Social Cognitive Principles in Safety Not Guaranteed

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The basic principles of social cognition, a sub-topic within the field of social psychology, focus on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. Specifically, it focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in our social interactions. The way we think about others can play a major role in how we think, feel, and interact with the world around us (Bless, Fiedler, and Strack, 2004). Theater and cinema attempt to display these interactions and processes of social cognition, oftentimes depicting it accurately and accordingly with research findings, while other times its representation can be contradictory. In the 2012 film Safety Not Guaranteed numerous social cognitive principles are represented, three of which are this paper’s focus: fundamental attribution error, the effect of mood on decision making (heuristics), and the human tendency to seek consistency (and the dissonance created when it is not). Safety Not Guaranteed follows three magazine reporters as they investigate a personal ad seeking a time-travel partner. As they follow Kenneth, the self-proclaimed time traveler that is presumed mentally unstable, one of the reporters, Darius, begins to believe his story and develop feelings for him. Jeff, the lead reporter, is distracted in rehashing the past and attempts to fire up sparks with his old high school flame. Throughout the movie Kenneth’s personality is depicted as abnormal. When first getting to know him, the viewer witnesses a conversation at his workplace with what seems to be his only friend, about quantum physics and black holes. While this would be considered normal conversation in many settings, the director ensures that there is a difference noted, slowly focusing on the Grocery Outlet sign, a bargain grocery store where a quantum physics conversation amongst employees would
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