Recently I saw the movie, The Five-Year Engagement. I know, I should have known better. It was pretty funny at times, but honestly, with all the talent and creativity on offer, does Hollywood really have to produce the exact same ending every single time?

I hadn’t read anything about the movie before I went, so I was surprised to discover that my very own field of social psychology had a role. Emily Blunt, playing Violet, heads to the University of Michigan to join a lab group that apparently designs experiments by generating totally silly ideas that have no relationship whatsoever to psychological theory or anything else. All a big game. Also, there is no script for the experiment. The professor and the various students mill around behind the one-way mirror taunting one another about who is going to go into the room with the participants and actually run the study.

I cringed all the way through those scenes.

From what I’ve read about her, Amanda Dougherty seemed to be a traditional high school student. She’s a 17-year old at a Catholic high school who was so excited about her junior prom that she bought her dress months in advance. She had also bought her ticket to the prom and her shoes and other accessories.

Amanda and her girlfriends started a Facebook page, closed to the guys, so they could share pictures of their prom dresses to make sure no two of them would show up in the same gown.

Then, about a week or so before the prom, her lout of a prom date backed out. Now this is what I love about Amanda: She did not let that deter her. She was going to go to the prom solo.

If you are a young single person, look out! Your parents and grandparents, along with others their age, may think of you as self-centered slackers who need to grow up already. They think you are narcissists, the “me generation.” Actually, they are wrong. Here’s why their perceptions are so distorted.

“Kids these days!” When people of a certain age express that exasperation, they are not talking about children. They are rolling their eyes and tut-tutting about those who have graduated from high school and should be on their way toward a conventional path though adult life. The problem is, the older generations are judging the younger ones by the standards of their own times, and the young adult years have changed dramatically in a short time.