Some Reminiscences of Michael R.A. Chance. (1915-2001)

“... a symbol of what a heart that stays young can accomplish in a world that is cold and inimical." (Maurois on Disraeli).

"From time to time I have to be reminded that the world is not harmonious." (Michael Chance).

It must have been towards the end of the sixties when I first met Michael Chance. Most likely, he visited our lab in Leiden coming from the IEC at Rennes, September '69. He may have read a paper, at the conference, on his invention of  'cut-off' behaviour (1). However that may be, it was one of the topics he took to our group. Everyone of us had one or two examples, in our experimental animals, of acts that might be interpreted as cut-off: 'head-flagging' in gulls, 'pricking' and 'showing the nest entrance' in the male stickleback, and 'dorsal and ventral roll' in barbs. The first and last of this little list were appeasement gestures; the stickleback postures were part of courtship. 

Michael Chance in 1997

Shall I explain about cut-off? When two rats fight, for instance standing up against each other on their hindlegs, boxing and biting, the party that has the worse may start a manoeuvre: bending backwards, which makes it lose sight of its opponent. That is cut-off: shutting one or more sense organs for a frightening stimulus. Our rat, as a result, may pick up fresh courage, prolong the struggle, and may be even decide it in its favour. That rat actually manipulates its own motivational state. Quite an accomplishment, lacking self-consciousness.

What we have just witnessed may be called the 'type specimen' of cut-off, the scene that gave Michael the hint. He surmised, though, that this was just an example of a whole category. Stereotyped movements turning head or body away from the partner abound in skirmishes and courtship of various species. Many of such acts had already been interpreted as appeasement gestures (hiding certain aggression-provoking parts, viz. the 'looking away' of the gulls), as displacement acts (for instance preening the feathers or adopting a sleeping posture as in contesting starlings or avocets), or as ambivalent zig-zags (as in the courtship of sticklebacks or zebra finches). Now, behaviour elements may be open to multiple interpretations. Grass-pulling by disputing herring gulls may belong to the nestbuilding context (gathering grass), and thus constitute a displacement act, or it may be aggression redirected. And it might be both. There is nothing against some of the above-mentioned being cut-offs as well. It was in this vein that Michael was looking around for more material to support his hypothesis.

As for 'my' barbs, I had to disappoint him - which he took in his typical cheerful manner. Barbs, when attacked, may roll around their longitudinal axis, turning the narrow aspect of back or belly towards the opponent. This is appeasement. The move hides all that is presented ostentatiously during threat from the attacker's eye. The latter immediately loses interest in such a small and insignificant creature. My observations strongly suggested that the rolling party does not at all lose sight of its enemy. On the contrary, it fixates the latter binocularly. It is part of the way in which it maintains that unusual orientation in space.

Rolling is only one of several specialised stances barbs may adopt. They may pitch or lean as well; and I was interested to find the technical means to test some hypotheses about all those postures. Michael kindly helped me looking around for those means. For the rats, special goggles had been devised to manipulate their visual field experimentally. He sent me off-prints of the relevant publications later on. Perhaps something similar might be done for fish...

He also persuaded me to enrol as a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (for Britain and Ireland), because of my paper in Current Anthropology of the year before. And he asked me whether I would review his forth-coming book (2) in Man, the journal of the RAI. "You would be an excellent critic", he said. He may or may not have been slightly disappointed with my review when it was printed. At the time, I was impressed by the super-critical approach of Jan van Iersel, and I did not let the concept of attention as a determinant of behaviour pass without a caveat. However this may be, Michael's gift for communication and cooperation had by then become quite clear to me.

Having mentioned cut-off, I may as well introduce you to some more of Michael's creative ideas. Three years before cut-off, in 1959 (3), he and Bill (W.M.S.) Russell launched the notion of 'Protean behaviour'. That is chaotic behaviour with which an animal may confuse a predator (or a prey, for that matter).

The already-mentioned book with Clifford Jolly, 1970, introduced the concept of the 'hedonic mode': a style of social interaction characterised by free communication, playful inquisitiveness as to the surroundings, and dominance relations that are based on abilities to catch and hold the attention of group members, rather than on intimidation. Chimps can do it, and humans, both in their own manner. However, in both, the coherence of a group may also be grounded in hostility, be it overt, or covert with social tension as a symptom. Michael referred to this as 'agonistic'. Only later (4), he defined the covert version as the 'agonic mode'.

It appears from this bird's-eye survey that Michael's contributions had a lot to do with social communication - and non-communication. Throughout, the notion of attention played a key role (5).

Among Michael's creations, the two modes, hedonic and agonic, constitute, to me, the most fertile. Their significance has not yet been completely understood. This in spite of two books written on the subject (6) and inspirations for at least another two (7). And also in spite of the steady efforts of the Birmingham Group, alias the SSI (Social Systems Institute), larded with written papers in the ASCAP newsletter. The idea has since been further developed by Kortmulder & Robbers (2005) (8). The theory has been adopted in studies as different as the interpretation of emotional expressions in electory candidates in TV debates (e.g. 9) and mother-child relation therapy (e.g. 10).The SSI was an informal grouping of scientists of diverse plumage, gathered around Michael. Each one of its members recognised in the 'two modes' something of his/her own experience. They met twice a year in order to delve into the subject, each from one's own discipline.

I did not meet the Birmingham Group before 1994. Through the years, Michael used to respond by mail to the off-prints I sent. Now he explicitly invited me, because he saw much in common between our ideas. As I couldn't make it to the autumn meeting because of my wedding, it was arranged that I should meet some of the members in London at a later date. I do not intend to dwell on all the subsequent meetings we had. The experience of coming home was there at each occasion, but I felt it particularly strongly that first time. On a rainy and dark december-afternoon we met in the lobby of a Bloomsbury Street hotel: Michael, Frank Cawson and David Stevens. There was chaleur instantly, and it didn't leave us through the evening, as we dined at a small restaurant in Coptic Street. We visited a wide range of subjects, of which I remember only the Dutch, British and American drugs policy. Our circle was wider than we surmised. Towards the end of the meal, the lady who had been dining tête-à-tête at the table across from ours spoke to us. Loraine Stern MD from Santa Monica, California confessed "having been eavesdropping shamelessly", fascinated by the spectrum of our discussions and wishing to have been a member of our club. We wouldn't have kept her out, but she was about to fly back to the States.

Next morning we met again at David's house. Michael explained how the meetings worked. A brief pause after each presentation before it was discussed. A good measure, keeping the mind relaxed, and capable of making optimal use of the information we gave one another. The general atmosphere was one of mutual respect.

At a SSI meeting, 1998

In this and later meetings, there was no doubt about Michael being the leader. Not through his power, but because everybody looked at him that way. His natural courtesy and personal warmth, as well as his openness of mind worked in that direction. But also, of course, the fact that he took initiatives for meetings, and invested in them financially.

But perhaps this is already tending towards hagiography. That would not be fair. His gentleness set the key for all his actions, but that did certainly not prevent him from manipulating people. He could exert quite considerable pressure, whenever topics wandered too far from 'his' two modes. As behoves a hedonic leader, he competed lustily for attention. He was easy to be flattered but, on the other hand, also a jolly good sport whenever he lost the game. "Shall we dance?" he suggested as we paused during one of the later meetings. And there we went, hands on shoulders, singing and around Odin's hall and garden like a cheerfully meandering snake.

His sanguine temperament made him warm quickly to somebody else's ideas, only to drop them as suddenly as he had picked them up. With some exceptions. He remained true to the work of Paul McLean, even when the pretty severe outside criticism was heard. He also stuck with Chris Knight, who could not boast great popularity with the rest of us. Fellow-feeling with the Marxist? Come on. But on the whole his acclamations and disfavours were rather unpredictable from moment to moment. I surmise, too, that his impulsive temperament, besides attracting people to join and stay with the group, could also, just as suddenly, knock off old and faithful members.

There is a certain mildness about people who use both their cerebral hemispheres, ratio as well as intuition. This certainly applied to Michael. His was a fertile phantasy, sometimes venturing into the impossible. His undertaking to write a new book on the two modes, unfolded during the late meetings, contained too much thin air. One of us, on his instigation, had already lobbied for the book with a publisher abroad. Michael had devised in detail what members of the SSI and other friends and colleagues were going to write. It turned out, however, that so far he had approached none of them. And it took some effort to convince him that he would not manage to write all those chapters all by himself.

And yet, his phantasy was at the base of his success, and one of his great charms as a scientist, along with his openness of mind and the emphasis he put on the fun of work-in-progress rather than the power or prestige of success. In short, a man to be fond of, and to never forget now that he is gone. As to the SSI, it would seem that its cohesion depended substantially on Michael's all-round scientific competence. After all, he was a biologist as well as a doctor and a pharmacologist, all in one. Nobody was able to take his place.

At Fardell Manor, Devon, UK, in 1998

(1) M.R.A. Chance. 1962. An interpretation of some agonistic  postures; the role of "cut-off" acts and postures.  Sym. Zool. Soc. Lond. 8: 71-89.

(2) M.R.A. Chance & C. Jolly. 1970. Social groups in Monkeys, Apes and Man. London: Jonathan Cape.

(3) M.R.A. Chance & W.M.S. Russell. 1959. Protean displays: a form of  allaesthetic behaviour. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 132: 65-70.

(4) M.R.A. Chance. 1984. Biological systems synthesis of mentality  and the nature of the two modes of mental operation: hedonic and  agonic. Man-environment Systems 14: 143-57.

(5) M.R.A. Chance. 1967. Attention structure as the basis of primate rank orders. Man 2: 503-18.

(6) M.R.A. Chance & R.R. Larsen (eds). 1976. The Social Structure of  Attention. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

- M.R.A. Chance (ed.) 1988. Social Fabrics of the Mind. London:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

(7) A. Stevens. 1995. Private Myths; Dreams and Dreaming. London: Hamish Hamilton.

- A. Stevens & J.S. Price 1997. Evolutionary Psychiatry. London: Routledge.

(8) K. Kortmulder & Y. Robbers, 2005. The Agonic and Hedonic Styles of Social Behaviour. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lampeter, New York, Queenston.

(9)  E.P. Bucy, 2008. "Happy warriors" revisited; hedonic and agonic display repertoires of presidential candidates on the evening news. Politics and the Life Sciences, 27(1): 78-98.

(10) J. Amos & L. Segal, 2018. Disrupting intergenerational maternal maltreatment in middle childhood: therapeutic objectives and clinical translation. Frontiers in Psychiatry, doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00623