Last Saturday I spoke to a group of graduate students at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. I’ve been doing this annually since 2005, when my book Reality Check was published.

The talk centered on how we all create virtual realities for ourselves that are difficult to pierce by such facts as our discovery that there are at least 140 billion galaxies in the universe, each with billions of stars.  How do our belief systems react to this bit of news, or the fact that physicists have learned that time is actually imaginary? They usually don’t.  We just continue doing the laundry.

After the class, one student asked me if I saw the movie “The Three Faces of Eve” on TCM recently.  I did see it, and I also remembered the movie from when it first came out.  The film centered on a woman with a case of Multiple Personality Disorder (now called Disassociate Identity Disorder)…she had three distinct personalities, each triggered to emerge by specific events in her life.

The student then asked what the cause of the disorder was, and I couldn’t answer her.  But I did mention that most humans have at least two different personalities.  One is our Normal Mode; the second is our Challenge Mode, a personality that emerges when our status is being seriously challenged.

Here is how I described it in Reality Check: 

We find ourselves in a Challenge Mode most often when we perceive we are being challenged by others. After the situation normalizes, usually so do we.

In many instances it would be akin to the reactions of one chimpanzee (humans share the same basic brain limbic system with chimps and other higher animals) in a chimp colony challenging another. Among chimps there will be “charging displays,” hair rising making their bodies look deceptively large, foot stomping, loud hooting, climbing into trees, and sharply swinging branches. Eventually, the challenge will usually culminate in eye stares and sometimes a struggle, before one of them turns his behind to the other and submits. Once it’s over, it’s over.  In other words, they each transform out of the Challenge Mode and return to relative normalcy.

It is possible that this behavior is also part of the general design of the system of challenges that creates dominance hierarchies in all higher animals, including humans.  In humans, just prior to a major challenge by another in our lives, we are prompted to become as ruthless and determined as our brain chemistry will allow: to give us the greatest possible odds for a victory.  Jane Goodall in her book The Shadow of Man conveys the story of a chimp named Hugo who transformed as follows just prior to a charging display:

“…he would sit, with hair on end, his sides heaving from exertion, a froth of saliva glistening at his half-open mouth, and a glint in his eye that to us looked not far from madness.”

Perhaps the characteristics that humans take on in our Challenge Mode are the human version of a chimp’s “charging display.”  Certainly we have observed glimpses of madness when the linemen of two professional football teams face off together.  After the game, the devout Christians from both teams will frequently gather in a huddle with arms about each other and pray together, re-assuming their normal temperament.

The Challenge Mode is plainly manifested among us humans when we feel we have been wronged and we are about to retaliate.  Our tempers flare, our faces turn red, the adrenaline flows, and we “charge.”  If another car cuts us off, we may charge to a position adjoining the offending driver and scream and gesture.  If someone at home, work, or elsewhere insults us or makes statements that we feel are deeply demeaning, we may blast back with psychological venom, aimed at inflicting the greatest mental damage on our adversary. If we are purposely pushed down hard on a basketball court, although we may ordinarily be calm in the heat of games, we may quickly pick ourselves up and physically charge the offender.  Then we go home later and transform to our normal gentleness if that is normal for us.

We all have both of these Modes with varying characteristics, intensities, triggering points and – in the Challenge Mode – the length of time it lingers.  Some of us can remain angry forever about some transforming incident…others get over it in a day or two.

It’s helpful for us to know our personality propensities in each Mode, not that we can always do much about it.  Freud was often crabby.  I, personally, can be a mess.

Tags: Dave Weiner, Disassociate Identity Disorder, Kellogg School of Management, Marketing Support, msi, Multiple Personality Disorder

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