Boyhood

The movie Boyhood is unique in the fact that it uses the same cast over a twelve-year time. The film stars Mason as a child and allows for the audience to watch him grow up. While he grows up, he experiences many struggles. This allows us, as viewers, to observe how someone fights through life’s struggles in under a three-hour time period. As we know, chapter 13 discusses three personality characteristics; I would like to focus on the concept of arousal (the act of being focused and engaged in a situation). Within the idea of arousal, the inverted-U curve shows how arousal can affect performance. People who are low or high in arousal see a decline in effectiveness of performance. People who are moderately aroused see the best performance (at the top of the U curve). At the beginning of the film, Mason’s mother is talking to him in the car about a conversation she had with the teacher. The teacher said that Mason would stare out the window most of the day, broke her pencil sharpener by putting rocks in it, and would never turn in his homework. These are signs that Mason is extremely unaroused in school. Because he shows low arousal, he would be at the bottom of the inverted-U. He cannot stay focused, so he is not learning anything. According to the textbook, Mason is probably low in arousal because the task does not interest him. He might find the school is too easy (the evidence for this would be that his mother checks his homework each night) and not pay attention.
As Mason grows up, he experiences new challenges. The kid’s father comes to pick them up from their grandmother’s after they move to Houston. When he gets there, they are very excited (screaming and running to him). This would be an example of the kids being over aroused (on the far right side of the U curve) because they were so excited that they forgot about their backpack and shoes. Another aspect of arousal is searching for new experiences and taking risks. An example of this is seen when the father takes the two kids bowling. He is trying to teach them how to bowl (and add in a life-lesson in winning). Mason asks if he can use the bumpers, and the dad responds with, “No. Life doesn’t give you any bumpers”. This scene moves to another where the dad is trying to explain politics and the war in Iraq to the children. He is trying to teach these young kids about new things, but this could either result in the children worrying about the issue (over-arousal and bad performance) or in the kids not caring about the information (under arousal and bad performance). When Mason’s mother gets together with the college professor (Bill), he gains quite a bit of motivation and arousal. It is not directly from his mother’s relationship but through his friendship with the professor’s son who is about the same age. Because this boy is a lot like Mason (he enjoys video games and hanging out), Mason now has someone to compete with for attention. Bill doesn’t like that his son seems lazy, but the boys compete in a variety of things from schoolwork, or golf, to video games. The one who wins gets the most attention. By adding another person like him, Mason moves toward the middle of the inverted-U; this means his performance is improving. While the boys and girls are doing chores, Bill constantly gets upset with them because of his desire for control. He is trying to increase arousal by doing this, but what he does not realize is he may be increasing it too much. By getting upset with the kids, he is adding a perceived punishment which makes the task more anxiety-producing. This adds arousal and may make their performance worse. There are many situations in everyday life that can add or subtract arousal, but according to the inverted-U curve, the goal is to maintain moderate arousal to increase performance.
Terms: Arousal, High Arousal, Low Arousal, Moderate Arousal, Inverted-U, New sensations, Desire for control and Risk-taking.

This movie follows a family and their struggles through life. Each family member deals with these situations differently in reflection of their differing personalities. The family faces obstacles and difficulties, from moving from one place to the next to dangerous behaviors, that bring out aspects of their personalities.
Mason is one character that has a wild side. From his actions, we can see that he possesses a high level of sensation seeking. People who are high in sensation seeking tend to prefer continuous external supplies of brain stimulation. These people typically become bored with routines and search for ways to increase environmental stimulation though exciting and arousing events. People with higher levels of sensation seeking are willing to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks in order to be stimulated. This can be seen in Mason’s character when he participates in drinking with his friends and breaking items. He also participates in smoking, which is very risky to one’s health. He is not afraid of the risks of his behaviors, he is just searching for a thrill with his friends.
Mason’s behaviors can also lead to the conclusion that he is extraverted. Extraversion can be defined as the sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness of an individual. This can be seen through his dangerous and exciting actions and behaviors, as well as his interactions with his friends. He follows his friends in their behaviors, such as when he increases his smoking and drinking, just to ensure that he fits in with his group of friends. He does this because of his extraversion and the preference of social interactions and situations.
When looking at Sam’s personality in the movie, it can be observed that she is more introverted than extroverted, like Mason. She is observed in the movie to be not very outgoing or interested in making connections with others in social situations. She seems to be shy and worried about others thinking negatively of her, which helps to explain her reasoning in the scene when she did not tell her friend to turn around and pick up Mason from school.
Sam also expresses a high desire for control in the movie. Desire for control is the extent to which individuals are motivated to gain control over the situations and events in their lives. People who have high levels of desire for control want control over their lives, regardless of whether or not they currently possess it. Sam does not possess much control over the events of her life, such as moving from place to place, and her life seems to have little structure. Although she does not have control over her life events, it is clear that she has a high desire to have control over her life. This can be seen when she is getting dropped off at her new school and she gets upset at her mother. This is a reaction to her lack of control being at another new school, and she desires control over not moving so frequently.
TERMS:
Personality
Sensation seeking
Brain stimulation
Environmental stimulation
Arousal
Extraversion
Sociability
Assertiveness
Introversion
Desire for control

The film Boyhood had many concepts from chapter 13. Mason, the main character, dealt with happiness, arousal, and control throughout the film. In the beginning, it was just Mason, his sister, and his mother; his father didn’t live close enough to be in their lives all the time but when he could, his father would always make them happy. Mason could be classified as an introvert, he keeps to himself most times and doesn’t have many friends, and he never really fit in. When his mother married her college professor, he was happy that he had a brother and some new stuff, but then his stepfather started showing a darker side and it upset him that his mother was being abused. When his mother left his stepfather, Mason was only upset that he was starting over at a new school. Mason was not happy toward the end of the film when he was feeling pressured to apply to colleges and fit the societal mold. He didn’t think that college would be a life changing experience and that it wouldn’t be the key to his future. He felt that people were living through screens and were not experiencing life. At the end of the film he is seen hiking with his college roommate, his roommates girlfriend, and the girlfriends roommate and he ends ups talking with the girlfriends roommate. She says that many people think that “seize the moment” but she thinks it’s the other way around, that “the moment seizes us”, and Mason agrees with her. From the look on his face, you can tell that he feels that he had found where he belongs and can be happy.

Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness and activation. There are 4 principals that connect arousal to motivation. The first is that a person’s arousal level is mostly due to how stimulating their environment is. The second is that people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. The third connection is that when people are under aroused, they seek out behavior that will give them stimulation. The fourth and final connection is that when people are over aroused, they seek ways to give them less stimulation. Being under or over stimulated can be harmful to ones performance. The inverted U hypothesis is that low stimulation causes boredom while too much stimulation can cause stress, but moderate stimulation is the right amount for performance. Mason in most cases was being under aroused. Throughout the film Mason would do his homework but not turn it in, he wouldn’t participate in class, or he would just not do the work. When he was in high school, he really only put effort into his photography class because that was what he enjoyed. Mason went looking for things that would stimulate him during school that would keep him from getting too bored. He was excited for college because it would challenge him to take better photos and that is a stimulating event.

Control was displayed in the film as the desire for control, or autonomy. The desire for control is that people want to control what they do, when they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with. Mason showed his desire for control by taking pictures and putting minimal effort into any thing else. He chose whom he was hanging out with and he chose to hang out with other students who were interested in photography as well.

Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, introvert, inverted U hypothesis, and autonomy

The film Boyhood follows the main character Mason through his childhood and into his college years. We see his relationship with his mother, his father, various stepfathers, and his sister bend and sway with the passage of time. His mother, Olivia, seems to have a curse of dating and marrying alcoholic, abusive men (Bill and Jim). His father, Mason Sr., is Mason’s only real positive role model, taking him and his sister, Samantha, on many pleasurable journeys and giving them a taste of a reasonably stable life. Olivia has custody of the children, and they move across the state of Texas as Olivia attends college, dates various men (most of ill-repute), and gets odd jobs here and there. Periodically, Mason Sr. takes the two children on adventures to baseball games, teaches them about the birds and the bees, camp, etc. Mason eventually gains his own girlfriend, Sheena, and the two share a fleeting relationship before breaking up during Mason’s senior year of high school. However, Mason makes it into college, earns a minor accolade in his hobby of photography, and seems to find his new niche to fill in his new life with an all new cast of characters at university.

For the psychological review of the movie, I’d like to focus on Olivia. Odd to not focus on the main character, but I believe that Olivia has the most to offer in terms of personality characteristics in this film. Specifically, her relationship and life choices and how they perfectly demonstrate at least a few of the characteristics discussed within Chapter 13. Even MORE specifically, Olivia is the perfect character to discuss when talking about the motivational concept of arousal.

As a brief refresher, arousal is comprised of the various processes that govern our alertness, our wakefulness, and our activation. It gives us the “get-up-and-go” attitude that we need to complete certain daily activities and tasks. However, arousal is only the motivation, and the actual characteristics that use this motivational tool are sensation seeking (seek out novel external sources of stimulation/reactivity) and affect intensity (capacity to become emotionally aroused). And the character of Olivia is the perfect example of these two characteristics in a relatable, human form.

First, Olivia is a medium sensation-seeking individual. In the Inverted-U Hypothesis, it is argued that a medium amount of stimulation from the environment facilitates the best emotion and performance. Olivia is constantly attempting to seek this balance from her environment, but she always seems to receive way too much when she thinks she’s found a place to settle down. She is first seen arguing with her very first boyfriend, obviously dissatisfied with the current relationship. This is an example of under-arousal and sensation-seeking, as Olivia feels she could be much more than she currently is and moves to attend the University of Houston in an attempt to receive more stimulation. She also meets Professor Bill Welbrock and begins a relationship with him to further add novel stimulation to her life, and they wed. She has been motivated to approach a newer lifestyle to prompt the environment for more stimulation. However, this proves to be too much stimulation, as Bill turns out to be a strict alcoholic and very abusive father. This turns Olivia into an overly-aroused and sensation-avoiding individual, leaving the current situation behind for the safety of herself and her children. This shows the other side of the motivation, as she was moved to avoid this newer lifestyle and to find a safer environment that provided less stimulation. In summary, Olivia spent the whole film attempting to find that perfect middle ground, and never quite reached the perfect area. She goes through the same relationship curve as Bill’s with a veteran named Jim, breaks up and leaves him behind, and then her children both leave her, leaving Olivia teetering on the precipitous edge of under-stimulation once more.

Affect intensity is basically how much a person can become emotionally aroused. Olivia was most assuredly an affect-intense (as opposed to affect-stable) individual. She quite easily and very intensely feels emotion based on her current situation. This emotion is also highly motivating to her behavior, as it is what causes many of her seemingly illogical moves in dating. She falls head over heels for the same type of men repeatedly, with the end result being fights, alcohol, abuse, and divorce/separation. Her first boyfriend was left behind in her boring starting life. She moves to the University of Houston and meets Professor Welbrock, and almost immediately falls in love and weds him. This demonstrates a very intense subjective emotion of love experienced by Olivia upon meeting Welbrock. And after her breakup with him, she remarries another man (Jim) three years later. And considering that Jim winds up the same as Bill, Olivia seems to be unable to control this love experience that causes her to marry these individuals. To make the same relationship mistakes one after the other displays how Olivia is a slave to her affective state, a very intense and motivational state, and the consequences that follow.

Terms Used:
Arousal – Pg. 374
Inverted-U Hypothesis – Pg. 375
Sensation Seeking – Pg. 379
Sensation-seeking – Pg. 379
Sensation-avoiding – Pg. 379
Affect Intensity – Pg. 381
Affect-Intense – Pg. 381
Affect-Stable – Pg. 381

Boyhood is a very unique movie that follows a boy and his family over the course of 12 years. At first the mom and her two children, Mason and Sam, are alone because their mom and dad got in a big fight and the father left. Throughout the movie the biological father stays a crucial component in the children’s lives, but nonetheless, their mother marries a man who is abusive and unkind. She leaves him and meets someone new, all over the course of 7ish years. The cycle continues: her meeting someone new, realizing they’re not worth it, and moving her children to a new place all over again. This cycle she puts her children through, no matter how much her choices are meant to help her children, puts them through turmoil and confusion. Mason goes through a time of sensation seeking a need to experience new things and Sam feels a desire for control over her life because her mother gave her no control when deciding to move them away from her awful lovers.

Sensation seeking is defined as “the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience” Sensation seekers don’t like living a relatively routine life and are willing to take the risks necessary to receive the sensations and experiences they seek. Sensation seekers continuously search for novel experiences that will give them a new form of arousal. Mason searches for new experiences in smoking, doing drugs, and art. In his middle teen years, after his mother leaves her second husband and starts dating a war veteran, he starts smoking a lot and drinking beer. He doesn’t do it excessively, but he also doesn’t care who knows. Doing drugs helps him form an escape from the awful situations his mother keeps putting him in, forget about the abusive men he’s had in his life, and experience liberating moments so that he can have a little fun and excitement in his life.

The desire for control is the extent to which individuals have the motivated to establish control over their own lives and the decision in their lives. People who have high desire for control are independent, leadership positions, and prepare for situations in advance. Those with high desire for control establish control by being overly loud, explosive, and speaking at a very fast pace. They tend to end conversations when they want to so that they have the last word and don’t stop until they are deemed the person in the right. While Sam was growing up, she was constantly talking about random things, singing out loud at random, and tries to do everything on her own. When they move for the first time after their mother and father split up, Sam throws a fit saying “goodbye house, goodbye front porch, goodbye friends, goodbye everything I ever loved” in order to show her discomfort with leaving because he doesn’t have a choice. She shows her discomfort by telling her mom she’s awful and how she hates her for making them move. As Sam gets older, she has more control over her own life and she takes it. Those who have a desire to control situations tend to be more adaptive and productive when situations are controllable, and this is what happens with Sam. No matter how much control Sam actually had growing up, she always had the desire to be in control of her own life.

Terms: Sensation Seeking, Search for New Experience, Desire for Control

In the film Boyhood it is a story in which Mason a child is growing up in a split home in which his parents are split up, his sister blames Mason for everything vice versa, his dad very sporadically present only for fun times and smokes most of the time when around his kids, and his mother has a boyfriend who ends up liking Mason more than his own kids. This movie continues going through Mason’s growing up process in this home situation and it has a lot of associations between emotions and moods expressed in life.

In Chapter 13 the term mood and emotion is described. Emotions emerge from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well-being. Moods on the other hand emerge from processes that are ill defined are oftentimes unknown.An emotions is that Mason’s mom’s boyfriend constantly gets mad when the mom chooses to spend time with her children and not with him and his guy friends. An example of a mood is the scene after the argument when Mason and his sister have these brief spells of annoying each other and then when the mom comes in Mason’s sister will ultimately direct everything at Mason.

In Chapter 13 another term that is discussed is perceived control. Before discussion perceived control lets discuss control. Control is this idea that we have the capacity to keep the balance in our lives. Now let’s talk about perceived control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person hold that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert. An example of perceived control is when Mason and his sister try to get their dad back in the picture and to stay the night by bringing them to the new house to see their new rooms so that way their parents would have to interact and they would have to get along. While this did not go as planned, it was a good attempt to try to control the situation for them.

In Chapter 13 the final term that I would like to discuss is everyday mood. People seem to have a happiness “set point”. There also seem to be two emotional set points rather than just one.One set point is for positive emotionality.Another is for negative emotionality. How happy and how unhappy we are turn out to be independent indicators of well being.These statuses of our happiness and unhappiness set points can be explained by individual differences in our personalities. The happiness set points can be explained by individual differences in our personalities. Mason has certain points in his life that are better than others, like when his mom is getting married and he finally has a dad who treats him well, that would be considered a positive emotionality point. Then the negative points would be when his birth father is not consistently in his life and doesn’t take care of his kids very well.

Key Concepts
Emotions
Mood
Perceived control
Everyday mood
Set Point

Boyhood is a unique film in the fact that it retains the same cast over a span of twelve years [2002-2014]. The film focuses on the life of young Mason as he begins in childhood and moves through his teenage years into early adulthood, however makes a point to showcase other aspects of the family life as well. The first thing that I noticed was Mason’s level of extraversion, or lack thereof. Mason was generally not very sociable and stuck to the same couple of friends as he was growing up. According to our book, people with low extraversion are less likely to be happy and are more likely to become overstimulated in social settings. For example, at one-point Mason is hanging out with a group of guys who are talking about their sexual experiences with each other, and while it makes Mason uncomfortable, you can also tell that he is overstimulated with this many people in the vicinity for a long period of time. I also noticed that Mason’s hedonic happiness was not as high as his peers, as in the beginning of the film it was mentioned that he did not take pride out of things such as grades or accomplishments, and let his grades slip in his younger years. As Mason gets older, he shows a low engagement which is the main portion of control, something referenced a lot throughout the movie. Because Mason is so young, he has low engagement when it comes to the things that happen in his life regarding his parents’ divorce and his move. Mason’s father also shows a lot engagement, as he has a drinking problem and never truly takes responsibility or tries to gain control of his situation. On the other hand, Mason’s mother has a high engagement. She realizes that her marriage is not working out and makes a plan to leave it, she continues to support and raise her children as a single mother even when it’s difficult at times, and she is always working to help better not only her life but those around her throughout the movie. Arousal is also a large factor throughout the movie, with Mason, his parents, and even Mason’s sister Samantha. Arousal has to do with how stimulated [or interested] a person is to accomplish their goal, and according to the textbook a happy medium is the place to be. At one end of the spectrum is Mason, who sits lower on arousal. He is not motivated to do a lot and is a very “go with the flow” sort of child, and therefore takes a long time to come around to his goals. On the other hand is Sam, Mason’s sister who sits very high on the arousal scale. Because of this she has more anxiety over her goals and situations than Mason, and easily becomes frustrated at times. Mason’s mother sits about in the middle of the arousal scale. Although sometimes she is in over her head, she isn’t too motivated to cause stress, but is motivated enough by her children to accomplish the goals that she sets for herself.

Extraversion
Hedonic happiness
Engagement (high/low)
Control
Arousal

Boyhood follows the story of a boy named Mason and all of the ups and downs in his life he experiences from adolescence into adulthood. His divorced mom and dad share the task of raising him and his sister, Sam, through all of their important milestones in life. It is a very unique movie for the fact that it was filmed with the same cast over a twelve-year time frame. As an audience, we get to see how each cast member ages and develops over this twelve-year period. We also get to see the individual characteristics of each character’s personality, as we learned from Chapter 13, and how they deal with different events life throws their way. In this post, I will analyze Mason’s character using the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control.
Throughout the twelve year time frame, Mason experienced many positive life events and many negative life events. These life events play a role on the “set point” of happiness and subjective well-being for Mason. One set point is for positive emotionality, how happy we are, while the other set point is for negative emotionality, how unhappy we are. Mason is low in extraversion because he is not very sociable. He is a boy/man of few words. He is not assertive and does not feel the need to have social dominance. However, he does seek out exciting and stimulating situations. Because of the negative life events that happened to Mason’s family, such as his parents divorcing, moving so often, and having alcoholics for step-fathers, Mason only feels contentment and not joy when a positive life event happens, such as having a birthday or graduating. Mason is also neurotic because the bad life events that have happened bring upsetting and pessimistic thoughts that linger long after the bad event is over.
Mason is a high sensation seeker, meaning, he “prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation” (pg. 379). You begin to see this at an early age when he and a friend were doing graffiti on a wall and then later were looking at pictures of women in lingerie in a magazine and were pointing at their breasts. You see an example of him being a high sensation seeker again later on when he goes “camping” with his friends and the older senior brother, but instead they are breaking things in a house being built, drinking beers and making up a lie about have sex with a girl named Jennifer. Mason is also seen participating in risk taking behaviors such as smoking marijuana and eating edibles in the film, which is a quick arousal boost for sensation seekers.
Mason also had a high need for autonomy and control. We see this when he is in junior high and high school. He made choices to go in and out of the house as he pleased without informing his mom or stepdad where he was going or what he was planning to do. Through his “rebellion stage,” the night of his fifteenth birthday, he comes home and his mom could tell he had been drinking and smoking marijuana. One can tell Mason has a desire for control because Mason wants control over his fate and the events that happen in his life. Mason knows that he wants to capture photographs and create art, so he decides to become motivated and persistent with his work ethic. He was awarded a college scholarship for his photography skills and pursues his passion of creating art through photography.

Terms used:
Happiness
Extraversion
Neurotic
Sensation seeking
Risk taking
Arousal
Autonomy
Control
Desire for control
Motivated
Persistent

The movie Boyhood centers around Mason who is trying to find his way through life. As the movie progresses, we see Mason change from a young boy into an adult. Because of this setup, we are able to have a pretty good sense of the character’s personality.

If happiness has a set point, we can assume that Mason’s set point of happiness is a little lower than some. Throughout the movie, Mason is not relatively happy all of the time. He’s more like a “go with the flow” and mellow kind of guy. Of course, some life events, like birthdays and roadtrips, make Mason happy, but after a while, the excitement wears off, and he’s back to his normal self.

Mason seems to be a little more introverted as well especially compared to his sister, Samantha. At one point during the movie, their father wants them to go camping, but Samantha wants to go to a party. Their father, a little sarcastically, asks whether she would rather go to a party than go camping with him and Mason. This scene gave us a little insight into Sam’s life, and we can see that she gets more energy from other people than being alone. We also see how Mason tends to have only very few friends throughout his childhood; this gives us the sense that he spends his time either alone or with only one or two other people.

I also get a sense that Mason is a little on the neurotic side. Sheena asked him why he had to be “so gloomy all the time.” People who are higher in neuroticism tend to experience more negative affect and feel dissatisfied and unhappy. Sheena was able to sense that negative affect and accused him of it. Mason has more pessimistic thoughts as well about life and himself, which may have resulted from his mother’s repetitive behavior of marrying abusive and alcoholic men and the way it affected his childhood.

I believe that Mason has a more moderate level of sensation seeking. He tolerates routine well, but he also likes to seek out new experiences. We see him trying alcohol, smoking cigarettes, trying pot, and meeting new girls. The reason I think some of these count as sensation experiences because he is taking legal risks as alcohol, cigarettes, and pot are all illegal. The alcohol and cigarettes because of his age, and the pot is illegal altogether. The book also states that sensation seekers tend to report more alcohol and drug use.

One thing that was very prominent in this movie was the sense of control. Children barely have much control over certain life events or anything else in their childhood. We see this is true when the children have to move over and over again. They have no control whether they move or not, and that can be frustrating when they have friends and enjoy the school they are at. Mason and Samantha were often in environments where they had little control at all. When Olivia got married to the professor, who was very controlling and strict towards the children. They were forced to do chores, and Mason was even forced to cut his hair without even being asked. Mason seemed to be lower in perceived control and desire for control because he never sought out challenging tasks or set high goals, but that doesn’t mean he likes to be controlled. He just seemed to go through the motions.

To me, Mason didn’t seem like a happy or unhappy person. He sort of floated in the middle and just made his way through life. We saw him happiest when he got to be with his dad and once he moved out of the house to college.

Terms: happiness set point, introvert, control, experiences, neurotic

Jon Lutz - section 01

The majority of the movie the characters swayed back and forth from hedonic blunders and eudaimonic growth. In one of the first scenes the mother is seen arguing with her boyfriend, because she chooses to stick with nurturing her children instead of chasing a good time for a night. The father seems to start in the opposite position. He is busy trying to write music and being a free spirit, only seeing his children occasionally. Over the course of the movie there transpires an interesting switch of their positions. The mother finishes college, but make a series of impulsive romantic decisions. A few divorces later she becomes a more passive mother and seems to have less drive. She says, “This is the worst day of my life,” when Mason leaves for college. She questions her place in life. It would appear she experienced deficiencies in achievement, intimacy, and competence. The father pulls a complete 180. At the beginning of the movie he has vague, unrealistic goals. He also smoke which is the most hedonic thing I can think of. As the movie progresses he visits with his children more often, for whole weekend trips as opposed to only the afternoon. The content of his speech becomes more meaningful. Eventually he gets a stable job, remarries, and trades his GTO for a minivan. His last scene before his son goes to college is a profound connection with his son. His shift in cognition and behavior seems to have payed off with an increase in wellbeing.

Mason comes into contact with many extrinsic motivational sources throughout his youth. His mother urges him to turn in his homework on time. Bill provides feedback while playing golf. His father pressures him to apply for earlier acceptance to college. As the film continues these sources do a better job transitioning to internalization. At the beginning adults speak to Mason with a because-I-said-so tone. Bill rarely is constructive with his criticism, instead his language is harsh and belittling. The transition starts when their father tries to get them to engage them in conversation. He doesn’t just speak down to them. He gives them example lines of dialogue (expert model). When they speak up he listens and values their opinion. He gives them autonomy and a sense of control. Both Mason’s boss and teacher use principles of the self to feed his intrinsic motivation. His boss says, “I got you pegged for a fry cook.” While this falls short of Mason’s long term goals, it is a step in the right direction. His teacher sees his passion for photography and uses it as a motivational tool. The teacher’s language is incredibly harsh, but spoken parallel to Mason’s identity and ideal self. It is not clear that Mason experiences the full motivational potential from these interactions. There was no hard work montage to show persistence. He did however graduate from high school, win a photography contest, and get a scholarship for college.

Hedonic
Eudaimonic
Achievement
Intimacy
Competence
Goals
Autonomy
Expert model
internalization

The movie focuses on a family over a couple of years and the things the many different events and things they go through in life. This movie really shows the struggles of the family all over different times in the life as well as the way personality and life changes take place. The many different things that the family goes through like the parents silting up and not being together the meeting of various people within his life that play a role in it. How the family deals with this helps you to learn a little about each of their personalities and how situations from different times and different situations and how they sort of change and make you into the person you are. Sam and Mason don’t really have any way of controlling the different things that are taking place in their life. For Sam its very challenging because of the fact that she is older and wants to have control over her life as well as the feeling of her life spiraling out of control and her being able to do nothing about it. Sam has the sense and desire to have control over her life and when she feels as though she can’t do what she wants and she can’t control what is happening it makes her have that drive and behavior in her to make that change. At the age Sam is in her life she wants to have that sense that she has control of what is going on and knowing what is coming next in life. I think that if she had more of a say as to what was going on in her life and if she was able to change things from the way they were then she would have more of a sense of fulfilling her needs and wants in life giving her more overall happiness. Sam and her brothers father is very much of an extroverted and he is one that looks for the best in life and tries to express his feelings and positives thoughts off on his children making it more of a chance that they can become happy as well. There is the scene in which he starts to talk to Mason about girls in life and how to handle it and be safe around them while have fun he tries to talk to them and also teach them lessons that not everything that happens in life is met to happen and that a lot of time life is not planned at all but that there isn’t anything you can do and many times just moving forward and moving on is the best thing for it. By having the positive outlook on life and the positive thoughts he pushes his children to become better people themselves and to think more positive which can help them to be more happier overall. Mason is a kid that was laid back as a child but as he goes on through life and gets older he begins to have interests and wants in his life that lead him down some different paths. These paths show that a lot of time emotions lead to behaviors and actions. While Mason is more of the outgoing type kid that is interested in new things and willing to try things Sam is much more a laid back person that isn’t out there and is more shy and unaware of things in life and more wanting things to go perfect or feeling like they are working well at all.

Terms:
Control
Overall happiness
Fulfilling needs
Extroverted

The movie, Boyhood, follows the life and journey of a family. The family deals with a lot of ups and downs, making life quite the journey. Each member of the family has very different personalities, making them deal with issues in ways of their own. This follows their journey from childhood, until the children are adults, which shows each milestone and every struggle they could have possibly faced.
One thing that really stands out from the textbook and this movie is the theme of control. From the very beginning, it is clear that the children have no control over their life. The mom is struggling and needs to go back to school, which forces the kids to move against their choice. At this point, the kids really want their dad to come back, and are hoping that they will see him more when they move. Despite this, their mom finds a new husband, who turns out to be very controlling. He slowly becomes an alcoholic and starts trying to control everyone and everything. An example of this is when he decides that Mason needs a haircut, even though mason disagrees. This is where the turning point starts for this relationship between his mom and new step dad. Each time the kids move schools, they have absolutely no control. They want to be in control, but unfortunately life gets in the way and their mom forces them to move time and time again. From the mom, I think that she also had a desire for control. She knew what she wanted and needed to do and was able to make those choices. She needed to go back to school so she could feel in control and feel like she was taking care of her children to the best of her abilities, so she did. I think this is more perceived control that Olivia shows throughout the film. For example, she leaves bill after being physically and mentally abused. Although not everything worked well, and they had to start over again, she had a sense of control.
The next theme that occurred in both the textbook and the movie is levels of sensation seeking. One thing that happened was mason starting to dabble with drugs and alcohol. He was never afraid to do new things or closed minded. From the beginning he was always with his friends and trying new things that he wanted to do. He is very chill, relaxed and laid back. His emotional state for arousal is extremely low. On the opposite side would be his sister. She was more of a stick to the rules kind of girl and she did not have a very high level of sensation seeking.
Terms used:
Arousal
Control
Perceived control
personality
openness

Is Mason happy? He broods, withdraws, is critical, sabotages a relationship via his negativity, holds himself apart from peers whom he finds boringly normal. We see a lot of evidence of neurotic personality tendencies in Mason, which are associated with suffering and unhappiness. Mason has learned much of this through disappointment in life, creating the durable nature of this neuroticism. His parents split, dad basically abandons them for a care-free itinerant life in Alaska for a long period, his hopes of his parents reunion are dashed, mom marries not one but two alcoholics, one of the alcoholic step-fathers is emotionally abusive, and they relocate and tear up his few friendships. He learns to not invest much of himself in new friends, or in new blended families. His behavioral inhibition system is strengthened and introversion and missing out on social approach opportunities for deeper connection mark much of the period of adolescence we witness. He comes to have a skeptical view of the adult world where appearance often masks dysfunction and inconsistency seems to be the norm.

Mason Sr. is more the extrovert with a high sensation seeking personality. His music, cool car, seemingly care-free pursuit of hedonic happiness lead him to skip out on his responsibilities. Still, as he matures, we see perhaps a recognition that hedonic happiness is not sufficient and a discover that there may be stimulation and challenge at mastering important relationships that require staying put and being responsible. Maybe too strong a reading of his character’s seeming changes, but there is a more introspective approach to the father who stops running off from his kids, settles down with a new partner, and takes on some of the self-growth in the eudaimonic type of happiness. He never steps up to fully pull his weight with Mason and Sam, leaving Olivia to bear the brunt of the work, but there is movement from the time we first see his character and the graduation.

Olivia is arguably the most complicated character, as she accomplishes more and grows the most of any of the movies main characters, and yet we see her continued lack of happiness as Mason prepares to leave the nest. Her life flutters between the monotony of the responsibilities of being a single mom to moments of incredible stress suffered at the hands of her repeated choices of bad romantic partners. It is as if her happiness set point has been set too low, such that moments of achievement and good feelings cannot be appreciated for long. The attractive extroverted musician with the cool care turns out to be an irresponsible father who flees to Alaska leaving her to raise the children. The attraction of an intelligent, seemingly stable man turns into a nightmare of abuse. The attractive stand-up veteran turns into a bitter, disillusioned alcoholic. Even getting her degrees, becoming a college professor, and gaining economic self-sufficiency and a bit of comfort even, seem not to give her a sense of long-term contentment and happiness. Like her son, there seems to be a touch of neuroticism in her behavior, and likely PTSD from the abuse contributes to a vigilance towards noticing the negative. She also seems to have a strong desire for control in her drive to persist in finding normalcy via romantic relationships and stable family life for her kids. The high levels of arousal she experiences during the trauma undermine her ability to perform effectively, and it is only after she is able to escape that environment and restore a relatively stable, moderately arousing life that she is able to get back on track to growing and developing towards the longer term goals she seems to have set for herself in education and career.

Terms: personality, happiness, hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, desire for control, extroversion, neuroticism, sensation-seeking, behavioral inhibition system, arousal, performance.

The film “boyhood” describes a boy’s transition from his early childhood years to his college years. Throughout the film there are several concepts that can be seen from chapter 13 of the text. Several personality characteristics are seen throughout the film within various characters.
In the beginning of the film we are introduced to a young boy named Mason and his sister Sam who are exposed to various negative situations that are out of their control. An example of this is when their mom marries her college professor and begin to view his negative attitude and violent behavior. Both Mason and Sam are unable to leave the situation because of the fact that they do not have control. Due to their young age they are unable to do anything to help their mom deal with their stepfather. Throughout this negative situation, their stepfather has a perceived control over the family. Their stepfather also forces Mason to cut his hair and further insults Mason’s hair choice. Mason mentions to his mom that his stepfather didn’t even ask him about his opinion regarding whether or not he should cut his hair and instead forced him to cut it all off. His stepfather believes that he is able to act in whatever manner he sees fit and constantly reminds the family of his financial contributions in order to establish control. His high desire for control results in negative and violent outburst that impact Sam, Mason, and his mother.
Aside from the negative situations that they are facing with various stepfathers, Mason and Sam still find happiness in their lives when they are interacting with their biological father. It seems that both siblings enjoy spending time with their father because of the love and attention he shows them. An example of this is when their father takes them bowling in the beginning of the film. It is apparent that Sam and Mason are happy because they are able to share their stories and set a genuine relationship with their father. As Mason grows up it is apparent that he finds a genuine interest in photography. He has found a genuine happiness taking pictures in creative manners because he is able to see things that other individuals cannot when it comes to capturing an image. Mason explains to his instructor that he wants to be able to take pictures because he believes he has an exceptional gift and because it makes him happy.
The final concept of chapter 13 that can be found in the film is arousal, or rather the lack of arousal. Throughout the film Mason demonstrates a severe lack of arousal in many things that he does. An example of this is when he is unmotivated to complete his homework and would rather spend time playing video games or taking pictures. It becomes apparent that Mason does not have high arousal when he is explaining to his girlfriend about the issues of the world and that he would rather live a simple life rather than attend college and have a structured life. He seems to lack the motivation take on new experiences. Aside from Mason, his father seems to have a higher arousal level when he is explaining certain concepts to his children. An example of this is when he is discussing politics and makes it a point to make sure his children understand the wrongdoings of political figures. Mason’s father displays a passion for politics and even stating that he is a patriot.
Overall, the film “boyhood” displays several concepts from chapter 13 that are seen among various characters in the film. The three underlying personality characteristics of: happiness, control, and arousal play a vital role in the character portrayals and development throughout the film.

Terms:
-Happiness
-Arousal
-Control
-Perceived Control
-Establishing Control
-Motivation

Boyhood is a movie that follows a boy named Mason and his family from Childhood to the beginning of college. Throughout the movie Mason has to deal with constantly moving and dealing with her mother’s terrible choices of men.
One of the principles from the text that I noticed throughout the movie was sensation seeking. Sensation seeking is a “personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity” and is defined as “the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience” (Reeve, 379). A scene that I thought illustrates Mason’s as a sensation seeker is when his mom asks about him looking out the window all the time while in class. Sensation seekers “prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences” (Reeve, 379). Him looking through the window during class and not turning in his homework, crumbling them up in balls, and leaving it in his bag shows that he is bored with the routine of school shows that he is bored with the same routine school has to offer. Mason is also continually searching for ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. Some examples throughout the movie include whenever he gets to go on adventures with his father (camping, baseball games, golfing), smoking and drinking with his friends, or spending time playing video games or riding bikes with friends or step brother.
Throughout the movie Mason is seen searching for new experiences. When Mason is hanging out with his friend and his friend’s brother throwing saw blades at a terrible drawing of a person and his friend’s brother throws Mason a beer. Later, when Mason is 15 years old he is experimenting with alcohol and drugs. Drugs help create a quick arousal boost and “open the door to new experiences” (Reeve, 380). One-way Mason uses drugs and alcohol is to experience new things, but another reason he decides to use drugs and alcohol is to get away from the terrible situations that is happening at home. His mother seems to always find herself in terrible and sometimes abusive situations where she ends up heartbroken.
Desire for control is another principle from the text that is touched on in the movie. Desire for control “reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives” (Reeve, 386). Mason doesn’t have a high desire for control, but I thought it was interesting what he had to say when he was talking to the girl at the party after taking pictures at the football game. He talks about how he was sick of how people have control of his life and she asks what would be different. He says that everything would be different and that he “wants to be able to be able to do whatever he wants because it makes him feel alive.”

Sensation Seeking
Desire for control

Boyhood perfectly shows many of the concepts shown in chapter 13. All throughout the movie, we see how Mason (interpreted by Ellar Coltrane) grows up interacting with different kinds of life events. It was very interesting to see how Mason, a teenager with a very well defined personality, faces all the adversities. In my opinion, he would score low in extraversion and neuroticism dimensions, two concepts that are related with happiness. According to Izard, happiness is a byproduct of life’s satisfactions, triumphs, and positive relationships. Mason, as most human beings, tries to approach life’s satisfactions, but he did not seem to have a greater sensitivity to positive feelings as for example, his dad, who is much more of an extravert.
Neuroticism is also a personality characteristic associated with happiness. The opposite of neuroticism is emotional stability, a component that would define our main character. Mason doesn’t seem to be vulnerable to negative emotions or to potentially punishing situations. We could see some examples when he was arguing with Jim (Olivia’s last husband), or in situations where he does not care much about paying attention in class nor doing his homework.
As the book mentions, how happy and how unhappy we are turns out to be independent indicators of well being. We can see this when Olivia starts crying at the end of the movie when Mason is leaving the apartment to go to college: she seems to be comfortable with her life and have many problems sorted out, but she perceives that she will have no future satisfactions now that she did “what she was meant to do” with her life. Olivia’s eudaimonic happiness is pretty low, as we can appreciate in sentences like “I just thought there would be more”.
Arousal is also a large factor throughout the movie: Mason tries to engage in situations that satisfies his desired arousal level, and this is probably why he engages in his favorite hobby, photography. Photography seems to stimulate him, and he relies on this cognitive and behavioral means that keep him away from boredom. At the end of the movie, he seems to be very happy to have a new group of sensation seeker friends that could increase his arousal through exciting experiences as taking drugs or going hiking. He also seems very comfortable with the new girl he just met, which boost his performance, efficiency, and affect, increasing his alertness, interest, and positive emotions according to the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being.
The theme of control is also shown in different characters of the movie. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. The lack of perceived control in Mason about his future, influences his decisions and engagement in school. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their life. A clear example of a person with high desire of control is professor Will Wellbrock, who assumes an extreme leadership role, influencing all his family with his decisions.

Terms used: extraversion, neuroticism, happiness, emotional stability, eudaimonic happiness, arousal, perceived control and desire of control.

The film Boyhood is a very unique movie that since it remains the same cast over a span for about 12 years. This repetition gives us a fair idea on on how people actually develop in different ways because it shows us perpetual personalities in script and in substantial appearance and delivery. I think this movie portrayed perfect examples that we have learned in our previous chapter for this week’s assignment, because it showed us various patterns of extraversion, neuroticism, and different levels of arousal.

At the beginning of the movie, we see Mason’s early years of his life. He seems like a very typical young boy. Then, of his close friend introduces him to graffiti, which we will consider as having an art interest. One of the most interesting thing in this movie was to see how Mason’s younger self’s behavior affects him who he develop to be as an adult. We all know that graffiti is a structure of juvenile delinquency, either he’s aware of this or not, but it is seemed to be continued throughout the entire film. During his early years of life, he starts off with the spray painting walls as he works through his art skills. As he begins to get older, he starts to hang out with his friends who were involved in some illegal activities like, drinking and vandalizing. Not only this, as he continue being friends with them, he starts breaking the law by underage drinking and smoking marijuana. Many studies have shown and I have also learned in my developmental psychology class that juvenile delinquency does not indicate delinquency later in person’s life. However, at the beginning of the movie, we cannot really predict whether it will continue or not.

Furthermore, Mason’s character is a perfect example of how an introvert person is in reality and how they behave and react towards things around them. In the movie, Mason has shown many examples of thinking in such neurotic way. A great example of this would be a scene where Mason continuously asks difficult questions to his parents like, dad, do you have a job, or another scene where he mentions is dad moving back”? These kind of questions and many others thoughts like these arose from an early childhood as we see Mason being a neurotic kid throughout the entire film. However, these questions is asked by Mason in a state of worry because he is not only worried about himself, but for his parents’ lives as well. Mason also seems like someone who is very sensitive and scared of negative things coming into his or his parents’ lives. This is the reason why he persistently asks his mother whether his dad is going to move far away somewhere because he is just having endless thoughts that his father may never come back in their lives ever again. Mason and his sister Samantha really wish that their parents stay together and his father to stay and not move anywhere else, so they try to watch their parents through binoculars to examine the interactions between them. While doing this so, they ask each other whether their dad is going to stay overnight and not leaving and we can tell as viewers that they both are hoping to get a reply as ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ from each other. But, unfortunately, they get very saddened when they come to a conclusion where they find out that their dad is going to leave.

In the movie, Mason’s neuroticism continues into his adolescent and middle school life. Despite having all the problems in his personal life at home, he does show many signs of being gregarious by having many friends to share his company, going out with them, and being invited and attending many events and being outgoing and socializing. This behavior of Mason’s shows a high need for autonomy because that’s why he is an outgoing person and I would say he is also very lucky to live in such environment where is surrounded by people and great climate that grant him to do whatever his heart wishes for. But, Mason also has an opposite side that makes him wonder and even worries him about a such world he lives in. This would be another example of neuroticism. Also, Mason can very likely to relate to our textbook example of neuroticism because he seems to be very attentive on those anticipated inequalities that today’s world perpetrating against humanity.

Lastly, as mason approached his last days of his high school years and being in college, tendencies continues because his thoughts involves him to think that society and the surroundings around his running the world. But, later in life as he matures and at the end of the movie, he begins to express his feelings and thoughts to his close friends. He feels much better after he tells his inner feelings to friends around him because this shows him being very close and open minded about things and having a very close and great connection with them and people he is surrounded by.

Terms Used:
Extraversion
Introversion
Neuroticism
Adolescent Egocentrism
Juvenile Delinquency
Arousal
Autonomy

Boyhood is a film that shows the growth and development of the main character Mason and his family. Within this film we see how he, his sister, and his mother go through the many ups and downs that life throws at us. As far as personality, we see how Mason would most likely be low in neuroticism and low in extraversion when compared to how the textbook defines those terms. When someone is neurotic they tend to be more anxious and worrisome. We see that Mason has a very relaxed and tends to be very passive. With extraversion we see how mason would score a bit lower on this as well since he is more shy and reserved. That being said, we can also see the side where he is semi-extraverted in a sense. To elaborate, Mason is able to communicate easily and when he is with friends he is able to come out of his shell and tries adventurous experiences (the end scene of the movie)
With the concept of control that was mentioned in the chapter we see how Mason experienced perceived control. He eventually wants to go to college and wants to figure things out for himself and to not care what others think about him. He takes the control and has the game plan set to move away from home while staying in the state to go to college. With desire for control, Mason is definitely in the drivers seat for most of his life. This is seen in the scene where he is coming back home from a high school party where his mothers husband mentions how he, Mason, just comes and goes as he pleases and does whatever he wants.
With arousal we can see how Mason is very intelligent and very laid back. His arousal would be right around the middle of the U-curve that was mentioned in the chapter. He is not necessarily energized but he is aware of the world around him. As a child we could see how Mason would have scored lower on the U-curve due to the fact that he was more unorganized and had a lower level of performance compared to his older sister who was constantly getting better grades in school.
With sensation seeking, we see how Mason has the desire to engage in new experiences. He enjoys trying new things and in this film we see how he is interested in it as well. Near the end of the movie he is excited to gain the experience of college and when he finally arrives he takes that step to try something new. He had never seen Big Ben and his new roommate invited him to go. Rather than saying no and taking the time to unpack, he would rather try something out of the ordinary with complete strangers.
Overall this film showed a very typical life of a single parent household. This was similar to my upbringing in a way where I had a couple of step parents and moved around a few times. I was not always super social but I enjoyed being with the small group of friends that I had created. Mason eventually is able to be himself and not care what others think. Even though he was sad his ex girlfriend broke up with him, he was not expecting to meet someone so soon that had the same mindset.

Terms:
Sensation seeking
Neuroticism
extraversion
Control
desire for control
arousal