The Goonies Essay

     John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, gives countless examples of the principles of interpersonal communication. Five high school students: Allison, a weirdo, Brian, a nerd, John, a criminal, Claire, a prom queen, and Andrew, a jock, are forced to spend the day in Saturday detention. By the end of the day, they find that they have more in common than they ever realized.

The term groupthink in this report is defined as, the social psychological phenomenon that results in groups during pressure situations. This social psychology theory is broken down into eight signs. Illusion of invulnerability, Collective rationalization, Belief in inherent morality, Stereotyped views of out-groups, Direct pressure on dissenters, Self-censorship, Illusion of unanimity, Self-appointed “mindguards”. According to research conducted by Irving Janis, there are three conditions to groupthink. The first, "high group cohesiveness" which is the direction for a group to be in unity while working towards a goal, or to satisfy the emotional needs of its members. Secondly, the structural faults such as insulation of the group, lack

This is the storming stage of our group development, which is ideally the second stage after the forming stage. At this stage, the group members have already become with their purpose at work and also got used to each other. At this stage, the team is already organized and responsibilities have already been divided amongst the group members. However, this stage always has rampant cases of competitions and conflicts. The competitions and conflicts are mainly because the group members have sufficient understanding of the general feels and tasks to be accomplished, they feel more confident being in the group and can voice their displeasure within the group. For this assignment I was tasked with analysis of the film ‘We are the Millers’.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail has been a comic success in the film industry for almost four decades. The main reason for its success is because the jokes have kept the audience laughing whether they watched it in 1975 or just saw the comedy for the first time yesterday. Monty Python and the Holy Grail would fall under two categories of comedy, a satire and a parody. In contemporary usage, a parody is a work that imitates another work in order to; ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke fun at the work itself; the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. Satire on the other hand is usually witty, and often very funny,

Working in small groups is either welcomed with excitement by individuals or dreaded with apprehension. However, group work is a fact of life. Whether in a classroom setting or workforce collaborating within small groups are experiences many will interact at some point or regularly participate in. According to the 2010 third edition of the book A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking by Dan O’Hair, Hannah Rubenstein, and Rob Stewart, small groups can be defined as “a collection of between three and twenty people” (321). Small groups, though, are interesting in that while a small collection of people communication role is imperative to the success of the group, but also demonstrates individual’s behaviors when interacting. During small groups, they way in which the member communicates with each other illustrates how individuals perform by taking on specific roles as well as exposing their leadership style. During participation in group work, there is a set of expectations individuals hold for themselves as well as members of the group. Individuals will subconsciously take on a specific role as to how they will help the group achieve their goal, whether that be cohesively or disconnected. Subsequently, the recognition of these acquired roles provides an insight into the individual’s corresponding leadership style. Depending on roles and leaderships style group work can be a consistency of either individual challenging or complimenting one another.

     “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a satiric comedy about the quest of King Arthur. The movie starts out with Arthur, King of the Britons, looking for knights to sit with him at Camelot. He finds many knights including Sir Galahad the pure, Sir Lancelot the brave, the quiet Sir Bedevere, and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Lancelot. Through satire and parody of certain events in history (witch trials, the black plague) they find Camelot, but after literally a quick song and dance they decide that they do not want to go there. While walking away, God (who seems to be grumpy) come to them from a cloud and tells them to find the Holy Grail. They agree and begin their search. While they search for the

The films we all love and cherish can also be used as tools to better understand individuals and groups within our society. Students studying various social sciences and relationships among members of the same society can turn to feature films as a way to further educate themselves on group dynamics from a perspective that might not be seen in an otherwise purely academic context. Such films provide students with interesting and entertaining case studies which with they can further understand and explore various theoretical concepts. This is exactly what is being highlighted in the article "Demonstrating Group Process Using 12 Angry Men," written by Stephen A. Armstrong and Robert C. Berg. Utilizing elements from the movie, 12 Angry Men, the authors discuss the various elements of group dynamics. The film highlights group interaction in a stressful situation, in this case a jury room, and thus allows students to explore group dynamics through the interactions of the characters in the film. The film highlights the dysfunction in a working group, allowing students to come up with their own theories and recommendations for increasing a more positive group dynamic that is needed to complete the task at hand. In the film are obvious conditions that fit the work of Sullivan (1953) and Bowlby (1983) in regards to interpersonal theory. Sullivan believed that interpersonal distortions are, for he most part, a result of an individual's personification of the other in question,

The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, is a movie that has become a classic for many generations. It is about five high school students, all from different cliques, that come together during detention and discover that they all share common problems they would have never imagined. Each student did something completely different yet they all broke the rules and ended up meeting. Those few hours in that room opened not only their eyes, but also the viewers’ eyes on how wrong we can be during those years of our lives. This movie has impacted so many generations because it is true to what the high school experience really is and how judgmental teens can be without really knowing each other.

Ketrow, S.M. (1999) Nonverbal aspects of Group Communication. The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research, 255.

This analysis will examine the following elements. First we will establish the group background by describing the development of the characters and major plot lines in The Italian Job. Second, we will describe the techniques/methods our group used to

Communication is essential in our society today. There are many different types and methods of communication that people use. Throughout life, people learn to use communication in order to interact in the everyday world. People form groups to place themselves where they think they belong in society. Whether people know they are doing it or not, they consciously or subconsciously place themselves into certain groups. There are many different reasons for people to join different groups, these being for learning, activity, personal growth, and problem solving. Members of groups must all contribute in order to complete a task. People can have both positive and negative effects on groups. There are many concepts that

First, I want to put out that my poster is ugly because of the pastel and the paint. In the left corner of my poster, it has comics that are hand drawn and cut out. The Kool-Aid comic represents my dark humor. The Peanut’s comic represents me stressing out in school and the Peanut’s comic in general represents my childhood. When I was small, I was really obsessed with the Peanuts gang when i was small so they grew a part of me ever since. Thier comics are relatable, funny, and creative just like me. I have other MAD comics too, and they are a part of me because I would have tons of MAD magazines and would read them all the time. The MAD comics always make me laugh no matter what. The comics on the green side of my poster resembles my funny and creative side.

Tuckman proposes that groups develop via five stages; forming, storming, norming, performing and finally adjourning (Archee, Gurney, & Mohan, 2013a). The first stage, known as forming, involves clarifying the task and purpose of the group, and identifying boundaries of both the task and interpersonal behaviour (Archee et al., 2013a). For the presentation task we were randomly allocated into groups. This worried me greatly as I have struggled in the past with group members who do not contribute equally or see the task as important as other group members. To avoid this problem, the group collectively determined and agreed upon a number of ground rules. For example, we decided that all group members were expected to contribute equally to the presentation, all group members were expected to attend and contribute at all group meetings, and all group members would adhere to agreed upon deadlines. Having failed to do this in previous group assignments, this clarification stage

When doing so the other group members were active listener, by using their whole body verbally and nonverbal. Like facing the speaker and giving eye contact and try to avoided interruption. The group also acknowledges the thoughts of the speaker by giving constructive feed back. Due to the effectiveness of the group communication, we were able to build trust, respect and understand the issues and make decision for effective change. We illustrate this by coming together as a group one again to accomplish the goal we initially wanted to accomplish. Since the first organization that we had chosen was incorrect, so we had to make the necessary changes to accomplish our goals. The other effective feature is the purpose of the group. Kozier et al (2010) stated that the effective group purpose is when “goal, task, and outcomes are clarified. Understanding and modified so that members of the group can commit themselves to purposes through cooperation” (p.401). For instance, each individual was assign a task and knew what was to be accomplished. As group we all decided to meet at suitable day and time which was beneficial to all team members, because we could commit to the group and focus on what needed to be achieved.

In conclusion, this class has changed my perspective about working in a group. Since my prior experience with groups was so unsettling, I believed that all groups were going to be the same. However, this class has made it possible to believe that there are groups that respect and take into consideration other members’