Meet the Parents: Exhibitions of Emotional Communication

People are naturally curious creatures and are interested with the idea of exploring the emotions of others. As a result, “[people] rarely interact with others without at least some expectancies about how they will act or perform”. Social perceptions, impressions, verbal and nonverbal communication, and emotional communication help individuals reach reasonable conclusions about others. This idea of emotional intelligence— “…the capacity to reason about emotions, and for emotions to enhance thinking…”—allows people to have successful social interactions and solve emotional problems.

The strength of said emotional intelligence helps determine the speed, efficiency, and facility of solving these problems. Thus, the ability to exhibit and recognize non-verbal behaviors that reflect emotions is significant in the process of communication. In the movie Meet the Parents, emotional communication and emotional intelligence are one of the deliberately arranged themes that are seen in the interactions between Greg Focker, a young man who is desperately trying to impress the girl he loves, Pam Byrnes, and her father, Jack Byrnes, a hard-to-crack retired CIA man.

One of the earliest instances of emotional communication between Jack and Greg was when they first met at the Byrne’s residence. Greg finds, within minutes of meeting Pam’s parents, that Jack has great love for his cat. When Pam says aloud that Greg has a strong hatred towards cats, Greg panics and begins to explain that he simply prefers dogs and that he definitely does not hate cats. Not believing this bluff, Jack pressures Greg and continually asks him why he hates cats, despite Greg’s continued denial of the fact.

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In this simple interaction, Greg attempts to display empathy and social skill, which are both aspects of emotional intelligence. Empathy is “the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people, skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions”, while social skill is the “…proficiency in managing relationships… an ability to find common ground and build rapport”. Greg concludes based on the way Jack speaks about his cat and how well trained his cat is that Jack loves his cat. In an attempt to relate to Jack and to start off on the right foot, Greg tries to convince him that he, indeed, does not hate cats.

Later, Greg agrees to take a lie detector test, with the effort of opening up to Jack. However, this takes a turn when Jack asks intimidating questions and Greg begins to fidget, create nervous facial expressions, sweat, and his breath becomes shallow. In this interaction, Greg starts to lose control of his emotions and this is due to his expectancies of Jack. Expectancy, “…in the communication sense denotes an enduring pattern of anticipated behavior… These proliferating expectancies thus form primary interaction schemata that should be activated in all human encounters”. Greg understands from the beginning that Jack is strict and has high expectations for the man that is to marry his daughter. As a result, Greg strives to prevent any negative connotations against himself. However, he gives off the impression that he is a liar, and his hesitant atmosphere makes Jack suspicious. Jack in this case recognizes Greg’s universal expression of fear and further grows weary of his daughter’s boyfriend. This scenario is unfortunately inevitable for Greg since “…facial actions that cannot be controlled voluntarily may be produced involuntarily even if the individual is trying to control his or her expressions”. This instance of micro-expression allows Jack to jump to conclusions about Greg.

Another key moment was when Greg first meets Pam’s sister and friends. Greg instantly feels out of place when he found himself the last to wake up and oblivious to their inside jokes and behaviors. He is treated in a patronizing manner, when he says that he is a male nurse and when the swimming trunk he borrows turn out to be too revealing. Due to this, Greg tries to fit in by attempting to use these inside jokes or to play more aggressively during the volleyball game to get some support from his team. Unfortunately, the opposite occurs, and he accidentally gives Pam’s sister a black eye. This case illustrates the attempt to conform to group norms through social skills and that “belonging to the same group tends to produce changes in opinions and attitudes in the direction of establishing uniformity within the group”. But in Greg’s case, his struggle to fit in is not successful.