A Pending Blessing

 A Pending Blessing - Movie Blog

Hailey Briscoe & Mara Strohl

Overview

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is about an interracial couple in the 1960s who met on vacation in Hawaii and intend to get married. Joanna Drayton was raised to not care what the color of a person's skin was, and her parents are known to be against racism and white supremacy. Joanna comes home with a black man named John Prentice to get her parents’ approval for them to get married. However, her parents are immediately opposed and uncomfortable with this idea. They do everything they can to find reasons why they should not get married without saying that it is because it is a black man she is trying to get married to. To make matters worse, John will not marry Joanna without her parent’s approval to avoid driving a wedge between her and her parents. Throughout the movie, Joanna believes that no one in either of their families will care if she were to marry a black man and he was to marry a white woman. In reality, both sets of parents try to come up with reasons for them not to get married without outright saying that they shouldn't get married because of their race. 

Social Psychology is an important lens to watch this movie through because it exhibits racism during arguably the most prejudiced time in the United States. It also shows characters feeling discomfort while their attitudes are challenged, which can be tied to cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). Watching this movie shares the importance of challenging stereotypes, venturing out of your comfort zone, and accepting people outside of your ingroup (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Turner, 1987; Tajfel, 1982). Additionally, we will discuss how psychological reactance, representative heuristic, priming, group polarization, and the theory of planned behavior are represented in this movie  (Brehm, 1966; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Higgins et al., 1977; Moscovice & Zavalloni, 1969; Azjen, 1991). These topics are from areas regarding attitudes, prejudice, group dynamics, and person perception.

Applications

Cognitive dissonance is when a person behaves in a way that does not align with their beliefs, feels bad because of it, and then has to change their beliefs to match the behavior to make themselves feel better (Festinger, 1957). Guess Who's Coming to Dinner showcases this when Matt Drayton, Joanna’s dad, gets upset when Joanna brings a black man home and professes her wish to marry him. Matt is a newspaper editor who, in the past, has publicly spoken out against racism and white supremacy. When Joanna brings a black man home to marry though, he gets very upset and refuses to let them marry. He had to switch his beliefs about race at that moment because his behaviors did not match up with his beliefs. This happens again when Matt decides that they should marry because of love and happiness and not because of the race of either person. After talking to his wife, he realizes that Joanna is feeling the same love for this black man that he feels for his wife and decides to give Joanna and John his blessing to marry. He changes his beliefs back to the original ones he held to match this.

Next, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner showcases ingroup favoritism (Turner, 1987; Tajfel, 1982). Ingroup favoritism is when a person discriminates in favor of the group of people that they are similar to as opposed to people they are different from (Turner, 1987; Tajfel, 1982). The most prominent groups in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner are the white, upper-class people and the poor, working-class Black people. Joanna and John are originally from these groups respectively, but John worked his way out of the working class group. An example of ingroup favoritism is every time Hillary St. George talks (Turner, 1987; Tajfel, 1982). The first time she sees John she is concerned because Joanna is hanging around a person who is not in her in-group. The second time she comes into the frame, she is trying to rudely offer her condolences to Christina Drayton because her daughter wants to marry a man who she assumes is below her social class. 

Similarly, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a group and its members (Cacioppo et al., 1997). This is shown in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner when the Draytons and their maid realize that the man Joanna wants to marry is a black man. They assume that he is trying to use Joanna as a stepping stone into a higher socioeconomic class because of their generalized belief that black people are all middle or working-class citizens (Cacioppo et al., 1997).

Furthermore, psychological reactance, or when a person's freedom is threatened, they fight against the threat and perceive the threatened freedom as more attractive than whatever they're being told, is portrayed in the movie (Brehm, 1966). Matt Drayton is an excellent example of this. Joanna's mom is against the marriage at first but is soon happy that Joanna is so happy, and Monsignor Ryan is immediately excited for Joanna and John. They both tell Matt Drayton that he should just be happy for Joanna and John because they seem so happy together. He responds to this by getting angry and solidifying his decision to not allow them to get married. His immediate reaction is to deny them his blessing because two separate people told him that he should let them be married. 

Next, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner demonstrates the representativeness heuristic, which is when someone uses the typicality of something to assume its probability (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). An example of this would be picturing an Ivy League professor when someone describes a tall White man who likes poetry and wears turtlenecks, rather than a semi-truck driver. When Joanna explains that the man she brought home is an accomplished doctor, her parents do not picture a Black man and are surprised when they first see John. Instead, they most likely pictured a White man who fits their schema of a successful doctor.

Additionally, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner exhibits the principle of priming, which is when recent information impacts how we think about new stimuli (Higgins et al., 1977). After meeting John, Joanna’s dad is convinced he is running into all the black people in the city. This belief was amplified after he recklessly pulled out of a diner after getting ice cream and crashed into a Black man’s car. Joanna’s dad uses the recent information of his daughter bringing home John, a Black man, as a lens to see new events through. 

Further, the movie reveals the effects of group polarization on Joanna’s dad’s attitudes (Moscovice & Zavalloni, 1969). Specifically, group polarization is the increase of one’s initial attitudes after discussing them with others (Moscovice & Zavalloni, 1969). When Joanna’s dad first meets John, he is surprised and upset with the idea of them marrying. Throughout the movie, he discusses his feelings with his wife, a priest friend, and John’s parents. As he shares his thoughts, he is increasingly uncomfortable with Joanna and John marrying and even shares with his wife that he will tell Joanna and John that they do not have his blessing. 

Lastly, the movie shares a great example of the theory of planned behavior (Azjen, 1991). This theory suggests that one’s attitudes, subjective norms, and their perceived control lead to an intention to do something, which ultimately leads to one’s behavior (Azjen, 1991). In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Joanna’s dad, Matt, had a pro-Black attitude and believed in equality (Azjen, 1991). However, the subjective norms at the time of this movie were against interracial marriage (Azjen, 1991). Finally, Matt believed he had a lack of perceived control in Joanna marrying John because he did not want his own daughter to resent him for not granting them his blessing (Azjen, 1991). Eventually, the movie ends with Matt granting Joanna and John his blessing to get married. 

Conclusion

Overall, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner portrays several Social Psychology applications. It was especially interesting to apply Social Psychology to a movie that covers racism and changing attitudes. I enjoyed being able to utilize my knowledge of Social Psychology to understand the characters and thought processes.

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We have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and are unaware of anyone who has not. - Mara Strohl & Hailey Briscoe

References 

Azjen, Icek. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Oxford: Academic Press. 

Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L., & Bernston, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The case of attitudes and evaluative space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 3-25. 

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. 

Higgins, T. E. & Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(2), 141-154

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80(4), 237–251. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034747

Moscovice, S., & Zavalloni, M. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 122-125. 

Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1-39. 

Turner, J. C. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.