The myth of the dissociative identities:

Rojhat Avşar:

"In the movie Me, Myself, and Irene, Charlie, played by Jim Carey, is known for his friendly, gentle, caring, and somewhat passive personality and finds himself often getting ridiculed by his colleagues as a result. Under socially stressful situations, Charlie transforms into Hank, his other personality. In terms of personality, Hank could not be more different from Charlie: Hank is assertive, aggressive, and much more hedonistic. Moreover, he does not follow social conventions. Charlie, as you might be able to tell by now, suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct (or split) identities or personality states that continually compete for power over the person’s behavior. Charlie seems to oscillate between these two extreme personalities. Most economists seem to believe that we act as if we have a split personality, of the kind similar to the one described above. As the belief goes, we can separate market relations from the rest of our social life with a great ease, behaving differently—sometimes surprisingly so—in each domain. From this perspective, seamlessly navigating our way back and forth between personal exchange (e.g., friendship) and financial transactions (e.g., taking out a mortgage) is our second nature. On the surface, this seems like a commonsensical approach: the domain where people engage in exchange or cooperation for strictly personal gains must naturally be regulated by a different set of norms."