There is something fascinating happening on "The Challenge: Rivals." In previous posts I've written extensively about this show, it's structure (contestants live together and compete for money in surprisingly difficult physical challenges), and the ways in which it unintentionally lends itself to social psychological examination (constant recording of human being, under
stress, and forced to engage in group dynamics is always a recipe for a good study). Two long-standing members of this reality television cast, Kenny and Wes, have engaged in a well-publicized rivalry with each other. What's fascinating is not why or how they came to hate each other, but the fact that they are now performing an abrupt about-face.
Season after season they have dedicated much of their time and energy toward tearing each other down. It's petty, stupid and makes them both look like barbarians, but the point is that there is a rich history of name-calling, slights, and overtly mean-spirited behavior that would seem to be exceedingly hard to forgive and forget. They've been like two dirty politicians slinging mud at each other in an endless campaign. And yet, this season, after merely a few episodes of forced partnership, we are seeing a sea change in their attitudes. It's not that they love each other, but that they tolerate each other and even alighn in subtle ways. If you were to ask them both about the discrepancy between their past and present viewpoints of each other I'd bet good money that they'd simultaneously note a cosmic shift and scratch their heads in disbelief. It's like watching two street dogs that you used to jump all over each other suddenly lapping from the same water bowl.
How has this happened? The answer, as is often the case with unexpected and significant changes in behavior, is part group psychology and part personality theory.
Group psychology: The Power of Environmental Rewards
The idea here, quite simply, is that the obvious thing is playing a deceivingly influential role. The premise of this year's game has been to pair previous season's enemies (of which Kenny and Wes are the poster children). This creates a situation where the fate and fortune of each partner is tied to the other. There is the presence of a shared, long-term goal. Some might observe Wes and Kenny's newfound cooperation and downgrade it to continued self-interests. Meaning, they are simply willing to tolerate each other so that they can avoid a scenario where they lose the game (and the subsequent status and money). This isn't cooperation they might say, simply a combination of tolerance and self-interests that is adaptive and predictable. Then they would accuse me of reading too much into the whole thing.
My counter is this: It might have started that way, but that's not where it seems to be going, and it's definitely not where it's going to end up. Let's review one of the landmark psychology studies on cooperation.
A now-famous researcher named Sherif plotted the Robbers Cave Experiments many years ago. In a series of experiments he took a group of boys (who were carefully screened and diagnosed as "normal"), and delivered them to a summer camp setting where he divided them into groups and employed various mind games. These studies had three phases: (1) Group formation, in which the members of groups got to know each other, social norms developed, leadership and structure emerged, (2) Group conflict, in which the now-formed groups came into contact with each other, competing in games and challenges, and competing for control of territory, and (3) Conflict resolution, the researchers tried various means of reducing the animosity and low-level violence between the groups.
In this final phase of the game the researchers found that the boys who had been easily manipulated into hating each other (paralleling the senseless self-imposed rivalry between Wes and Kenny), could just as quickly cooperate with each other with the insertion of a superordinate goal. This is a goal that is so large that an individual cannot achieve it on his own and is, thus, another way of saying "long-term, shared interest." Of note, this simple, external strategy was more effective in establishing cooperation then other strategies that we might expect to work better. For instance, we might have expected that Kenny and Wes could bury the hatchet if only they had sat down to hash it out, or if one had bought the other flowers (you get the idea). But this would've been unlikely, as evidenced by the fact that such gestures never came close to happening in all their previous interactions. But throw into the mix something that has nothing to do with the thoughts, feelings and actions that actually unfold within or between them - a prize at the end of the tunnel - and you get almost immediate changes in behavior.
Who needs couples counseling when you have superordinate goals?
Individual Psychology: The Pursuit of Power
Freud talked a lot about motives and there was a reason for this. People do what they do, and a significant part of the explanation is because of internal goals that are intentionally being pursued. On a basic level there are only so many different types of drives. One of them is power, and for Wes and Kenny, this is a particularly important aim that pulls on their respective psyches. We could speculate all day about why their exaggerated need for power has developed - maybe they are overcompensating for feelings of helplessness born out of an alcoholic/dysfunctional family system of abuse and neglect, maybe they have a narcissistic personality structure that craves the spotlight, who knows? Who cares!
The important thing is that they both spend ample amounts of energy fostering and stroking their public persona as a winner, a dominator, a powerhouse. And because actually winning the cash prizes on this show is a challenging, low-probability outcome they have often sought power through their attacks of each other. For instance, if Kenny tears Wes down with a public, verbal humiliation he can then bask in the perceived glory of his attack through a sense of mastery (i.e. calling Wes "ugly" and then patting himself on the back for his witty one-liners) and upward social comparison (i.e. looking in the mirror and thinking that he's so much prettier than Wes). But now that they are forced to be in a group, power can no longer be attained in this way. The only path to power is through winning, and playing well as a team. So, they have begun to communicate with each other during challenges, and corral their collective strength in the elimination rounds, and receive that nice ego boost from their formation as a fabulous duo (minus Kenny's recent poor performances).
They've rewritten their narrative of power on the fly. It all stems from their initial narcissistic fantasies of power (a personality characteristic unique to each of them - and probably fostered by a reality television upbringing), and leads to an outcome of cooperation.
So, just to review - some important features of cooperation are this: cooperation can be induced with surprising ease if you inject shared interests into the mix; cooperation should not be confused with altruism, cooperation can even be born from pathological elements of self-interest and internal motives.
Please email with other thoughts/explanations for the newfound cooperative spirit between Kenny and Wes.
