Motivation and Emotional Concepts in X-Men First Class

Motivation and Emotional Concepts in X-Men First Class

When one considers the existence of pre-man or Homo neanderthalensis and the fear and struggle they may have been faced with as Homo sapiens began to arise on the scene and virtually eradicate their very existence, it is not impossible to imagine how current humans might react to a new class of humans that are evolved to survive and adapt in ways that the current Homo sapiens is not. This is the underlying conflict in the X-Men stories originally release in comic form by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961. The X-Men series was released in a period of racial tension and drew from that tension to be a social commentary of the times {Beatty, 2008 p.56}. The film X-Men First Class embodies several of the concepts of motivation and emotion that are studied by psychologists. The film is primarily set in a post nuclear age world where, according to the film, the increase in radiation worldwide from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear testing has sped the process of genetic mutations that would otherwise occur naturally over time.

In a flashback scene, set in Germany in the 1940’s, a Nazi doctor tries to encourage a young Erik Lensherr to harness his power over metal to move a German coin across a table using only his mind. Using incentives, positive or negative stimuli to influence behavior {Myer, 2010 p.455}, Dr. Schmidt asks Erik to move the coin. He first chooses a positive incentive by offering chocolate. This results in little if any success. However, he quickly resorts to a much more negative and stronger incentive by threatening Erik’s mother with a gun if he fails to move the coin. At this point, the coin begins to shake but does not move in any significant manner. In a cruel action that results in a violently angry reaction, Dr. Schmidt shoots Erik’ s mother. Erik responds with a fit of anger, his rational mind loses control to his his irrational, an adrenaline surge forced his...