In Disney Pixar’s Inside Out, eleven year old Riley goes to school, plays hockey…and has five tiny people inside her mind. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust all have specific jobs in Riley’s head. They keep her emotions balanced. But when her family moves to San Francisco, Riley starts feeling a lot less Joy and a lot more of everything else.
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Things go from bad to worse when Joy and Sadness are accidentally lost in the enormous maze of Riley’s Long Term Memory. With her personality collapsing and Fear, Disgust, and Anger unable to save Riley, can Joy and Sadness make it back before Riley stops having emotions at all?
The movie is vivid, clever, and of course, emotional. Give Inside Out a watch.
Discussion Questions
- Which of Riley’s emotions is your favorite? Explain why.
- Riley’s mom’s emotions are “female” and her dad’s “male,” but Riley’s own emotions are a mixture. What does that tell us about her character?
- How could Riley’s parents have reacted differently to Riley’s problems adjusting to change?
- Describe how your emotions might look. Which one is in control most of the time?
- Write a conversation between your emotions.
This film is also an opportunity to start a conversation with your kids about mental health, since Riley at the very least shows signs of an Adjustment Disorder though the film conceptualizes this in kid friendly language.
Additional Resources
Psychology Today Article on how Inside Out is stays true to cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychological.
Untranslatable Emotions – Feelings we might not know we have because we don’t have words for them.
