinks he can do it.
Outcome expectancy comes into play since standing up for himself has worked so well he continues to do it. He starts working out on the bench press and smoking marijuana and Carolyn doesn’t like it, but Lester doesn’t care and stands his ground yet again. Also, as I mentioned that he quit his job, not only did he get power, but outcome efficacy. He stands up to his boss feeling since he is “on a roll” with it, it succeeded again.
As for Carolyn, she wants to fulfill her need for achievement. She really wants to sell the house, which also ties into goals. She cleaned the house and showed the house to prepare to accomplish the goal. However, she didn’t convince anyone to buy it. Yet she started out with hope. This is when a person’s optimism and desire drives them to their goal. Carolyn kept repeating “I will sell this house today” over and over. She believed she could do it so it gave her the extra boost of confidence which made her put more effort in. An example of learned helplessness for her appears when she is at the shooting range. She believed she was a natural, so she was just good at it out of coincidence. However, her anger and stress could have helped her. She was in a good mood, so everything good was happening.
I have seen this movie in the past, but it was great seeing it again. Many surprising twists occured that I forgort about. Overall, I enjoyed noticing the topics we have covered.
Terms used: learned helplessness, need for power, goal, efficacy expectations, outcome expectancy, need for achievement, hope,
The movie American Beauty is quite the tail. Being a movie that I have never seen, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. What I did end up gathering from the movie was much of what we have learned up to this point in this class. Not only just from chapters 7-9 but the previous chapters as well.
In the movie, Lester, is not only a super creepy dad, but he also is man that has lost his way. The character portrays many characteristics that we have discussed in class and in the textbook. He is a perfect case of learned helplessness and in the end empowerment. He felt that there was nothing that he could do with his failing job, marriage, and family. He let his life tumble slowly downhill and before he knew it, it was not his ideal life. Because of the discrepancy between his ideal life (being happy and having sex with Angela) and his actual life, goals were set in place. Angela, his daughter’s friend, had brought him back to life and showed him what he has been missing out on (which creates an ideal self). He wants to have sex with Angela and she disclosed to Jane that she would if he would work out. This is motivation for Lester to work out. Even though in the movie the specifics of the goal were not described, such as date, where etc. it was still a goal of Lester’s to have sex with Angela. Through Lester quitting his job and sticking up for himself against his wife he gained a sense of autonomy, which he had been lacking. Another social need that was obvious that Lester had been low in was intimacy. This issue came up multiple times in the film. His wife was not a partner with him anymore; she was just basically a roommate. He admits that their marriage was over a long time ago and that it was just for show.
Another very interesting character was Ricky’s dad. His father was obviously struggling with a need for autonomy and power. In the scene when Ricky told his dad that he did sexual things with men for money, Ricky’s dad had a fit. This aspect I believe was more due to autonomy. His dad did not feel as though he had control over his own life. He was not okay with who he was, and that came down to the fact that he himself was gay. He walks over to Lester’s house and needs to feed that sense of autonomy. His dad also shows to need a strong sense of power in his household. Being from the military, that would make a strong man, but he took it to an extreme. Whenever Ricky would be caught doing something he should not have been doing such as smoking dope, getting into his fathers personal belongings, etc. his dad beat him. This is a very strong sign for a need of power. If he can’t get Ricky to follow his rules and listen to him verbally then actions were taken. He wanted a sense of responsibility and discipline to be instilled in Ricky and he wanted it done his way. Ricky was sent to military school and then to a hospital for mental treatment after nearly beating a kid to death.
Jane’s mother, Carol, was another very interesting character. I think that she may have had some issues mentally outside of motivation and emotion. But for the purpose of this summary, I will only focus on those relating to this class. The one scene from Carol that sticks out to me was the scene where she is getting ready to sell the house. Carol sets a goal for herself to sell the house. She builds herself up with positive mantras. Her self-efficacy was high as well as efficacy expectations. She knew she could and was going to sell the house (outcome expectations). Later on after showing family after family her self-efficacy is lowered and she has a breakdown over the fact that no one wants it and she didn’t do her job. This also shows me that she has a high need for competence and achievement. At the dinner where she talks to the other real-estate agents she wants to talk personally with “The King” about how he does his job so well. She wants to gain more information on how she can better her business.
Terms: learned helplessness, goals, ideal self, actual self, autonomy, intimacy, power, self-efficacy, competence, need for achievement, discrepancy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, empowerment
American Beauty was a movie full of emotion, social needs and self-efficacy. Carolyn displayed many of the social needs herself. For instance, physiological needs are based on the necessities of life like hunger, thirst and sex. Carolyn displayed this need by cheating on her husband with the “king” of real estate. She also put a lot of emphasis on being successful and told her daughter that the most important lesson in life is that you can’t depend on anyone but yourself, which is a great example of psychological needs because in order to depend on yourself you have to be competent and autonomous. Lastly, Carolyn always said, “to be successful you must display an image of success at all times”. A social need is defined as a psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. When Carolyn and Lester went to her business outing, she was consumed by the importance of their image. She didn’t want anyone to think their marriage was anything but perfect. Her need-relevant incentive was that her image would bring her clients and she would be seen as reputable. Carolyn took her job very seriously and set relatively difficult standards for herself. She went to a house that was clearly undesirable and told herself she would sell it. She had a mastery orientation way of thinking and increased her efforts to make the house look decent. She also had high expectations for success that drove her approach-oriented behavior, however when she didn’t meet her goals she didn’t show a tendency to avoid failure, she kept working.
Ricky’s father however showed his quasi needs through physical abuse. Certain situations like Ricky going through his locked case built up energy that resulted in his father hitting him to reduce his built up tension. The colonel was a power needing individual that needed people, like his son and wife to conform to his personal ideas. He wanted impact, control and influence over his son, and when he realized it wasn’t working he snapped. His need for power centered around his dominant behavior. He always introduced himself as colonel and always came off as intimidating to others, which made me think that his status and reputation meant a lot to him.
Jane was rather quit but it was obvious that she was deprived of social interaction. Angela was her only friend and she was self-centered. Jane was jealous that her father paid more attention to Angela than to his daughter. When they were having dinner, Jane told Lester that he can’t just expect to be best friends after not speaking for months. She clearly wanted her parent’s affection, but at that point she didn’t seem to care. What drove her to hate her parents and express a growth oriented motive (enriched her relationships by dating Ricky) was her previous lack of social interaction. Jane was angry with her father because he was attracted to her friend Angela, but Lester’s behavior was innate. He also had a social need for intimacy and affiliation that he wasn’t getting at home. In the end it was noticeable that Lester had changed. He had no self-efficacy in the beginning; he felt like he was already dead and didn’t have any motivation for life. However, he started changing his way of life by quitting his job, exercising, and gaining self-control. This is a great example of the reactance theory. Lester behavioral attempt to reestablish his threatened freedom was shown through his intentional letter to the managers and reacting toward his loss of freedom.
Terms: Competent, autonomy, social needs, physiological, psychological, self-efficacy, need-relevant incentive, mastery orientation, expectations for success, approach-oriented behavior, tendency to avoid failure, power, Quasi, dominant behavior, status, reputation, social interaction, growth oriented motive, intimacy, affiliation, reactance theory,
There were several motivational and emotional concepts portrayed in the movie American Beauty. Lester’s learned helplessness was perhaps the most easy to pick up on. Lester has taken on the view that he has no ability to change his environment, which means he has low outcome expectations. He also has low efficacy expectations. Because both of these are low, Lester is reluctant to participate in events that he does not have to. He allows his behavior to be dictated completely by extrinsic motivation, mainly from his wife and job. This leaves him with an absolute lack of autonomy. When this cognitive imbalance becomes uncomfortable enough for Lester, he fulfills his need for autonomy through a change in behavior, or midlife crises. His present life is inconsistent with his ideal situation, so he needs to make a plan to eliminate this discrepancy. Lester blackmails his boss and quits before he can get fired and stands up to his bossy wife. Lester becomes attracted to a friend of his daughter’s named Angela. His attraction to her motivates him internally to become fit in order to please her, so he makes a goal to lose weight. He flirts with Angela, who reciprocates. This provides feedback for Lester’s attempts at becoming more appeasing. Angela’s feedback and Lester’s ideas of what will happen when he reaches his long-term goal motivate him to achieve it. Also, it is clear that Lester is suffering from an extreme lack of intimacy and affiliation. His desires to become closer to his daughter and intimate with Angela are Lester’s attempts to fulfill these social needs. An incongruity between his ideal intimate and affiliate state and his current intimate and affiliate state provide energy for Lester to pursue his ideal state. Some of his behavior exhibits quasi needs, such as buying a new car and possibly the actual physical part of his relationship with Angela. Lester needs the emotional intimacy acquired through an adult relationship, but it is questionable whether the sexual gratification is deficiency oriented, situationally reactive and not necessary for life, growth and well-being. Lester’s wife Carolyn feels in imbalance in autonomy when she loses control over Lester. She has also for a long time experienced an extreme lack of intimacy. These imbalances lead Carolyn to behave in a way to correct them, and she has an affair with a rival real estate agent.
Terms: Learned helplessness, outcome expectations, efficacy expectations, extrinsic motivation, cognitive imbalance, autonomy, intimacy, affiliation, feedback, quasi needs, long-term goal, social needs, ideal state
American Beauty is a very good movie. The plot revolves around the main character Lester and the last year of his life. Lester is married with one child and is very unhappy. He says he feels like he is in a coma and Lester and his wife Carolyn are very defeated. Their daughter meets a boy whose father is abusive and mother is like dead. There are many components from chapter 7 and chapter 8 that I believe are shown in this movie.
From chapter eight I believe that Carolyn and Lester both suffer from learned helplessness. We know that Learned Helplessness is when a person believes the desired outcome of undesired outcome is independent of their behavior and therefore uncontrollable. Lester is very unhappy in his life, in the scene at the very beginning when he talks about the ‘high point’ of his day and how sad his life is we can see this. Lester is basically walking around silently, dead to the world. He believes that life is just bad and he cannot do anything to fix it. This changes when he sees his daughter’s friend and he sort of wakes up and re-enters life. Carolyn shows learned helplessness when she is trying to sell the house and she is fighting the two women about the pool. She tries very hard to be successful but all her mantra’s show that she doesn’t believe in herself or her behaviors.
The effects on both these characters are severe. One of the most shows effects I believe is the motivational deficit. This is when a person exhibits a behavior or not willing to try. Both Lester and Carolyn show this deficit in the begging of the movie when they are just floating through life, going through the motions and not trying to do anything about their constant unhappiness. They both also show emotional deficits from their learned helplessness. Carolyn shows her depression when she is crying in her car after her affair break up. Lester doesn’t show his depression as much but he says in the movie he is lethargic and uninterested in the world.
Another concept shown in the movie is self efficacy or lack thereof. Self-Efficacy is the extent to which a person believes they can competently enact an action and receive a positive outcome. Carolyn has very low self-efficacy throughout the movie. The first instance of her showing this is when she is trying to sell the house in the beginning of the movie and she is repeating the mantra ‘I will sell this house’. This shows she has little confidence she can actually sell the house and she is trying to convince herself. She also talks about the concept of to be successful one must project an image of successfulness. She tries so hard to maintain this theory she even denies her own qualms in her life outside of work. Carolyn uses verbal persuasion to try and convince herself that she can sell the house. She also shows she is worn down and her physiological state is in a bad shape because of her lack of self efficacy.
Chapter eight deals with Lester towards the middle and end of the film. One thing that we see in Lester that is a concept from chapter eight is his goal setting. He wants his daughter’s friend to like him and want to sleep with him so when the she says he needs to work out Lester does exactly that. He is highly motivated into working out and it is difficult as he noted when he is running and cannot keep up with his neighbors. Lester shows the concept of discrepancy creation when he looks forward to being strong and sleeping with the friend because when he saw her dance that is when he felt he work up. He does get feedback when the friend finally comes over and comments on how good he looks. Lester also demonstrates goal striving because after he starts to work out he begins to change other things in his life to make it better. He quits his job, buys his ideal car and stands up to his wife. He visualizes his encounter with the daughter’s friend many different times, and because of this he persists in his working out even when his wife puts him down and child calls him out.
This movie had a lot of interesting concepts not only from this class but from other classes I have taken before. I choose to focus only on Lester and Carolyn because they have some much already to talk about if I were to include the neighbors, the daughter, the boyfriends, and the daughter’s friend this post would be way to long.
Terms: Discrepancy, Creation, Goal Setting. Goal Striving, Feedback, Self-Efficacy, verbal persuasion, physiological state, Learned Helplessness, motivational defects, emotional defects.
American Beauty is simply a great movie; Great script, well acted, and visually stunning. It is one of my favorite movies and I believe it is a worthy of being called a masterpiece of film. Kevin Spacey does a great job of acting throughout this movie. There are multiple themes presented in this movie. American Beauty, at its core, presents the facade of contemporary Americana and the dark side underneath this front. It is one man’s rejection of suburban life and his quest to find his own beauty. I will attempt to highlight few of the principles and concepts from the movie as they relate to our textbook.
Kevin Spacey’s character Lester feels alienated by everyone in his world. None of his social needs are being met. He has little to no affiliation or intimacy with anyone, displays little power and demonstrates little self-efficacy. He does not feel like he has achieved much of anything. He reaches a point where he realizes his life is incongruent with his idea life, even if he is not exactly sure what his ideal life might look like. Throughout the movie we see a dramatic character change as he attempts to seek a better existence through a series of short and long-term goal attempts.
Lester has no real affiliation with others until he goes about changing things. He is not close to anybody at his job and leaves/gets fired from there. He was not happy there so it is not a big lose to him. He later finds a job in fast food where he demonstrated greater affiliation with the people that he works with there as well as a greater sense of personal achievement even though society might tell him he is a failure for working there. He also develops a relationship with a neighbor boy who becomes a friend of his.
Lester also intimacy needs are not being met. His relationship with his wife is cold and distant. He develops an interest in his daughter’s friend and focuses his energy on creating an intimate relationship with her. This motivates him to start working out. The action of working out to look better physically is a short-term goal which would lead to the long-term goal of attracting his daughter’s friends Angela to form an intimate relationship with him.
Lester’s former existence appears to be one of helplessness so when he finally changes and begins to work to fulfill his emerging need for power it is exciting and cathartic. He demonstrates this need for power in multiple scenes. The first is when he is being fired at work. He turns the tables on his boss, demands a year’s salary and benefits or he will bring public damaging information. When his boss attempts to refute him, he counters with if you don’t do what I say I will also tell people you attempted to have sexual relations with me. The next scene where he yields greater power is at dinner. Tired of his wife’s attitude he throws his dinner against the wall and exclaims “don’t interrupt me,” adding I’m tired of how things are run around here with the comment about her taste in music. The final scene demonstrating him fulfilling his power need is at his new job in fast food. He is confronted by his wife and her boyfriend at the drive up window. She attempts to play it off and introduce the two. Lester says we have met before but something tells me you will remember me this time in a power statement. When she tries to argue with him he further exerts his new found power telling her you don’t get to tell me what to do ever again.
At the end of the movie Lester realizes that his goal of having a sexual relationship with Angela is not really something he wanted. He just thought it was something he wanted before when he was less confident and had less self-efficacy. Now that his reality is more congruent with his ideal version of himself, he does not have the inferiority complex leading him to the inappropriate intimacy need to be a young beautiful girl.
In the end, Lester is shot and killed. It is not of hate by his wife or out of perceived love for his daughter by the neighbor kid. He is killed by the neighbor kid’s dad, Colonel Fitts, because Fitts is not able to fulfill all of the needs that Lester does by the end of the movie. In Fitts we see a person with severe incongruency in image and self. His earlier rejection by Lester makes the unbearable incongruency of his ideal image and the reality of who he really is so apparent and humiliating that he is driven to kill Lester.
Terms: social needs, affiliation, intimacy, power, achievement, self-efficacy, incongruent, short-term goal, long-term goal, helplessness
One concept I noticed in the movie was power. The character Buddy Kane is a real estate salesman that is very successful, and he takes great pride in his success. Throughout the movie he is portrayed to be a powerful man. In this case, success and power go hand-in-hand. This is seen in the movie when Buddy is talking about how his wife left him because he was always at work. Buddy didn’t understand because he wanted the world to know that he was powerful and this social need was very important for him to portray. According to the textbook, Buddy wanted to have an impact, he wanted to have control, and he was an influence on people. Power must have been important to Carolyn because she cheated on her husband for not wanting to achieve success and power such as she did. Buddy used his power to control, or manipulate, Carolyn to sleep with him.
The next concept I noticed was the Colonel’s low self-efficacy. Ricky’s dad came off very powerful and masculine. He had a high need for power and he beat his son, and most likely his wife, to achieve superiority. He did not like his homosexual neighbors, and ran a very strict household where everyone had to agree with him and follow his rules. What we find out later is that the Colonel had a very big secret that he shared with Lester, because he thought he was gay. However, the Colonel was not ok with his son Ricky doing homosexual favors because the Colonel still frowned upon and wanted to hide his own problem. The Colonel shows a good example of the reactance theory when Lester rejects him and he finds out Lester is not gay. He ends up killing Lester because in my opinion he could not live with other people knowing about his secret. He reacted in a very quick and rash way at the end of the movie, killing Lester.
The last concept I would like to discuss from the movie is that almost every character was lacking intimacy in some way. Lester and Carolyn were lacking it in their marriage, which led Lester to want Angela. Angela was lacking intimacy because she wasn’t being intimate with anyone, and didn’t have a lot of close relationships because all she did was lie about herself to everyone else. Jane was lacking intimacy because she might have felt like a loner, but then she got some attention from some boy. Ricky was lacking intimacy with his father and other people close to him. It was hard for him to be gay and not be able to let others know. All of these characters are searching for social needs so they can feel good about themselves.
TERMS: Power; Self-Efficacy; Intimacy
The topic of this blog is over the movie American Beauty. A movie about a depressed suburban father by the name of Lester Burnham, who tries to turn his hectic life around after developing an attachment to his daughter’s hot and attractive friend Angela. This movie does a good job covering the material in chapter 7-9, but more so in 8 and 9. I found it to be a bazaar and oddly weird movie to watch, catching myself questioning “What the hell is going on?”
The first scene(s) I’m going to talk about is the one that the movie opens up with’ Lester narrating about himself and how he is dead already, but he just doesn’t know it yet. Then we proceed to see him waking up in bed by himself followed by him taking a shower where he proceeds to whack one off, telling us this is his high point of his day. From there we peer through the front window were he watches his wife Carolyn trimming roses and being social with their heterosexual neighbors, while continuing to narrate about how just watching her is exhausting and how unhappy they are together. Fast forwarding a bit to the next scene, we have Carolyn honking the horn in an attempt to hurry her daughter Jane and Lester up so she can get to work. In the mean time criticizing her daughter for looking unattractive and looking down on Lester as he makes her even later when his briefcase come flying open. While Lester is on his knees picking up his papers he once again narrates on how his wife and daughter think he is a gigantic loser and agrees with it; for he has lost something but is unsure about what it is and sleeps in the back seat of the car.
These two scenes set the stage for Carolyn and Lester in where they stand in the pyramid of power. Starting with Carolyn we can see she has a somewhat high need for affiliation by interacting with her neighbors and maintaining that relation. We also her as a high-power-need woman, by trimming roses we see her establishing dominance, maintaining it through leadership by keeping her work separate from home and also by car pooling the family to their destinations, and finally showing aggression by honking and yelling at Lester and Jane to expand and keep her status as the head of the house hold. Here we see Lester as the complete opposite, he has low affiliation (caring little about what his family thinks) and high intimacy needs (missing that warm, positive relation with his wife). He lacks self-efficacy (doubt), thinking negatively when he says “My wife and daughter think I’m a gigantic loser” and then agreeing with himself bringing his personal deficiencies and negative emotions to attention. He questions his own abilities giving him a helpless motivational orientation which leads to learned helplessness, thinking his life’s outcomes are uncontrollable.
Next is when Lester is mesmerized by Angela while she is cheering, then precedes to fantasizes about her later that night in bed. When Jane has Angela over for a sleep over Lester over hears them talking about how Angela would totally screw him if he built up his arms and chest. So Lester heads to the garage to start working out. The first time Lester laid eyes on Angela it induced his quasi-need for intimacy but knew it wouldn’t be that easy, thus his plan. When he heard the girls talking it sparked his social need for achievement and mastery goal became clear. His goal-performance discrepancy was his out of shape body (present level) that was brought on by Angela’s discrepancy reduction about him working out more to look better which (ideal level). The goals difficulty is getting into shape and lifting weights, were as the specificity came from Lester’s fantasies of Angela giving herself to him. Now Lester’s self-efficacy at this point is starting to take form and his sources came from verbal persuasion from Angela and vicarious experience from observing the actions of his homosexual neighbors. Later in the movie Lester once again is confronted by Angela in his house, but this time she gives Lester the feedback he has been striving for giving him empowerment over his life.
Terms: affiliation, high-power-need, establishing dominance, maintaining, aggression, intimacy, self-efficacy, doubt, deficiencies, helpless motivational orientation, learned helplessness, quasi-need, plan, achievement, mastery goal, goal-performance discrepancy, discrepancy, present level, discrepancy reduction, ideal level, goals difficulty, specificity, self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, feedback,empowerment
American Beauty is one of my favorite movies about life. Lester, who shows a high need for autonomy and competence throughout the film, has been in a constant battle against his wife by always doing what she tells him what to do, but mostly he struggles with finding himself. Chapter 7, 8, and 9 concepts are all prominently expressed in this beautiful film that displays how setting a long-term goal to just be happy can result in achieving smaller short-term goals along the way and can retain one’s autonomy, competence, and relatedness while also conquering achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power needs.
The first scene I have chosen to depict starts more towards the beginning of the film where Carolyn tries to sell an older house. Carolyn is constantly taking second glances at ‘The Kings’ realtor signs and strongly envy’s him for his work. This shows that Carolyn is in her present state of having not sold as many houses as she would expect (efficacy expectation) and wishes to be in her ideal state of having sold as many houses or more as Buddy, and probably expects to get more money out of it (outcome expectancy). She is highly goal striving with her job and shows this by constantly saying to her, “I will sell this house today.” At the beginning of the scene, she displays a high self-efficacy of herself by overly cleaning and smiling while still repeating to herself that she will sell that house today. She believes that she has the empowerment to sell the house and by keeping herself motivated, she also has a high need for achievement and power. Little does Carolyn realize that by focusing on the outcomes of selling the house (like money and sleeping with Buddy while also looking socially ‘good’), she is not being intrinsically motivated to sell the house. Her creativity is not being strongly displayed because of this and instead of trying to gain a communal relationship with her clients she develops an exchange relationship that probably causes the two women to complain about the pool area saying it looks like a cement hole. By having a high effort of cleaning the house, her ability to sell the house is very low. This causes Carolyn to not sell the house that day, which means she did not reach her performance-approach goal of doing so. By breaking down and crying at the end of the scene, Carolyn has reached a state of learned helplessness. She feels at the time that she has no control over selling the house that day anymore. She is probably mostly disappointed in herself because she does not want to look like a fool to Buddy or her family, and probably wants more prestige possessions (like her Italian couch) in her home (due to her high need of power) which will have to be held off for a bit. I also think this is due to her high need of affiliation and to be accepted by Buddy, as well as her high need for intimacy with him too since her and her husband (Lester) do not display any affection towards each other anymore. By making an implementation plan of going over and cleaning the house in time to make it look nice for clients, but instead set too high of goal for herself and failed. At the end of the scene (after slapping herself and telling herself to quit it), she develops a sense of control again by not crying anymore and walking away with a slight, confident smile. I’m not sure if this is because she realizes there is nothing she can do and the day must go on, or if she realizes that it is not the only way to get Buddy to notice her. She then regains her autonomy strength as well as her competence by moving forward from the situation and using a different strategy to get Buddy to notice her (to fill her relatedness need).
The next scene I chose also occurs at the beginning of the movie, but it is my favorite scene out of the whole entire movie. This scene takes place at the gymnasium within Jane’s High School at a pep rally dance. Lester and Carolyn go to watch Jane dance, or so Lester seems to think. After watching the dance for a while, Lester is suddenly drawn into Jane’s friend Angela. He begins to dream in his thoughts of her dancing seductively for him, which displays his high need for intimacy and sex, but I think there is a whole lot more going on behind this scene. Not only is Lester filling his fantasy of imagining Angela dancing for him, he also comes to slowly realize that he is the only one who can take control of his own life by supporting his own need for autonomy and competence. I like to think that when Angela is about to remove her shirt in Lester’s day dream, that the roses come out displaying how beautiful his way of thinking has changed for the better. I also think the roses represent not only how beautiful Angela is at the time, but how beautiful he can really make his life from there on out. By sitting next to his wife and being at his daughter’s dance, this shows that Lester beings to not care what anyone else thinks, otherwise he would not be staring at another (young) girl with them around. After the dance scene, Lester acts very nervously around Angela (as Jane later says, ‘you seem drunk’) and still imagines her later when he masturbates in bed while lying next to Carolyn. Carolyn catches him doing this and Lester snaps back saying “Some of us still have blood in our body”, meaning some of us still have the ability to be happy (by developing autonomy and competence over his life). He then continues to dream about Angela naked wrapped in roses, and as they gently fall to his face from the ceiling he says “It feels like I’ve been in a coma for 20 years and am just waking up”. This shows that he has been unhappy for a while now, but sees how to set long-term goals (sleeping with Angela) and also accomplishes short-term goals in doing so (working out, eating better, talking back to Carolyn, and quitting his job). This small scene of the rose petals falling with him smiling and slowly saying “Spectacular” is my favorite because of the beautiful music all tying together showing how beautiful life can be if you just open up your eyes, do what you want, take control of your own life, and never let others bring you down.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed watching American Beauty again and am glad it was assigned as one of the movies. If one is feeling low and is constantly wishing to change their life, this movie would be the perfect motivator, at least for the time being.
Terms: achievement, affiliation, power, intimacy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, intrinsic motivation, exchange relationship, communal relationship, reward, autonomy, competence, relatedness, long-term goals, short-term goals, present state, ideal state, effort, performance-approach, implementation plan, prestige possessions
American Beauty showed many concepts from chapters 7-9. I thought it was a very good movie because it had many examples of a variety of concepts.
The first concept that I am going to talk about is intimacy. Intimacy is the motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships that produce positive emotions and hold little threat of rejection. The scene where Lester was playing with himself in the bedroom and wakes up Carolyn and she starts yelling at him and he brings up that she hasn’t shown any affection in a long time. This is a good example of how some people have a higher need for intimacy and others have a low need. Lester in this case had a high need for intimacy and Carolyn has a low need for intimacy. Carolyn also showed in the movie that she had a high need for intimacy when she would meet up with Buddy in hotel rooms to hookup. The only difference with the way Lester and Carolyn handled the situation is, Lester was extrinsically motivated to not cheat because if he did, there would be a reason for Carolyn to divorce him and he wouldn’t get his half of things, while there wasn’t anything stopping Carolyn from cheating because she would have to give up some of her things anyway.
Another concept in the movie is power. Power is the desires for making the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image for it. In the movie when Ricky’s dad Frank tries to make Ricky into a perfect marine son and to make him believe in all the right things and be the way that Frank wants him to be. This shows the Frank has a high need for power and throughout the movie you can see that even with Frank’s wife, that Frank gets the power that he wants.
Another concept in the movie is goal setting. A goal is whatever you want to accomplish. When you are setting goals you need to make sure that you are setting goals that you can accomplish and are too difficult or too far in the future to be able to achieve. In the movie Lester sets a goal that he wants to become more fit and better looking to have a chance to sleep with Jane’s friend Angela. Lester sets up a goal and works hard to achieve it. He made sure that the goal was achievable and that it was something that he wanted to achieve. He also chooses a goal that was specific and gave him immediate feedback. It is important to have immediate feed so you know if you are getting close to achieving you goal.
Terms Used: intimacy, extrinsic motivation, power, goal, goal setting, feedback
American Beauty
While watching the movie American Beauty the first thing I looked for were the four social needs. These were not hard to find at all. The first social need of achievement I found most easily demonstrated by Carolyn, Lester’s wife. Carolyn’s main focus it seemed was her career and succeeding in it. In the scene at the beginning of the movie when we saw her trying to sell the house she is very driven to achieve in selling the house and keeps saying over and over how she will sell this house today. She also is seen scowling at the competition’s advertisement post in the neighbor’s lawn. This could also be a high reason she is driven to succeed in selling the house, because she feels she has such high competition. However, when she fails at selling the house that day she is visibly a mess and probably feels like a failure because her social need for achievement was not met.
The character I felt had the highest need for affiliation was Angela, Jane’s best friend. Angela is constantly building herself up throughout the movie. She always talks about how she is so used to guys looking at her and how she doesn’t mind because she likes the thought of them thinking she is so beautiful. In fact she doesn’t like Ricky because when he first came over to meet and talk to Jane, Angela said he was weird because he didn’t even look at her once. However, at the end of the movie Angela confesses that she really isn’t even the person she pretends to be and the only reason she acts like that is because she is scared of being ordinary or not liked. This is a big sign of people who are at a high need for affiliation, trying to please people or act a certain way so they are not rejected.
The obvious intimacy comes into play between Ricky and Jane. These are the two characters that I feel demonstrated the best personal relationship that meant more than casual relationships. They told each other private stuff and opened up to each other in ways that you wouldn’t to just anybody. For example when Ricky told Jane about his films and how he felt they captured beauty and what it meant to him. Also when he showed her his Dad’s nazi plate this demonstrated a trust that was at the intimacy level.
The last social need I looked for was power. I felt this was mostly shown by Ricky’s dad, Colonel Frank. He seemed to need to run the household and be in charge. The very fact that he was in the marines shows to some degree that he has a need for power. However, the scene that I saw this shown the most was when he hit Ricky for going into his cabinet and how he told Ricky he was just doing (hitting) this to him because the boy needed structure and discipline.
Another concept I looked for during the movie was self-efficacy. The character of Ricky I feel showed the best examples throughout the movie of having good self-efficacy. Jane even made the comment after meeting him that he seemed so confident. This is a good indicator that someone has high self-efficacy. A confident person is someone who believes in themselves and what they do. Ricky’s main thing that he seemed to love to do was film. Throughout the movie it was like this was all he did sometimes. Because he loved to do this and seemed confident in his ability he put a lot of effort and persistence into his filming. This is another sign that Ricky had high self-efficacy because people with high self-efficacy tend to put more effort into what they do and persist longer.
On the flip side of this Lester appeared to have low self-efficacy at the beginning of this movie. He did not have confidence when it came to his job. He was also on the verge of getting fired, which was probably due to in part the fact that he wasn’t doing very good in it due to his little effort and persistence. However once he quit his job and started doing things he thought he was good at and would make him happy his self-efficacy began to improve. He emotionally was in a lot better place and was happier because of this. Along with the increased feeling of self-efficacy and the thought that he was free and could do anything came the feeling of empowerment for Lester. He almost felt liberated in his new state compared to how he was at the beginning of the movie.
Terms: social needs, achievement, competition, affiliation, intimacy, power, self-efficacy, effort and persistence, emotionality, empowerment
American Beauty has always been one of my favorite movies. It wasn’t until I took this class that I noticed the examples of social needs, goals, and personal control portrayed in this film. Chapters 7-9 in the textbook describe the characters lifestyles and how it reflects their behavior. I will provide several examples of the various characters and how these concepts fit into their behavior.
Carolyn is a person who needs achievement and sets high goals for herself. In the scene where she’s trying to sell a house, she makes that her goal. After spotting another realtor’s sign across the street from her open house she becomes competitive as she uses that sign as an incentive. She repeats to herself “I will sell this house today” to create motivation and goal-striving. Her goal is specific, as well as difficult. It’s known that difficult goals energize behavior, so it’s understandable why she cleans up the whole house and makes it more presentable, while repeating her goal to herself. This shows her high need for achievement because she’s competing with the other realtor and has the desire for her own standard of excellence. After several showings it’s clear that no-one was interested in buying the house. This type of feedback is negative and is damaging to her goal. After closing up, she begins to cry and slap herself saying “weak!” and “shut up!” This is an example of her high tendency to avoid failure. According to the text, a person avoids failure in order to protect against the loss of self-esteem, social-respect, and fear of embarrassment. Therefore, she cries and slaps herself because she feels emotionally dissatisfied and created a discrepancy between her present state and ideal state.
Angela shows a few different, yet similar, concepts from the book. The scene in her car where she tells Jane that she likes having guys drool over her because it means she’s not ordinary and that she’s confident she has a shot at being a model, are examples of high self-efficacy, mastery-oriented, optimistic explanatory style, and her little discrepancy. It shows some of her sources of her self-efficacy, for instance she has a history of guys drooling over her since she was 12, the source of personal behavior history. Another source is her verbal persuasion of herself, which persuades her to only focus on her strengths. Angela shows her strong mastery-beliefs for attaining her belief that she can get Jane’s father to have sex with her. Despite Jane being insistent on not doing anything with her father, a setback or distraction in Angela’s way, she proceeds to flirt with Lester and remains task focused. Throughout the film, or whenever Angela talks herself up, shows her optimistic style. The scene when she’s telling two girls that she did a photographer and the girls respond with negative features about her, then Angela calling them out on not being pretty demonstrates Angela’s tendency to avoid negative feedback about herself. Ignoring self-related negative information is an example of the optimistic style.
Lester is another character that shows a lot of the various concepts we learn in chapters 7 through 9. A specific scene in the movie portrays his discrepancy, goal-setting behaviors, and his hope is when he overhears Angela telling Jane that if he worked out she would fuck him. Lester immediately runs away and heads towards the garage where his free-weights are located. The discrepancy is between his current appearance and the appearance he desires to achieve in order to impress Angela. The goal here is specific – to get in shape. He begins by weight-lifting and then joins the neighbors on their jogs. Not only is the goal specific, but it also looks difficult for him. After a short time of running he’s out of breath and stops to chat with the new neighbors. Having both a specific and difficult goal increases his performance and decreases the likeliness of getting distracted. Lester experiences hope once he has the motivation to meet his goal and begins to do so by working out. This begins to open up pathways for him as he becomes more confident in himself. He quits his job and feels he has more control over his life. Later in the film when he’s in the kitchen drinking a health shake, Angela walks in and compliments his appearance. This is a positive feedback that Lester has been waiting for. For him, this feedback means his achieved his goals. Through his goal-striving of getting Angela, it’s clear Lester has a high need for intimacy, especially since he’s not getting any from his wife. Intimacy is an important factor of our social needs. This need expresses itself as a growth-oriented motive, which is demonstrated through his goal of getting in shape to impress Angela. His need for intimacy reflects his concern for the quality of his social involvement, since he feels detached from his daughter and his wife.
Ricky’s father, Col. Frank, is an interesting character. He mainly portrays the social need of power. The scene when he beats up Ricky for going through his things demonstrates this. He exerts his power over his son by aggression. Col. Frank has the desire to transform the physical and social world around his to conform to his own image. Examples of this include how he raised his son to his high standards, and resembles his own morals. The scene where he finds out his neighbors are gay and talks to Ricky about it; he pretty much makes Ricky agree with him that Gay’s are inferior and dumb. Frank also addresses his power whenever he meets new people by saying “Colonel Frank Marines”, which reveals his influential occupation. Frank also has strong empowerment. He’s able to exert his knowledge and strength when he feels threatened and exerts control over intrusive negative thoughts. For example, when he believes his son is gay and is “seeing” Lester, he exerts his control by forcing his son out of his house and to never see him again. After being rejected by Lester in his garage, he exerts his strength by shooting Lester. However, this may also be an example of coping difficulties. Instead of approaching the problem with his son, he avoided it and kicked him out. Instead of focusing on regulating his emotions, he focused too much on the problem. Therefore, he took a proactive action to get rid of the problem, which to him was Lester.
TERMS: social needs, goals, personal control, achievement, incentive, specific goals, difficult goals, feedback, tendency to avoid failure, discrepancy, self-efficacy, mastery-oriented, optimistic explanatory style, personal behavior history, verbal persuasion, hope, intimacy, growth-oriented motive, power, empowerment, coping.
In the movie American Beauty I saw many concepts from chapters 7-9. For my post I decided to focus primarily on the main character Lester and how his role in the movie portrayed multiple themes from the textbook.
The first thing that I saw in the movie was the concept of learned helplessness. In the beginning of the movie we saw Lester in his daily routine that expressed his dissatisfaction with his life. His monologue during this introduction included information about how he hated his job, life, and family but never said how he could change it for the better. Lester had developed a learned helplessness where he felt he had no control. He took things as they came and did nothing to fix his disappointment of a life. This movie was also a prime example of how helplessness is learned. In the movie, Lester turns his life around and learns to make his life conform to him. He no longer accepts things how they are and makes his life as enjoyable and laidback as he wanted. Lester learned to overcome his sense of helplessness and it increased his motivation to do the things that he enjoyed.
Another concept that was present in the movie was that of affiliation. Affiliation was present in a variety of scenes but the one that I am concerned with is the first scene at the dinner table. Affiliation is the social need to establish and maintain positive relationships with other people. In this particular scene, Lester was lacking this social need. He was not close with his wife and his daughter seemed to want nothing to do with him. The book stated about how social isolation increases a person’s desire to affiliate with others and this was a perfect example. After his daughter walked away angry with him, Lester went into the kitchen and explained how he wanted to try harder to be close with her. He was trying to restore his sense of affiliation and remove the social isolation.
Intimacy seemed to be lacking in every character to some degree. Carolyn was not close to her husband, Lester was not close to anyone, Jane remained distant from her father, and Ricky had a terrible relationship with his father. Intimacy is a social need that people desire and you can see throughout the course of the movie how each of the characters is working to improve their levels of intimacy.
Long-term and short-term goals were an underlying theme in the movie because goals are what motivate each of the characters’ behavior. Carolyn wanted to be this hot shot realtor with a picture perfect family, Jane wanted to be more attractive and accepted, and Lester wanted to be free of his crappy life and sleep with Angela. For each of their goals, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations were pushing them to complete each said goal. Lester’s particular goal of sleeping with Angela was composed of several short-term goals that all lead up to the big moment. He had a discrepancy between his ideal and present state, which led him to completing his goals to get to where he wanted.
Power was a theme that I saw expressed in American Beauty in great detail. Every character in the movie seemed to want to be in control of everything and that of course is a foundation of motivated behavior. The basic need for power revolves around desires for impact, control, and influence. Carolyn wanted to be a big shot realtor like Buddy Kane, Jane wanted to be prettier and more outspoken in her relationships, and Lester wanted his wife to get off his back and regain control of his life and household. Each one of these characters behaviors was driven by the desire for power, which often resulted in aggression.
Lester was the character with the most aggression in the movie with his frequent outbursts and harsh words. An example of power and aggression that I saw was the last scene around the dinner table. At this point in the movie, Lester had overcome his sense of helplessness and was attempting to regain the control of his life. In this scene he yelled at his wife and threw the plate of food because he wanted to not be interrupted. This is something that he would have never done before but his need for power took control of his emotions, which resulted in him causing a major scene and becoming the focus of Carolyn and Jane’s fear and attention.
Another example of power that I saw was when Carolyn first discovered Lester smoking pot in the garage. She started yelling and degrading Lester with which he responded with an insult. He didn’t like losing his sense of power to Carolyn so he reacted with once again an example of aggression.
Learned helplessness, motivation, affiliation, social need, social isolation, intimacy, long-term goals, short term goals, discrepancy, power, aggression
I initially watched American Beauty for this class and found it very applicable to the concepts and terms learned in Motivation and Emotion. As I am sure many others experience with the movie blogging I would have never really applied these concepts to the film unless I was directed to and now it is always occurring. American Beauty’s characters show the lack of social needs, but show their ways in which they want to achieve these needs through goals and personal beliefs.
Lester initially had a goal such I discussed in a previous blog which was to fall in love and have a family. Now in the film he struggles to achieve social needs, but his wife is also in the same place with their intimate relationship. While Lester may have initially acquired social needs through the goal of his wife and child a change of goals were developed when he started fulfilling the need of autonomy. The choice to quit his job displayed a desire and fulfillment of power and achievement over another. Not only was this obviously achieved when quitting his job but I think lack of needs being achieved at home allowed him to take control over his position at work. By achieving power through the autonomy of quitting it began the next step to taking control over his family and desires. I think that for Lester his approach for achievement brings him anxiety originally, where he hesitates to change his life but then obviously his standards develop otherwise when becoming infatuated with Angela. I also believe the social need for power increased with the quitting of the job to continue with the goal of sleeping with Angela. I would also qualify Angela as the implementation intention of the goal of working out. She is the drive of the when, where, and how long Lester will need to work out. Lester’s self-efficacy also improves when he develops the long term goal of sleeping with Angela, his need for competence is also affected when he begins to work out where he has improving his physical appearance to obtain intimacy. This display of quitting the job and standing up to his wife is a great display of discrepancy. He is currently unhappy with his present state of marriage and lack of intimacy but then his ideal state would be to be with Angela. The maintaining of this relationship was done through the discussion of hanging out more and developing their personal connection.
Lester is also a prime example of learned helplessness. His view of the marriage should be love, sex and support but this is obviously not the case for Lester and his family. As for Lester the change of his helplessness and depression is initiated by being introduced to Jane’s friend Angela. Jane, Lester’s daughters, is also struggling with achieving her own social needs, but is very negative toward her father which affects their relationship. For Jane she is able to fulfill her lack of intimacy with the relationship with her neighbor Ricky. This was not her initial goal, but due to her ability to be open to Ricky they were able to help each other fulfill their social needs. Ricky’s relationship with his father is very negative due to the vast amount of physical and mental abuse displayed in the film. While their relationship is mostly negative Ricky still desires approval and little disapproval. The fear and anxiety Ricky has if his father disapproved of him was also an increase of why I think he desired the social affiliation with Jane.
Terms: motivation, long term goal, affiliation, intimacy, discrepancy, ideal state, present state, achievement, self-efficacy, competence, implementation intention, learned helplessness, social needs, fear and anxiety
This is a great movie. One of the pricniples that the other in the film has is a high need for power. She is not in power at her job as a realtor, and when she comes home she tries to do the same. The dinner scene at the beginning, when Jane asks why they have to lsten to the elevator music every night at dinner, her mother answers with because I make dinner every night and it is healthy and delicious and therefore we do what I want. She hates when she sees Buddy Kane selling more houses than her, she hates that someone is having more power than her and she does a ton of work to her houses because she cant stand the idea of losing. When the houses don’t sell as fast as she would like, she slaps herself and calls herself a baby. She is losing some control and she hates it!
Lester’s high need for intimacy comes through a lot in this film. Some of the basic scenes are at the beginning when he is jacking off in the shower and says that will be the highlight of his day, and things will go downhill from here. This just shows how he is lacking some intimacy from his wife. He also stares at his wife out the window and talks about how just watching her exhausts him. There is no bond between him and his wife and once he sees Angela he cant stop thinking about her and imagines she wants him just as much.
Vice versa works for her too at the same time, she also has a high need for intimacy, mostly because she isn’t getting it from her husband. At the event she is falling all over Buddy Kane. She also has a high need for affiliation, she wants so badly to be a part of what Buddy Kane is a apart of. She wants her name and face on the signs, she wants the recognition that he is receiving and she wants to be on his level. She changes so much around Buddy than she does on her husband. She has a major need for power with her husband, upset when he works out and when he smokes pot, but around Buddy, her need changes, she sees him as more of a man in power and I think that is what attracts her to him, he has the power that she wants. He talks about how firing a gun makes him feel powerful, perfect example of his need for power. She is intrigued by this and wants to try, she wants that power that he has and he feels because each day she is losing it more and more at home.
After the major fallout and screaming match at dinner, Jane’s mother breaks down to her and shows some fear and anxiety. She is socially isolating herself from her family, and at the same time having fear arousing conditions from this. She wants to divorce her husband, knows nothing really about her daughter and at the same time has a strong desire for affiliation with others like Buddy and even the gay couple next door. She tries to impress people with her flowers and yard. I think it is pretty awesome how the need for power sort of changes from her to Lester, he used to keep his mouth shut, but as the movie progresses, he is gaining more power and it is bothering her, not only that he has it, but that she is losing it.
RIcki’s father has a very high need for power. Because he was in the Marine Corps, he feels he is above everyone and has some control over everyone. He introduces himself as Colonel, keeps his marine haircut, busts in on his son when he thinks he broke into his china cabinet and beats the crap out of him, rather than asking him or talking to him. He wants everyone to know he is in control. He really thinks he has lost the power and control when he thinks he finds out that is son is gay. Regardless or the truth of this, he has no power over it and flips out and kicks his son out. He does always however have power over his mother because she isn’t really there mentally, so he can control that. When he cannot control his son, he goes to Lester to try and seduce him?
On the same hand, Angela’s need for intimacy and affiliation is pretty high too. She loves the fact that guys that don’t even know her think about her and jerk off, because she thinks this gives her a shot at being a model. She says there is nothing worse than being ordinary. The scene where Ricki comes over to first introduce himself to Jane, Angela is shocked that he didn’t even look at her. She expects that everyone wants her.
One of the social needs that Lester is lacking I would say is a need for achievement. Once fired form his job, he os very happy with going to work at a fast food restaurant. At the same time, when he hears from Angela that she thinks he should work out and get bigger arms and a smaller stomach, he immediately hits the weights and starts running. There are some areas of his life he wants to grow in and do better in, but other areas he lacks this need completely.
Terms Used: social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, fear and anxiety,
In the film “American Beauty”, we can see quite a few social needs from Chapter 7 displayed, as well as other concepts from chapters 8 and 9. First of all, when Lester and his wife’s relationship begin to crumble completely, they both have the need for intimacy. Unfortunately, Lester’s wife Carolyn goes outside their marriage to satisfy her need for intimacy. Lester stays in the unhappy relationship and he continues to spiral downward into a mode of learned self-helplessness. After countless years of bad treatment and disrespect by his wife, his daughter, and from his meaningless job, Lester begins to give up, coming to the realization that there is no escape to the miserable world he is surrounded by. None of his actions thus far had resulted in anything positive; therefore Lester learned he was destined to fail and adopted helplessness behavior. This learned helplessness eventually led Lester to depression. His whole existence seemed to be a sort-of non-existence. He lived in a perfect neighborhood, had the perfect job, and the seemingly perfect family life, but in his mind, he had nothing. A motivational deficit followed this depression and learned helplessness. Day in and day out, Lester lived mechanically, methodically, taking whatever was thrown at him and just internalizing it all, until one day…he cracked.
Another example of learned helplessness is the neighbor Ricky. His father, The Colonel, was so overpowering and controlling that Ricky had also become machine-like, displaying learned helplessness. Nothing Ricky could say or do was good enough for his father. The Colonel would always be right, and Ricky would be wrong and in need of a “lesson” (aka corporal punishment).
Carolyn displays a strong need for mastery and power. She constantly bosses Lester around like he is a servant or someone not worthy of her time. Her numerous put-downs are meant to hurt him, thus making herself feel more powerful. Also, Carolyn displays her need for mastery when she yearns to succeed in the real estate world. She has a lot of self-efficacy, as she displays when she wants to sell houses, and tells herself that she can do it, she will succeed. This confidence is what helps her gain in her career and she feels as if she has control of her outcome. I do believe that Carolyn becomes empowered somewhat by Buddy Kane, the “Real Estate King”, as well. When she sees what he has accomplished, she wants what he has and strives to go for that goal of becoming successful like him. In a way, this is like an unintentional Mastery Modeling example. Lastly, Carolyn shows a high need for achievement as well as competence regarding her real estate career.
When Lester finally stands up for himself, he displays control vs. escape behavior. Rather than allowing his daughter and wife to continue to treat him like a worthless POS and walk all over him, his fights back. I think some of Lester’s self-efficacy he suddenly acquires is due to his psychological state. In other words, when Lester “snaps”, the current state he enters most likely includes a racing heart followed by an adrenaline rush, helping him push forward and become motivated. Vicarious experience may have contributed to Lester’s change of demeanor. After countless years of watching his wife Carolyn “win”, Lester may have realized he could win too.
Lester’s newly acquired motivation brings about new goals. After the admission by his daughter’s friend Angela regarding how she would really be interested in him if he worked out, a whole new and improved Lester begins to surface. He sets a short-term goal of bulking up and getting in shape so he will be desired by younger women, namely Angela. Because he has set this goal specifically, and it is a relatively difficult one, he will most likely become more energized, thus increasing his effort and persistence in obtaining this goal, increase attention and focus, as well as causing him to work smarter with a more direct plan of action. Overall, this goal specifically will enhance Lester’s performance.
This was an interesting, yet highly eccentric movie. I really liked it. The mundane aura of it all made it very realistic and left you wondering how many families in real life are JUST LIKE THIS???
TERMS: self-efficacy, vicarious experience, psychological state, motivation, short-term goal, master, power, Mastery Modeling, learned helplessness, control vs. escape behavior, intimacy, motivational deficit, competence, achievement
American Beauty is a weirdly intimate look deep into the lives of the everyday ordinary suburban home. Working married couple raising a rebellious teenager who is seeing a boy who likes and he is raised by a military family. When described like that it is homely and typically a desired image on America. However, when those normal lives are put on display in true color the outcome is distasteful, yet sadly true. That is the sense I got from the film. While I spent much of the movie despising these peoples morals and spitting at the thought of their actions I knew this happened in life and far too often. To any person this movie is all about what is wrong with America, but as upper level motivation and emotion students we can see clearly the reasoning behind many of their decisions.
In chapter seven there is a clear need for achievement in every single character. Lester wants to be a free spirit, Carol wants to be a good real estate agent, Angela wants to be loved, Jane wants to be noticed, Ricky wants to live his life free of oppression, and Ricky's father wants to raise a disciplined military son. They all want to achieve these statuses and all of them are not getting what they want. So, of course, we see people lose their minds. Hallucinations, video taping private moments, cheating, shooting, murder. We see how truly valuable achievement is in life. Need for achievement can be a powerful motivator. Lester, for example, was passive aggressive until a few teenagers walked into his life. Angela motivated his sexual fantasies and in turn he started exercising. Ricky brought him weed and brought back his old music which led him to be carefree and live a free life. Ricky and his father are also an interesting case of achievements in failure avoidance and performance avoidance. Ricky's father has a severe need to avoid failure as he was a marine and taught that failure is out of the question. He is oppressive with his son and forces his own beliefs onto Ricky. This behavior in turn forces Ricky into performance avoidance goals. He is constantly seeking to avoid performing for his father. In the first half of the movie he tells his dad, "faggots make him want to rip his guts out." This is not his real belief, but rather a way to avoid his father. His fake urine is another example of avoiding the need to perform. Sticking within chapter seven Angela and Janie is the main case for the need for intimacy and affiliation. Angela has the severe need to be loved and thought of as sexy so she talks a big sexual game to impress others. Jane sees this behavior and has a need for affiliation. She thinks all girls should be sexy and that her sexual history and performance is her main criticism.
I believe chapter nine also discusses many key factors of the movie. Perceived self control is a huge part of everyone's lives and almost all of the characters lack it. Lester is the most obvious. He has no control over his daughter, home life, and in the beginning he isn't even in control of his future at work. This forces him into a psychotic state of mind. He finally snaps after his sexual fantasies and Ricky providing marijuana for him. He begins to take control of his body with exercise, he blackmails his work so he is in control of his finances, and he tells his wife to back off because he will not be imprisoned in his own home anymore. This makes for a pretty decent life for him except in one area. He still has no control over his relationship with Janie. As we find out that is the one thing that would complete his happiness, but of course he is shot and killed as he stared at a picture of her.
The final example I will talk about is learned helplessness. Carol is the most emotionally unstable of all the characters. Its starts early in the movie with the showing of a house. She affirms her thoughts of selling a home by repeating it over and over as she makes the house clean and new. We later she she feels helpless when nobody even shows interest in the home. She feels like her future is uncontrolled by her because she couldn't do anything more to sell the house. Later in the movie Lester informs her that even if she wanted a divorce that her case wouldn't stand because it had no grounds and she would probably end up owing him money, again helpless. These and many other factors prove to be too much for her she finds control in the form of a gun as does another character. As a motivation and emotion student this film basically summed up the necessity for achievement, control, and several other components that I did not mention. American Beauty is a powerful and disturbing look into what really happens when you go under the covers of the happy faces of suburbia.
Terms Used: Achievement, Motivation, performance avoidance goal, failure avoidance, intimacy, affiliation, Perceived self control,learned helplessness.
American beauty is an excellent movie, displaying several psychological terms that we have learned throughout the course of this semester.
Chapter 7 is all about the four social needs: achievement, affiliation, power, and intimacy. It also describes the different definitions of quasi-needs and social needs. Lester, being the main character, demonstrates all four of the social needs during this movie. From an outside perspective, it may appear as though Lester meets his need for achievement quite easily. However, as you watch the movie, you begin to realize that Lester struggles with achievement on a daily basis. Although he has met his lifelong commitment of becoming a successful business man, Lester's life achievements do not leave him feeling that way he has always imagined it would. Because of this, Lester's need for achievement is not met. Once Lester realizes that the feeling of achievement comes from internal factors rather than external, we see him begin to meet his need for achievement. For example, Lester starts off the movie in an unhappy marriage, never getting to do anything that he truly wants to do. He realizes that his goal wasn't to be a successful business man, but rather a happy business
man. We then witness Lester start to take control of his own life and do things that he has always wanted to do, allowing him to cross things off the old "bucket list", giving him a sense of achievement.
Another social need that Lester demonstrates throughout the movie is that of affiliation. In this movie, Lester experiences a mid life crisis. Although Lester is well into his middle ages, his sense of self is still a younger, male version of himself. Lester is in a constant battle between the actual self and the possible self. Lester always imagined himself as a "hip", fun middle aged man. When he comes to the realization that his life is not that at all and that he is rather boring, he begins to engage in odd hobbies and behaviors to prove that he "still has it." His sudden obsessions with his daughter's friend, Angela, and that with working out are his attempt to fit in with the younger group, therefore affiliating with them. As we see time go on, we notice his self-efficacy of "being cool" also increases...Leading him to eventually make his move on the much younger Angela.
The third social need discussed in Chapter 7 is that of power. This is easily depicted through the power struggle between Lester and his wife. Lester realizes that he hasn't made decisions for himself lately, causing him to rebel. You notice throughout the movie that the madder Carolyn gets, the happier Lester appears to be. This is because Lester realizes that he has taken some for his control back and began doing things for him again; making him happy and not him AND Carolyn happy. Having power of the relationship again.
Finally, the last social need discussed in Chapter 7 is that of intimacy. Lester and his wife are clearly going through a rough time during this movie. The attempted love scene on the new couch shows that Lester and his wife are either no longer intimate together or are having difficulties with it. Lester seeks out his need for intimacy by chasing his daughter's best friend. In the end of the movie, we see Lester sharing a moment with Angela that doesn't end up as promising as we had all pre-assumed it would. However, we do see Lester meeting his need for intimacy with his connection to Angela.
American Beauty is centered around the lead character Lester Burnham. Lester and his family (Carolyn and Jane) live in white suburbia next to neighbors Ricki Fitz (love interest of Jane) and his parents Col. Frank Fitz USMC and Barbara Fitz. Early on in the movie it is apparent that Lester suffers from Intimacy needs. He and his real estate agent wife aren't very close. He lacks a positive affective relationship with another person. His wife is one of those white picket fence wives who is highly successful with a lot of material goods. She puts on a skin deep appearance that she is part of the perfect family. Lester is bored in life and is transformed after meeting his daughters friend Angela. After she says she would “F#$% him if he had more sculpted arms and chest” to his daughter Jane (which he overhears outside Jane's door) Lester starts to workout. He first starts running with the homosexual life partners who live in the neighborhood and then moves on to smoking pot and repping bench press in his garage. He takes not giving a shit to a whole new level after he quits his job. In this form he is setting goals for himself that he wants to achieve. He sets a healthy pot smoking and exercise program hoping to achieve the desired outcome of looking good enough to sleep with his daughters best friend. Chapter 8 would call this Goal setting.
His wife Carolyn is low in the area of Achievement. She despises Buddy Kane the real estate “king” who she is in direct competition with. She strives to be the best real estate agent in the area. About midway through the movie she meets up with “the king”. He teaches her a few things about real estate. After this they have sexual relations.
Ricki Fitz is probably the strangest “heart throb next door”. He's borderline psycho due to the fact that his father is a strict authoritarian in the household. His mother is so disengaged from his father that it's not even funny. The underlying issue in this family is that his father is a closet homosexual and that his wife is his cover up or “beard”. His father gets physical with the pot smoking Ricki and attempts to instill discipline and make him a better citizen. It's about the most dysfunctional family you could imagine.
Lester is eventually killed by Frank Fitz because Lester turns down Frank after Frank thinks he's gay.
Terms: Goal Setting, Achievement Needs, Intimacy Needs
Terms used: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, power, affiliation, intimacy, self-efficacy, and learned helplessness.
The movie American Beauty gives great examples of quasi needs, goal setting, and personal control behaviors from chapters 7-9. The main character Lester is a middle-aged man who is in a rut because he can’t get any sort support or encouragement from his family or from work. He is unhappy with the current state is life is in, but once he meets his daughter’s friend Angela, he comes to the realization that he has a discrepancy between his current, miserable state compared to an ideal state of being with Angela. Discrepancy happens when the present state falls short of what a person’s ideal state (perfect state) of being is. For Lester to overcome the discrepancy in his life he starts working out after he overhears that Angela would sleep with him if he were more toned and fit. Lester then goes on to experience goal striving, which is when one visualizes the goal they want. That can be seen when Lester vividly pictures/dreams about Angela multiple times which continues to drive him to persist towards his ideal state.
One could also say that the character Ricky also experiences the struggle to overcome the discrepancy between his current state and his ideal state. For the majority of the movie Ricky is stuck under the rule of his father, but wants to escape to abuse and control his dad has over every aspect of his life. A perfect example of how bad Ricky’s current state was when his father, who has a high need of power, barged into Ricky’s room and acted aggressive towards Ricky. Ricky didn’t retaliate at that time, but after he finds his dad waiting for him in his room after his dad thinks he saw Ricky engage in oral sex with Lester he finds the opportunity to achieve his goal and lies so his father will finally kick him out of the house, which allows Ricky to reach his ideal state of freedom.
Lester’s wife, Carolyn, is also a great example of many things discussed in class and in the book. First off, Carolyn, has a high need for achievement which is the desire to do well and maintain a certain standard of excellence. An example of Carolyn’s need is seen when she is prepping for the open house she is about to have. She wants to be successful, and manage to sell the house by the end of the day, so as she is cleaning one can hear her repeatedly giving herself a pep-talk, which is form of verbal persuasion to empower herself and improve her self-efficacy. Empowerment occurs when a person possesses the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow someone to feel like they have control over their life. Self-efficacy is when a person organizes and orchestrates his or her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances they face. One can also see Carolyn’s high need for achievement by her value of materialistic things and at her efforts to mingle at that party with Buddy, the “king” of real estate, and get his secrets to success.
The character, Angela, is another great example as someone with high self-efficacy. Throughout the movie she brags about her beauty and that she’s going to make a perfect model. Some examples that support that her high self-efficacy is her verbal persuasion that she is perfection and has all these men lusting after her. An example of vicarious experience that supports Angela’s high self-efficacy, which involves someone witnessing modeling behavior, is when she notices Lester ogling over her every time the interact. However, Angela does experience doubt (inefficacy) when she gets into a fight with Jane and Ricky. One could also say that Angela has a high need for affiliation because she constantly has the need to feel like she’s liked and wanted by men. She even goes to Lester in the hopes to hear Lester confirm that she isn’t ordinary like she fears she is.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie and thought that it had many real life examples to relate to the book and what we’ve learn in class.
Terms used: current state, ideal state, discrepancy, goal striving, drive, control, need of power, aggressive, need for achievement, verbal persuasion, empowerment, self-efficacy, cope, vicarious experience, doubt, need for affiliation, hope, quasi needs, goal setting, personal control behaviors
The movie, American Beauty, demonstrated many principles from chapter eight and nine. Mostly pertaining to the goals, learned helplessness, and self-efficacy. Obviously, Lester is quite unhappy with his life. He hates his job, his wife, Carolyn, is very controlling and tries to hide the fact that their family is less than perfect, his daughter, Jane, is embarrassed by him, ignores him, and somewhat hates him. Lester, at this point in his life, according to Erikson is in the category stagnation. He is not happy with his job, relationship with his family, and regrets a lot of things.
Lester is demonstrating learned helplessness, because when he is in the office of his boss, he has information about his boss's superior that could incriminate him, but he is subdued by his boss and gives up. Lester also demonstrates learned helplessness with his wife. Carolyn is a realtor and makes more money than Lester. Carolyn is the breadwinner so she thinks she can run everything however she wants. When Caroline brings Lester to the realtor party, she wants him to act like they are the perfect couple and they are happy, even though they are anything but.
At Jane's cheerleading performance, Lester see Angela, Jane's attractive friend, and becomes sexually attracted to her, to the point that it became almost an obsession. He overheard Angela tell Jane that if her father worked out she would find him more attractive. At that point Lester set it as his goal to work out so he could have a chance with Angela. Lester goes off into the garage and finds little weights and looks at his appearance in the window. He is unsatisfied with the way he looks, there is an incongruence with his ideal state and his present state. His losing weight would be a long-term goal, because losing weight does not happen within a short period of time. To strive for his goal, he started running with the neighbors that were partners, lift heavier weights, bench press, drinking healthy shakes, and eventually he was able to lose weight and gain muscles.
As the movie went on, Lester's self-efficacy became higher. He stood up to his boss, and used his knowledge and skills to convince his boss to give him a year's pay. He stood up to his wife, saying what is her's is half of his if they divorce and when he found out she was cheating on him, he gave her the boot.
Carolyn when she was trying to sell the house would say, "I will sell this house today!" She used verbal persuasion in self-efficacy to convince herself that she could sell the house. She set a short-term goal for herself to sell the house that day. Carolyn's feedback was when none of the buyers wanted to buy the house. Carolyn was very upset and beat herself up for not meeting her short-term goal.
TERMS: learned helplessness, goal, goal setting, incongruent, ideal state, present state, long-term goal, goal striving, verbal persuasion, self-efficacy, short-term goal
American Beauty
I saw the film when it came out (same as all the others), but didn’t really remember much of it (ditto). I watched the first bit of it in class today.
The title of the film alludes both to the variety of rose and to Angela, but also to the disparate ideals of the ‘American Dream’ life that each of the characters holds. I thought that this was shown by all of the different strategies for asserting a sense of autonomy and control over their lives that each of the different characters displayed.
At the beginning of the film, Lester seems to have an external locus of control (LOC), reacting to events over which he feels powerless rather than making choices and acting on them on his own. Lester, feeling trapped in a dull job (where he is unmotivated because he has no interest in his assigned work, no challenge, no goals, and no opportunity for creativity), does, however, later contrive to quit his job of fourteen years and take a healthy severance package. This action will allow him the freedom (in terms of time and money) to pursue choices of his own making -- and we see that, by simply taking on more of an internal LOC, his whole attitude toward life changes (e.g., standing up to his castrating wife, pursuing his own goals, and giving some overdue attention to his own desires). This shows how the environment can impact affect and vice-versa. Lester has a short-term goal (to f*ck Angela), and an implementation intention (working out, so that he can “develop his arms and chest,” in order to be attractive to her -- as Angela herself inadvertently hinted). Lester’s surname ‘Burnham’ (pronounced “burn ‘em”) may be a nod to the bridges he is burning.
Carolyn, no longer attracted to Lester (perhaps due to his lack of ambition, or his ‘failure’ in his career), seeks achievement and status of her own (perhaps to make up for the failure of her marriage). She attempts to force herself and her family to fit a certain preconception that she has of what a ‘successful’ family should be. Carolyn believes that, to be successful, one must always act as though they are successful, saying, “My business is selling an image,” (much like Lester’s job in advertising), “And part of my job is to live that image.” Carolyn gives herself pep talks to motivate herself (i.e., her mantra of “I will sell this house today”), and even punishes herself (slapping herself in the face) when she loses control of her façade (crying after a frustrating day showing a house). Lester says that it is “no accident” that Carolyn’s garden shears match her clogs -- and this shows the degree to which Carolyn tries to conform to her particular ideal.
It’s funny that Carolyn has this Madison Avenue idea of what life should be -- since Lester is in advertising; and that Lester’s fantasies always include rose petals -- when Carolyn is so merciless in establishing her dominance over her prized roses.
Jane, the daughter, is embarrassed by her parents, and also feels resentment over being neglected emotionally. The film begins with Jane saying that she wants to have her father killed (trying to assert control over her environment). She is glad when Ricky pays attention to her rather than Angela, as she feels a social need to be recognized and cherished.
Angela, too, has an ideal goal for her life (to become a model, and so gain recognition from others), and an implementation intention to achieve that goal (have sex with anyone who might benefit her career, such as the photographer from 'Elle'). As she says, “If people I don’t even know look at me and want to fuck me, then I have a real shot at being a model!” But it’s not all about the life of glamour for Angela: she reveals her vulnerability and character flaw when she says things like, “I am so sick of people taking their insecurities out on me,” or, “He didn’t even look at me once!” Angela feels that her good looks are the only thing she has to offer, and she wants to feel valued (recognized and cherished) for them. But Angela knows what she is about: it is clear when she tells Jane, “I should go say ‘Hi’ to your dad.”
Ricky (the neighbor boy) also has a goal: making enough money to get out on his own and escape from his father’s authoritarian rule. Ricky plays his father like a fiddle, covering up his source of income (selling herb) by taking on random jobs, disparaging the ‘fags’ down the block, and substituting black-market urine for his own when it is time for his biannual urinalysis: all in order to make the Colonel believe that he is a ‘proper’ young man (thus taking the heat of his father’s suspicions off of Ricky). As Ricky tells Lester, “Never underestimate the power of denial.” Ricky also manipulates Lester by giving him his first hit free (knowing that Lester -- a beaten down, middle-aged man with predictable pain-avoiding/pleasure-approaching tendencies -- will come back for more). Ricky also tries to assert a sense of control (autonomy) over his life by capturing everything he sees on film. Ricky is short for Richard, as is Dick -- so his name, “Dick Fitts”, may suggest elements of his character, also.
(Ricky was also way ahead of the curve, sporting that tuque back in 1999.)
Ricky’s father, Col. Frank Fitts, tries to enforce military discipline in his home, in order to maintain the type of social environment that he is accustomed to, to preclude uncomfortable emotional entanglements, and to withdraw himself from the temptations that even he is apparently prone to (i.e., buttseks).
Buddy Kane (the Real Estate King), knowing that his wife is leaving him, manipulates Carolyn by telling her to call his secretary to schedule a lunch -- knowing (after she confesses that she is "in awe" of him) that she will succumb to his charms (including his unibrow and 5 o’clock shadow, which Reeve considers to be very appealing traits in a man).
Terms: acting, reacting, authoritarian, recognition, cherished, ideal, goal, challenge, powerless, locus of control, denial, autonomy, control, unmotivated, freedom, motivate, pep talks, ambition, failure, façade, plan, image, implementation intention, strategies, social need, punishes,
This was the first time I have ever seen the movie, American Beauty. In fact, I don't ever recall hearing about it. After reading chapters 7-9 I can see how they can relate to the movie. There are many similarities between the two. I happen to enjoy this movie, even though it was a little different.
One of the first things I noticed in this movie was how there wasn't any intimacy or affiliation between Lester and his wife, Carolyn. Not once did they ever display affection towards each other in a way that a married couple should. Also, the way they spoke to each other wasn't very nice. I can recall one scene when Carolyn just came home from having sexual relations with Buddy and her husband was at home drinking a beer when they were real close to having an intimate moment, and then Carolyn ruined it by saying, "you're going to spill on the sofa" and everything from there just went downhill. I feel like they both wanted different things.
I think motivation was a big part in this movie. Carolyn is a real estate agent and one of her biggest competitors is, Buddy Kane. Both Buddy and Carolyn have in common that they want to be successful real estate agents and I think that's why they clicked. I do think that part of Carolyn and Lester's marriage problems was that Carolyn was motivated and wanted to succeed and Lester couldn't care less.
Lester became obsessed with his daughter's friend Angela. He ease droped on his daughter Jane, and Angela's conversation one night. They were talking about how Angela thought Jane's dad was hot and she would want to have sex with him if he would only lose weight and have more muscle. Lester uses that as motivation and sets a goal to get into shape. He starts to run and lift weights and ultimately I think he gained more confidence in himself.
Finally, I really think Ricky's dad, Frank showed the best example of power. He wanted to make sure that Ricky knew who was head of the household and in charge. Frank wanted all the power in their relationship. If Ricky wasn't acting the way his father wanted him to, he would verbally and physically abuse Ricky. For example, Ricky wanted to show Jane a plate that his dad had in a locked case and Ricky's dad found out. So Frank got mad and barged into Ricky's room. He ended up hitting Ricky and yelling at him before Ricky could even answer the question. I think that alone shows the kind of power Frank had over Ricky.
Terms: Power, goals, intimacy, affiliation, motivation
I had seen American Beauty once before, but it was just playing in the background during a poker game. After watching the movie, I must say that my hypothesis of movies that win a lot of awards are usually not that great. I love Kevin Spacey, but I felt as though this movie didn’t have much direction. Despite what I thought of the movie it is clear that it demonstrated many different aspects of social needs, goal setting, and personal control beliefs. Although the plot didn’t travel much they certainly went deep into the aspirations and motivational factors in their characters.
The first scene I would like to take a look at is when Carolyn drags her husband Lester to a function with many more prominent real estate figures than herself. Right here we see a discrepancy between Carolyn’s present state and her ideal state when she stresses the importance to Lester by telling him how to act (to which he responds sarcastically) and attempts to fraternize with the most successful man in the room, Buddy King, a mogul of sorts. The type of discrepancy that Carolyn is noticing is discrepancy reduction because she has received feedback, in a sense, by not being able to sell homes very well. She is now seeking to reduce the level of inadequacy she is feeling by doing whatever she can to sell houses. For her this is a difficult, yet ambiguous long term goal which could provide her with moderate success. As the book has shown, when goals are difficult they push us to persevere and to increase our performance. This was definitely apparent in watching Carolyn go through her “I will sell this house today” bit, where she works ridiculously hard to spruce up the house in an attempt to make it appealing to customers. She was even wanting to meet with Buddy King to see how he found such success, and ended up having sex with him in some weird attempt to gain/feel that success. However, I don’t think that Carolyn ever really knew what ‘success’ in her career would look like for her so she didn’t have a set direction to apply herself to. For her there was no end in sight, no time for a breather, which is probably why she ended up despising her husband’s laid back attitude so much in the end and why she never realized her goal.
A few minutes later in the same scene Lester meets their new neighbor kid, Ricky Fitts, who is working as a waiter at the same party. Within the first few minutes together they both end up out back of the party getting toasted. The manager of the establishment comes out to scold Ricky because he’s not doing his job and so Ricky quits on the spot, thus becoming Lester’s new hero. This was the domino that triggered the effect of Lester moving from an empty helpless kind of life into a life where he takes charge of his life’s direction. Seeing that Ricky could live such a laid back life without caring about others around him and the added motivation from his crushing on Angela brought him to this point. Before this moment Lester’s life sucked, I know this because he said the highlight of his day was beating it in the shower…that’s lame. He was constantly beat down by his boss, his wife and his daughter. No matter what he tried he could never please those around him. Just like the cognitive test given to humans in our textbook (p. 248) when Lester experienced this repetitive failure, despite his best efforts and multiple approaches to success he has now learned helplessness. Lester exhibits this in his thoughts and behaviors by attributing all of his crappy life situations to external causes (i.e. boss, work, wife) and doesn’t seek to change them because he has been beaten down so many times that he doesn’t believe that he can change them. However, that was the old Lester, the new Lester holds extreme mastery beliefs. This all began to change, as I said with Ricky Fitts’ “who cares” attitude, and let’s not kid ourselves, with his wanting to have sex with Angela (which is statutory rape! just want to put that out there). The first building block on this road was seeing Ricky Fitts live life the way he wanted without caring what anyone else thought, or a vicarious experience. Lester saw Ricky successfully accomplish this through selling weed, lying to his dad, and video recording things he thought were beautiful. Being that vicarious experiences are the second most important factor of building self efficacy and that he referred to Ricky as his “personal hero” this moment was crucial. Secondly, Lester became empowered by learning the skills and knowledge of knowing how to “look good naked”. He began running and lifting weights in his garage and after a while of this he sees results it gave him a boost of confidence. Seeing that he could in fact accomplish something on his own when he had the skills and knowledge provided him with an increased self efficacy because of his personal history, brief though it may be. Now, when we add up his self efficacy with the empowerment he experienced we develop mastery beliefs, or the perceived control we have over getting what we want and avoiding what is undesirable. Once, Lester has a taste of this he makes up for lost time. First he starts working out in the garage (something his wife disapproves of), quits his job (with great class, I might add), buys a very nice car, and demonstrates his new found self determination over passing the asparagus. Way to make up for lost time Lester.
The last part of the movie I would like to examine would be the relationship between Angela and Jane. Immediately, from the first time you see these ‘friends’ you know there is a mismatch. Angela thinks she very much of herself, is very confident, and snows no shame at all while Jane is extremely self conscious, a part of the cheerleading squad merely to be a part of something, and is humble. I’m going to go ahead and agree with Ricky in saying that Angela leached onto Jane in order to make herself feel better about herself and meet some of her social needs, namely affiliation and power. As our textbook suggests, affiliation is not necessarily the best social need to exhibit as it is primarily just a cover for fear of rejection from those around us. This makes great sense when you compare Angela and Jane’s external features. Angela was not risking a lot in being friends with Jane because it is not very likely that Jane would ‘break-up’ with her. Also, Angela exhibited signs of anxiety, even with Jane, by telling outlandish stories of sexual exploits, in a way trying to impress upon Jane just how ‘cool’ Angela was and that Jane was lucky to have her as a friend. Although Angela thought these stories were cool and would keep Jane there, they had the opposite effect in the end. When Ricky and Jane have a fight against Angela I believe that Angela reacts so severely because of her intense need for affiliation. From this it is also easy to see how Angela fulfilled her social need for power by having others (including Lester) fall in lust with her. She established her power in him through flirting, then she continued to flirt to maintain her control, and influenced others in a similar fashion. Her relationships with Lester and Jane both gave her a sense of power in different ways; via a ‘relationship’ with Lester and via influential occupation (cheerleading) and relationship (friendship) with Jane.
Those are the three scenes from ‘American Beauty’ that really stuck with me and I thought were easily applicable to our field of study. Although it wasn’t my favorite movie it certainly made me appreciate the practical nature of the material we are studying.
Terms: social needs, goal setting, personal control beliefs, present state, ideal state, feedback, discrepancy reduction, goal difficulty and specificity, helpless, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, mastery beliefs, empowerment, skills/knowledge, vicarious experience, self efficacy, affiliation, power, I’m sure I forgot to include a few
There were many motivations shown in the characters in the movie American Beauty. In this movie Lester is not happy in his present state. He is in a loveless marriage, his daughter doesn’t like him, he hates his job, his life has just become a drag and Lester decides to move from his present state to his ideal state. He does this by trying to get with Angela, Jane’s friend, who is young, beautiful, and everything his own wife is not. He over hears Angela saying she would have sex with him if he worked out and got bigger muscles, so he decides to start working out and get into shape. Lester also hates his job, so he ends up getting fired which was likely self-inflicted. He also stands up to his wife which was different from the beginning of the movie where she just walked all over him. Although, at the very end of the movie he is not in his ideal state, he made changes throughout the movie where he changed his current state into his more ideal state. I think this movie also goes to show that your ideal state can never truly be achieved, because once you make changes for better, there is always something better that becomes the new ideal state.
Lester had a goal in this movie to sleep with his daughter’s friend Angela. After he saw her dance he began fantasizing about her, and then Jane introduced him to her after the game. He stumbled over his words and was creepily into her. Lester began having fantasies involving him and Angela doing inappropriate things together. Then Angela spent the night with Jane, Lester over heard Angela saying that she would sleep with him if he got in shape, as well as other inappropriate sexual things she would do to him. This gave Lester feedback as to what he needs to do to get with her. Lester decided to start working out so that Angela would be attracted to him and she would have sex with him. He ends up almost achieving this goal, but then the rational side of him took over and he decided it was wrong to sleep with her.
Another person who had a goal in this movie was Ricky. His goal was to get with Jane. He did this by creepily filming her from his house which was next door to hers, and then approaching her in a very confident manner. He did not seem ashamed about filming her and was definitely not discreet about it, especially when they were at school. It is not very hard for him to achieve his goal since she is willing to give him a chance. It is clear though that Ricky is a character who will not back down and not afraid to go after what he wants.
Ricky’s Father had a high need for autonomy and power. When he introduced himself he always said Colonel Frank Fitz which was for the sole purpose of establishing his power and authority showing that he is ranked in the military. He also shows his status by having a well kept home and washing his car, making sure it is nice, this was subtle, but definitely important to show his desire to have a good appearance to the neighbors. Frank also asserted his power a lot with his family. It was never shown that he beat his wife, but it seems very plausible with her robotic like character, almost as if she is in a trance or disassociated from herself. The movie does however show Frank beating his son causing him physical injury. He also possesses his power over Ricky by making him take urine samples. It is clear that Frank needs to be in control and wants to have power over his family.
Jane is a character that has a high need for autonomy. Jane does not follow the norms of society, and that is very evident by her choice to be Goth. This is something that is considered to be edgy and rebellious, and clearly not what her Mom wants for her which was evident when her Mom asked if she was trying to look ugly, but it was what she wanted to do not what her parents or society wanted her to do. Angela also told Jane that she should not date Ricky, but Jane could care less what Angela said and she dated him anyways. Jane was a character that was motivated to do what she wanted to do and didn’t want anyone to tell her what to do.
Many characters in this movie showed a desire for intimacy. Carolyn clearly desired intimacy and she got it from Buddy Kane when they had their affair. Lester wanted intimacy from Angela, and Angela wanted intimacy from most men. Jane wanted intimacy with Ricky as did he with her. The last need for intimacy was with Frank desiring intimacy with Lester, which was not reciprocated and was what Frank thought to be competition between him and his son. This was a driving theme in the movie and was what a lot of the motivation was in this movie. These characters exemplified this need very well.
Terms: present state, ideal state, goals, feedback, autonomy, power, motivation, intimacy, need, competition
“American Beauty” was a very interesting movie. While its morals were somewhat complex and obscure, it was basically about a man (Lester) who goes through a mid-life crisis due to a loveless marriage and a job he despises. The main idea that I came away from the movie with was that this family did not feel in control of their lives because they were trying to personify “normal”, or perhaps, “American Beauty”. They were too swept up in trying to be perceived as happy while they were in fact miserable. For instance, at the very beginning of the movie, Lester says that he gets exhausted just watching Carolynn, whose mantra is to project an image of success. However, Lester hits his breaking point and he decides to stand up to Carolyn about their marriage and to his bosses at work. This outburst is a demonstration of reactance, or the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing an eliminated or threatened freedom. Once he has re-asserted his autonomy, Lester is much happier. Once he has awoken from his “trance”, he makes plans to using corrective motivation to become the person that he wanted to be, which is also called an ideal state. This discrepancy between who he was and who he wanted to be provided Lester the motivation to quit his job, demand respect from his wife and daughter, and begin working out.
Another person who does not seem to be in control of his life is poor Ricky, who has a strict authoritarian parent who is physically abusive. In one scene, Ricky’s father comes bashing through his bedroom door and hits Ricky in the face because Ricky had been in his father’s room when showing Jane his Nazi dining ware. After hitting Ricky, his father tells him that it is for his own good and Ricky quickly agrees with him and says, “Don’t give upon me, Dad.” It seems to me that Ricky is demonstrating learned helplessness, or the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. Ricky is trapped in a very controlling environment, which results in Ricky feeling he must make his father proud by deceiving him. It seemed like Ricky felt trapped. However, Ricky shares a video with Jane that reveals a lot about Ricky’s psychological state. He says, “That’s the day I realized that there was an entire life behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force wanted me to know that there was no reason for me to be afraid. Ever.” In this dialogue, the viewer can interpret that Ricky has somehow found meaning in the things he tapes that transcends his experiences at home. The meaning that he derives from the videos gave him hope, which helps him escape the fear and anger he may have had towards his father.
The last person that I will examine that seemed to demonstrate some extreme personal control beliefs is Lester’s wife, Carolyn. Carolyn is actually at the opposite end of the spectrum. She is very controlling and very driven towards achievement and affiliation. She places a lot of emphasis on her career, which can be seen in the clip where she is preparing a home for open house. In this scene, she repeats the phrase, “I am going to sell this house today.” It seems like while Carolyn has a high need for achievement, she may have low self-efficacy or low self-esteem. At the end of this particular scene, she becomes distraught when she receives negative feedback from the potential buyers. It seems like Carolynn is set on being perceived as perfect, which can only result in failure because her goal difficulty is way too high. It also seemed like Carolynn became very uneasy when she was not in control of the situation, such as when Lester begins acting out. Her need for power and control can be seen in the scene where she becomes empowered by shooting a gun. For her, it was a cathartic experience because she felt in control of her environment, which gave her the mastery belief that she could take control of the situation. Near the end of the movie, she is repeating to herself, “I will not be the victim.” For Carolyn, the worst think was not being in control.
Altogether, it was an interesting movie that evoked a lot of thought. I did enjoy the movie even though it was not my typical genre.
Terms: Reactance, corrective motivation, ideal state, discrepancy, learned helplessness, hope, achievement, affiliation, self-efficacy, feedback, goal difficulty, power, empowered, mastery belief
The characters in American Beauty displayed a lot of psychological concepts. As the movie progresses, the issues become more evident and the characters seek solutions for themselves. Both Lester and Carolyn are keeping their happiness and their own needs in mind. They do not seem to care much about fulfilling the other’s needs. The characters’ actions build on one another, so it is hard to isolate just one scene and explain it without referencing other parts of the movie. I chose a couple of scenes that I thought showed a few psychological concepts clearly.
The first scene I chose for my analysis is the one in which Carolyn and Buddy place an order at Mr. Smiley’s Restaurant and Lester gives them their order. Lester clearly sees that his wife is having an affair with Buddy. At the same time, Carolyn has to face the fact that Lester knows about her affair. She becomes defensive and upset that her secret is out. Lester accepts it and states that she does not get to tell him what to do ever again.
Carolyn’s social need of intimacy was not being satisfied inside of her marriage, so she sought intimacy elsewhere. Carolyn feels helpless in her marriage and in her life and decides to start making her own decisions. She reclaims power and control over her own life and starts shooting guns to relieve stress and to feel powerful. She finds that she really enjoys the release that that provides. She feels the need to control Lester’s actions and isn’t happy if he disagrees with her.
Carolyn adopts a performance-approach goal in her work life. She wants to outperform her competition, make it look easy, and show her competence. She provides verbal persuasion, or pep talk, for herself. She repeats to herself, “I will sell this house today” while preparing for the open house. This demonstrates her self-efficacy. In addition, her personal behavior history, vicarious experience (Buddy), and physiological state all contribute to her self-efficacy. She is all about keeping up an image and acting happy for her professional career.
The second scene I chose is the one in which Lester is lifting weights in his garage and smoking pot. Carolyn discovers him in the garage and responds with, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? … Lester, you will not get away with this.” I think these statements say a lot about their relationship. Carolyn thinks she has control over Lester and she expects him to follow her orders and her rules. By Lester’s response above, we can tell that he is tired of listening to her and following her orders. He wants autonomy. He feels like he is in a cage in his own marriage and is therefore lacking volition. In addition, he did not have internal perceived locus of causality: He just listened to his wife and functioned on autopilot. He doesn’t feel intimacy with his daughter or wife. He fantasizes about his daughter’s friend and starts masturbating when he feels like it. Carolyn gets upset by this and thinks it is disgusting. Neither one of them is fulfilling the other’s physiological need for sex.
Lester gains a sense of empowerment when he quits his job. He starts to believe in his ability to turn his life around and develops a high self-efficacy. He manages to get a year’s salary paid because he threatens to expose the sexual harassment and prostitution present in the company. He strongly dislikes his job, so being rid of it makes him happier and he feels like he has control over his own choices again. He has gained his autonomy back. I think that Lester uses an active and assertive control way of coping later on. He does his own thing and deals with problems as they come up. Previously, Lester behaved in a passive coping response. He felt very lethargic, listless, depressed, and a sense of helplessness. The change in coping styles allowed him to improve his situation in life.
Terms: intimacy, power, empowerment, volition, autonomy, internal perceived locus of causality, performance-approach goal, verbal persuasion, physiological need for sex, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, physiological state, passive coping, helplessness
The movie American Beauty is one of my all time favorites which automatically made me excited to analyze it for an assignment. There are many concepts from the book that can and are demonstrated in the movie. Chapter eight and nine are especially good examples because they discuss the goals. In American Beauty the characters have many different motives, behaviors, and desires. The movie displays how people may react when their desires are filled or unfulfilled. Kevin Spacey (Lester) is the main character. He is a middle aged man that feels since sense of autonomy is in jeopardy because of his controlling wife. She controls the relationships by deciding how money is spent, when to do certain things and how people should behave. They have a daughter, Jane that seems a bit “dark” compared to the image the mother is trying to portray for her family. Jane brings over a friend and Lester develops intense feelings for her.
The scene where Lester quit his job is a great example of goal setting. He was unhappy at his job and felt as though his life was wasting away. He was making decent money, but he wasn’t having any fun. At this time, his short term goal was to have fun. After being rejuvenated, he felt as though he could do and accomplish anything. Money was no longer something he valued greatly, most likely because he didn’t want it to suck the life out of him as it did his wife. When Carolyn found out about Lester quitting his job she was mortified. He wanted to go back and work fast-food so he could have a party lifestyle and get laid. This was an attempt for him to communicate his psychological needs to his wife. She did not have a desirable response.
Another example of goal setting is when Lester decides to lose weight and start eating healthier as a long term goal. What motivated Lester in the first place was Jane’s friend. He wanted to impress her so she would pay attention to him and satisfy his needs. Angela was very attractive in his eyes and she strutted her stuff like she knew what she had. One night Angela has a sleep over with Jane at her house and Lester overhears them talking in Jane’s room. Angela said to Jane that if her dad toned up, she would have sex with him. This motivated Lester to take immediate action. He starts to run and lift weights on a regular basis, eventually gaining Angela’s attention.
Carolyn’s personality is a good example of what high self-efficacy is all about. She is a real estate agent and has a high stress, competitive job. If she did not have a high self-efficacy personality, she would most likely not succeed in that competitive field. One of the scenes in American Beauty shows her deep cleaning a house that has been impossible to sell. She seems a bit manic while cleaning. This most likely has to do with the amount of stress that is currently going on in her life with Lester losing his job, Jane being an “outcast”, and money. While frantically cleaning she states over and over “I will sell this house today!” This type of behavior does not include the outcome expectancy level; she just thinks chanting it will make it happen. She is taking an active approach at trying to sell the house when no one else has been able to. While giving tours to numerous families she attempts to maintain a positive outlook and sell the house by describing all the luxuries and amenities included.
The lack of affiliation and intimacy between Lester and Carolyn leads to both of them having affairs (physically and emotionally). Buddy King is a rival real estate agent that Carolyn sleeps with in order to better herself and learn more about the business. She felt that by sleeping with a successful real estate agent, she could become one too. Lester realizes he has been forced into a life that was robbing him of his youth and energy. When he met Angela he was motivated to live the life he wanted and gain a sense of autonomy.
Terms: goals, motives, behaviors, desires, autonomy, controls, short term goal, long term goal, psychological needs, desirable response, high self-efficacy, active approach, positive outlook, motivation
It seemed to me that a lot of American Beauty was about goals, at least as far as Lester, Carolyn, and Jane (to some degree) went.
It's clear that, from the start, Carolyn's main goal is to succeed in her real estate business. She doesn't really have a clear-cut specification as to how she plans on getting that accomplished, because I don't think she quite knows what "success" means to her, but it's obvious that she aims to be like "The King". She is attempting to out-perform her competition and show that she is a competent real estate saleswoman. The feedback she receives on her goal is whether or not she sells a house. In the scene where she has an open house and nobody seems very interested in buying the house. The two women at the end of her open house were even very disappointed with the house. She takes this failure extremely personally, showing very little self-efficacy and some learned helplessness. She begins the open house by saying "I will sell this house", which is an outcome expectation, without really coming up with an efficacy expectation or plan to getting the outcome she desires. She seems very confident in herself, but her extreme emotional reaction to not selling the house leads me to believe that she considers it to be a personal failure on her part, attributing the bad outcomes to being a bad salesperson, when really it could just be that nobody seriously looking at the house showed up.
Lester has a lot of goals in his life. One goal is to take back some of the control he's lost over his life. He takes an approach-oriented method of coping by getting the balls to do what he's always wanted to do: quit his job. He also argues and talks back to Carolyn when she demeans him and tries to control him. He feels much more empowered after he quits, even though he will be making considerably less money and Carolyn is extremely angry at him for it. Another goal he goes after is much more specific: to get Angela to sleep with him. Or, that's what his goal seems to be. He fantasizes about her frequently and after eavesdropping on her conversation with Jane, he uses what he hears as motivation to start working out more. As he says to Jim and Jim while running, he just wants to look good naked. He feels that if he looks good, Angela will want to sleep with him, since that's what she told Jane. He takes on a very active and assertive way of coping and works hard to improve the control he has over his life.
Jane seems to have the goal of being noticed. Angela talks about how men always stare at her, and when Jane catches Ricky filming her she is initially angry and calls him an asshole, but later she smiles slightly to herself because for the first time, someone is going out of his way to watch her and take notice of her. She feels invisible to her parents and the guys at school, and the little smiles she has when she knows Ricky is filming her give it away that she enjoys the attention. She further proves this by walking home with Ricky, undressing for him at her window, and becoming his girlfriend. Her need for intimacy is so great that she finds solace in the creepy peeping tom she has for a neighbor.
Terms: intimacy, active coping, learned helplessness, approach-oriented coping, empowerment, control, feedback
The film “American Beauty” was a very interesting movie that demonstrated many good examples of motivation and emotion. One example is the different way characters in the movie would cope with problems. There was a broad array of coping strategies displayed in the movie. Problem focused versus emotion focused coping strategy was displayed when Lester Burnum and his wife Carolynn were discussing the letter Burnum was being required to write by his boss that discussed what he contributes to the company. When Burnum was talking about the letter to his wife, he really just wanted to vent and for her to take his side. At this point he was stressed and angry and was coping through the emotion focus strategy. However, his wife was problem focused. She kept telling him to just write the letter like they were asking, so he could better his chances of keeping the job. She wanted to focus on how to fix the problem, but Burnum needed emotional support, not an answer. This opposite strategy in coping with the problem led them to start fighting with each other.
Autoplastic and alloplastic coping strategies were used by Burnum. There were many problems he was facing in his life, and depending on the time and situation he took different approaches to the problems. With his job he took an alloplastic approach. His job was very stressful and after 14 years of working for the company they were requiring him to write a letter telling them why they shouldn’t fire him. He dealt with this situation head on by writing a letter telling his boss exactly how he felt about them, followed by bribing the company for a year’s worth of wages. He refused to change for the company and was fed up with the way he was being treated by them so he basically quit. While this may not have been the wisest decision he made, it did resolve the problem at hand. Burnum also demonstrated autoplastic coping strategies with his appearance and his attitude towards certain people. The escalation of him meeting Jane’s friend Angela and with his wife treating him with such disrespect and lack of honor he finally cracked. He no longer put up with his wife’s disrespect. He stood up for himself to his wife and his daughter. This was definitely new to them, because they were very surprised when he threw the plate at the wall. He also seemed not to care about things as much as he did before. He became more laid back and bought himself the car he always wanted. He also increased his beer intake. Having Angela around also caused him to start working out. He started lifting weights and running in order to try and impress Angela.
The control and escape coping strategies were demonstrated in the relationship between Coronel Fitz and his son Ricky. Fitz was a very controlling father and this was displayed in many ways. When Fitz discovers that his cabinet had been tampered with he immediately took the take charge controlling approach and accused his son of doing it while he beat his face in. He took the same approach when he found the naked video of Burnum on his camera. Another example of Fitz’ take control style of parenting was how he would make Ricky give a urine sample every six months to make sure he is not doing drugs. Fitz takes to this way of coping, because of his internal struggle with being gay. He was clearly taught that being gay is wrong, coped with this desire by taking an extreme amount of control in his home. Ricky took an escape approach to coping with his life and the struggles he faced with his dad. He told his dad that he was gay though not true, in order to be able to get away from his home for good. He wasn’t happy with his dad and the strict life he had to endure. He just wanted to get away and bring Jane with.
The reactance theory was demonstrated by Ricky throughout the movie. While he always appeared to be the perfect son, behind closed doors he was doing the opposite of what he was supposed to be doing. He had established a very lucrative weed selling business. He was able to obtain urine from a client, to use for his dad’s urine tests. He even got a key to his dad’s cabinet and opened it up to show Jane the Nazi plate knowing that he wasn’t supposed to be in there. His dad had eliminated his freedom, and in turn Ricky snuck around and did the things that he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
Burnum and his wife Carolynn’s relationship demonstrated what happens when both efficacy expectation and outcome expectation aren’t reasonably high. For them one of the bigger problems was that there outcome expectation for the relationship and for each other became very low. This was demonstrated though out the movie with the way they treated each other. They got to a point in the relationship where they didn’t even try making it work. They were no longer intimate with each other, and also were not willing to try and make the other person happy. One example of this is how Carolynn always played the same type of music during supper despite the fact that she knew he didn’t like the music. They had little hope that anything they tried in the relationship would work and got to the point where they no longer tried with each other. Because their outcome expectation was low, neither one of them were energetic or goal directed to work on their relationship. Perhaps if they were to perform implementation intentions on their marriage they would have been able to plan ways for them to have fun together in low stress places. This active approach would have worked much better than how they were passively allowing their marriage to fall apart.
Terms: coping, problem focused, emotion focused, autoplastic, alloplastic, control, escape, reactance theory, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, hope, goal directed, implementation intentions
American Beauty was a strange movie that I had heard about but never actually saw. The movie is filled with complex characters and experiences. The social needs were clearly evident. The social needs are achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power. It became clear early on that Carolyn was experiencing the need for affiliation and intimacy.
When we meet her, she is criticizing her husband and ordering him around. It is evident in this that their relationship is not in very good shape. When she met Buddy at the restaurant, we could tell that she was interested in him for a form of relationship because she kept looking at him from behind her menu. When they begin having an affair, we see her mood improve and she actually smiles with him. The reason that this is the need for intimacy rather than sex is because when they begin having an affair, she has little fear of rejection and the relationship is positive in a sense.
One of the clearest motivational concepts for Lester was his goal-striving. When he hears Angela say that if he built up his chest and arms, she would sleep with him. At that moment he realizes that his ideal state is built up chest and arms and that there is a discrepancy between his present state and his ideal state. He decides to go and start to work-out to reach that ideal state. He was using the T-O-T-E method. He first tested and discovered the discrepancy. After that, he began to operate by working out and he continues to operate throughout the movie. We don’t see him utilizing any consistent form of feedback. However, when Angela responds positively towards him after he works out towards the end of the movie, he receives positive feedback. Through the movie we don’t see the specificity or his perceived difficulty of the goal.
Lester is also experiencing the need for achievement. It isn’t as concrete and visible as achievement usually is. In this case, Lester is trying to do well relative to his own standard of excellence. He realizes that he is not achieving as much as he could and that he feels he is letting his life go to waste. Lester works to satisfy his need for achievement by quitting things that make him unhappy and taking up activities that he enjoys. He does this by quitting his job, working out, smoking pot, fantasizing about Angela, and buying the car he has always wanted. This is evident because at the beginning of the movie, Lester is just going through the motions and says very little. However, as the movie goes on, Lester starts to speak up for himself more and we see him smiling more often. These changes in his life could also fall under goal-striving. He tested and realized that his ideal state (happiness) doesn’t match up with his present state. He begins to operate through little things such as masturbating and doing drugs. He tests again with his conversations with his wife and realizes he is still unhappy. He continues to operate. By the end of the movie we see him look at the picture of his family and smile and he realizes by then that he is happy that his daughter his happy, so he chooses to exit. Unfortunately, it is not too long after that moment that he is killed.
Social Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Sex, Fear of Rejection, Motivation, Goal-striving, Ideal State, Discrepancy, Present State, T-O-T-E, Test, Operate, Specifity, Perceived Difficulty, Standard of Excellence
American Beauty
The film is about death essentially. Everyone throughout the film is dead in some way. The suburban families are all wishing that they felt happy and alive, yet they are depressed and feel little reason to “live”. They do not feel happy or secure in this world and they have clearly lost something that is important to them. Lester and Carolyn have an unhappy marriage. Ricky and Jane both have unhappy parents and families. Jane’s friend Angela is extremely insecure and passes it off by trying to be sexual. Ricky’s dad is abusive of his mom, and nobody (with the exception of the homosexual couple) is living an honest, happy life. None of them are really living/ alive. This is because they are not achieving their goals and they are not meeting their basic psychological and social needs.
Carolyn has a high need for affiliation. This is clear as she constantly tells Lester to act normal and appear happy. She fake laughs frequently and she works really hard to get Buddy, the “prince of real Estate”, to view her as doing the same kind of work as him. She also strongly desires intimacy and she seeks it out in Buddy. It is clear that she doesn’t have an intimate relationship with anyone, including herself. She slaps and yells at herself every time she cries. She doesn’t even allow herself to be in touch with her own emotions and intimate side. The only time she seems to disclose herself intimately is during her affair with Buddy. Even then it could be argued that her primarily goal is to satisfy her social need for affiliation. She wants to be affiliated with the “top dog” or the “royalty” of her career, that person being Buddy. Even when she cuts roses and visits with the neighbors she is fake and trying to put off a positive image of her marriage, life, and family. As Lester puts it during the introductory narration, “it is exhausting just watching her”.
Lester, like all of the characters, had a need for affiliation and intimacy as well. In the beginning he seemed to have an intimate relationship with his hand in the shower. Later he desired an intimate fantasy in his head between himself and Angela. His overhearing her stating that she would “totally do him if he built up his arms and chest” spark a goal-setting behavior in him. His goal also catered to his need for achievement. His running with the homosexual couple and lifting weights in his garage is his “plan” for achievement of his goal to be in shape and looking good/fit while naked. In terms of the goal-performance discrepancy, his present level was that he believe that he had an out of shape body because of the discrepancy reduction in what Angela said about doing him if his arms and chest had better muscles. His ideal level or goal was to look good naked. He worked toward the goal he set by lifting weights and running. The working out behavior was also part of the difficulty of the goal. He gets feedback in the end when Angela compliments his muscles and she was willing to let him have sex with her. This was his very specific goal as he desired sex with Angela and he got empowerment as he reached his goal of being attractive to her.
Lester also shows a low self-efficacy in the beginning as he states a couple times that his wife and daughter think he’s a “gigantic loser”. He even agrees with them and clearly shows that he has negative feelings toward himself or personal deficiencies. He has learned helplessness as he seems to just give up. He rides in the back seat on his way to work while his wife drives and his daughter sits up front. He also just does what is expected of him and smiles his way through his job and marriage even though he is extremely unhappy with both! He constantly questions his competence and abilities. He thinks that he has little control over the outcomes of his life and consequently has low motivation to do anything but “take it”.
Lester, though also desiring intimacy and affiliation, is primarily focused on achieving and maintaining autonomy, competence, and a high level of achievement. Lester begins to life weights in order to feel some source of achievement. The way he puts it, “he wants to look good naked”. He wants to achieve the desired body and have a sense of accomplishment in something that he has done in his life. His way of working to achieve his desired feeling of competence is in black mailing his boss and quitting his job so that he can feel like he is actually smart enough to be successful, he also achieves his need for autonomy as he is able to take back control over what he does with his life. He no longer has to do what his boss tells him. Other ways that he establishes his autonomy and competence together is when he decides to smoke pot because he could and he wanted to, when he smashes the plate on the wall to get everyone to shut up and listen to him finally, and when he buys the car of his dreams. He does all of this because he can. He has the money and the ability to do it so he wants to establish that he is competent enough to make these decisions for himself. He also has autonomy or control over his body and money and what he does with his time. By getting the job flipping burgers, he is choosing work in which he feels more than competent and happy. Lester’s goal from the beginning is to have control over his life and decisions (autonomy) and display his talents and abilities to do what he is capable of (competence) and fulfill something that he considers to be an important achievement, getting fit and looking good naked.
For Jane, she seems to desire the ability to relate to someone. She is unable to relate to her friend Angela who is seemingly very pretty and sexually active, she can’t relate to her parents, and she doesn’t feel like she fits in anywhere. She is able to relate to Ricky however. They both feel weird and different from everyone else together. She is able to connect with him and he appears to be the first person who she is able to relate to and be intimate with. If she didn’t feel the desire to fulfill her need to relate, she would not have chose to walk home with Ricky instead of riding with Angela. She likes that she is Able to understand Ricky and that he seems to be like her and understand her.
Ricky’s dad most definitely needs to fulfill his need for power. He is abusive of his son and wife. He needs to have power and control over something because he feels like he is unable to control himself. As we find out in the end, he is gay. Yet he is constantly hiding it and disguising it by showing hate toward other homosexuals. When he finally comes out to Lester in the end by kissing him, his power is insulted when he finds out that Lester is not actually gay and he’s been viewing everything the wrong way. He views himself as being messed up, so he has to show that he has power over everything else in his world. His abuse of his family and his shooting of Lester is his way of fulfilling his need for power.
Throughout the movie, all of the characters have some goal whether it be Ricky’s goal to escape his father’s rule/abuse, Jane’s to get a boob job, Angela to not be viewed as “ordinary”, Carolyn to “fit in” and have affiliations with others that help her to have a successful business, Ricky’s dad’s to hide his true sexuality, and Lester’s goal to “do” Angela and be in control over his life (autonomy and competence). All of the characters are also working to satisfy their psychological and quasi or social needs. As discussed in some of the above examples. All of the characters feel “dead” and they are trying to meet their needs in order to feel “alive”.
Terms: Affiliation, intimacy, psychological needs, social needs, autonomy, maintain, competence, achievement, power, goals, secure, self-efficacy, personal deficiencies, learned helplessness, abilities, uncontrollable outcomes, control, motivation, specificity, consequences, relatedness, plan, goal-performance discrepancy, present level, ideal level, discrepancy reduction, goal setting, goal difficulty, feedback, empowerment, quasi-needs.