How realistic is Inside Out 2? Neuroscientists get involved as the film first appears on stream

The popular Pixar film Inside Out 2 follows Riley as she deals with social pressures and puberty, but what exactly are the psychological aspects of the animated film?

Pixar first released “Inside Out” in 2015 to critical acclaim for its raw approach to the emotional turmoil of children. Nine years later, the sequel follows the protagonist into high school and the arrival of four new emotions.

“Inside Out 2” landed on Disney Plus for the first time this week after the film premiered in June, when it broke box office records and grossed more than $1 billion in the first 19 days of its release – the fastest animated film ever .

The production team consulted with numerous psychologists to ensure they accurately portrayed the telltale signs of the four new emotions in Riley’s teenage brain: fear, envy, embarrassment and boredom – a feeling of boredom or dissatisfaction.

Psychologists have scrutinized the emotional issues portrayed in “Inside Out 2” to ensure they are portrayed accurately

Envy is portrayed as a blue figure with starry eyes who just wants to be included

Psychologists have engaged in studies of whether experiences such as embarrassment are an emotion and whether a physiological process is involved.

Humans regularly experience 20 emotions, but the writers of “Inside Out 2” were told to focus only on the new and five main emotions from the first film – joy, fear, sadness, anger and disgust.

Watching Riley grow from a 13-year-old in the first film to a 15-year-old in high school in the sequel is surprisingly accurate, especially when you look at it from the perspective of what it feels like for the teenager and for the family,” it says clinical psychologist Lisa Damour.

“So (Riley) goes to bed one night and is a kid, and then the puberty alarm clock goes off on the console,” she said told NPR.

A team of clinical psychologists were brought in to determine what each emotion would look like if given a form and how it would manifest.

When thinking about embarrassment, they first had to consider whether it was really an emotion and whether it had a clear expression that could be incorporated into a character.

Dr. Dacher Keltner told TIME that they discovered this and then considered whether it was a physiological process – whether the emotion manifested itself externally.

Keltner, a neuroscientist who taught human emotions for 30 years at Berkeley, confirmed this in the form of blushing – when your face turns red after suffering extreme embarrassment.

“Embarrassment is an emotion in a social context that protects the norms that keep people in groups,” said Dr. Keltner.

“When you violate a social norm, you blush, and that blushing makes people forgive you.” It shows people that you are aware of social norms, that you know you’ve made a mistake, and that you are sorry.”

Keltner was asked which emotions should be included in the film and promptly answered 20. However, he was told that this was not possible from an artistic point of view and that it had to be narrowed down.

Embarrassment (right) was added as an integral part of reaching the stages of puberty and interacting with the opposite sex

The team agreed to expand the repertoire of emotions Riley experiences to include envy, and while it can be portrayed as wanting things that other people have, Pixar took a different stance.

“There is new research from Europe that distinguishes a malicious form of envy – perhaps undermining someone’s work or stepping over them to bring them down – from a milder form of envy, where the envious person works harder “To earn this reward,” said Dr. Keltner told TIME.

“That kind of envy can be a really good thing and have a big impact.” “Envy isn’t a villain in the film, and they made a point of portraying her that way.”

Instead, Envy is a small blue character with big sparkling eyes and a charming personality.

Fear was the most difficult to portray as Pixar had to portray a serious emotion in a way suitable for children.

Unlike fear, fear projects what might go wrong in the future rather than what is happening now, changing the way we perceive threats.

“Having a little cartoon character that embodies all of those feelings is so nice for kids to see,” Dr. Keltner told TIME.

“I can’t tell you how many parents have said, ‘My little one loves that Anger character!’ “He looks exactly how my child feels.”

Research has shown that children who have suffered from psychological instability, such as bullying, at a young age are at higher risk of developing depression and anxiety.

Riley experiences these emotions during her important soccer game when she becomes overwhelmed with fear and comes to the brink of a panic attack.

“As psychologists, we view fear as an important, valuable, protective and natural human emotion,” Damour told NPR.

“We see it as a common sense version that anticipates exactly what could go wrong, the right response to it, and the right level of response.”

“And in terms of her relationships with the other emotions, I think that over the course of the film’s development, she went from being kind of a villain on the outside to being a person who is treated as she should – as unpleasant but valuable Feeling.”

Annie Wright, a trauma therapist, told Psychology Today that the football scene alone “will likely be hauntingly familiar to any of us who live with ongoing anxiety and/or as a result of our trauma history.”

Fear was one of the most common themes, showing the nervousness that arises when we worry about the worst-case scenario

Pixar added Ennui, which means boredom in French, to explain teenagers’ emotional habit of rolling their eyes and appearing disengaged

Boredom was the final emotion added to “Inside Out 2,” and is indicative of the typical reactions we see teenagers do every day: eye rolling, attitude, and disregard for the rules.

“Boredom tells you when you should do something differently.” “Boredom teaches you what matters to you,” said Dr. Keltner.

The only downside to an otherwise matter-of-fact film was the timing in which these more advanced emotions occurred.

According to the Healthy Children Organization, emotions like fear, embarrassment and envy can actually start much earlier than they are portrayed in the film, which is more similar to Riley’s age in the first “Inside Out.”

This emotion “often begins in the years immediately preceding puberty,” not simultaneously with puberty, as depicted in “Inside Out 2.”

Timeline aside, the overarching theme of the emotions Riley felt and her reactions to them were iconically spot on, Wright said.