🌪️ Do Crises Really "Reveal" Character?

Advice columnists — and fiction novelists — often claim that pressure exposes “who we really are,” but I'm not sure how relevant those crises really are to evaluating personality.

A recurring theme I’ve noticed in various books I’ve read is that “crisis reveals character.” I sometimes see this taken to a weird extreme, where advice columnists will tell people they should deliberately provoke a fight with a potential spouse in order to “really know what you’re getting into.” But even in the world of fairly mainstream fiction, there’s this repeated claim that pressure exposes “who we really are” and either helps us find our strength or reveals the cracks in our nature.

• Faefever by Karen Marie Moning: Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials, or fractured by a permanent, damning fault line.

• Soulsmith by Will Wight: When you can’t count on anybody else, that’s when you know if you’ve got what it takes. It’s painful, it’s bloody, and it’s hard.

• Diary of a Girl by Anne Frank: You only really get to know people when you’ve had a jolly good row with them.

• Storm Front by Jim Butcher: There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.

• The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire: “We are the sum of our actions,” said Simon. “When desperation sets our course, those actions can blacken with remarkable speed.

I am certainly not perfect when stressed. Sometimes I lose my temper and raise my voice, sometimes I curl up and go to sleep. But I’m not sure that the “stressed out” version of me is “the real me” and I don’t feel like there’s some kind of “permanent, damning fault line” in me if 11 hours of grinding away on a project gives me a headache. I suspect the rest of these quotes are more accurate than Moning’s, of course… and McGuire and Butcher have the most relevant takes here.

Because honestly… how many modern-day folks have really been put into the sort of crucible being described above? We live in one of the most peaceful times in human existence. How many people end up in situations where there’s nobody to count on, or where an “jolly good row” is existentially important enough to reveal something meaningful (but hitherto unknown) about yourself? Arguments mostly just reveal how you argue.

Maybe that’s what she means, that it reveals something about me that I try not to get into screaming matches even when provoked… after all, the people who know me best are the ones I try very hard not to have rip-roaring screaming matches with. But that’s not to say I’ve never had one; it’s just that my rip-roaring arguments are usually about things that are relatively inconsequential, like obscure niceties of courtroom protocol.

I’m just not sure “how he reacts under argumentative pressure” or “how she handles a screaming toddler” is the best proxy for “really knowing a person.”

Dan Daly is a Marine Corps legend, and possibly the original inspiration for the famous Starship Troopers line: “Come on you apes, do you want to live forever?” From the summary of his (excellent so far) biography: He was nominated for (but not awarded) an unprecedented third Medal of Honor in World War I for his valor at Belleau Wood, where he led a charge against the German stronghold with the (alleged — he denies it)battle cry, “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”

This is a guy who, during the Boxer Rebellion, single-handedly fended off repeated sniper attacks and about 400 soldiers who tried to storm the wall until backup arrived. He was a brave, quick thinker with a strong sense of duty and loyalty. But he was humble, turning down a commission¹ and trying to avoid the fuss people made over him. He reportedly said he’d “rather be an outstanding sergeant than just another officer”— which suggests he knew himself well enough to choose his path without needing a crisis to “reveal” how he’d handle strategic leadership.

Daly put in his 20, then took a job on Wall Street as a bank guard, where he stayed for 17 years. One imagines him as a sort of blueprint for the Jason Statham & Bruce Willis style action heroes who retired from their fighting ways and then ended up roped back into a life of violence because somebody tries to rob their quiet little bank or whatever. But as far as I know, Daly never had to fend of any exotic bank robbers or rescue a relative from damn-fool kidnappers. Did those quiet years with no crises make him “less himself”?

He never married, and died in his sister’s home, and I wonder… what ‘version’ of Dan Daly did his sister see? Did she know a gentle man? A haunted one? Was that version any less “real” than what his fellow marines saw? He lived with her after he retired, and in at least some senses knew him longer than anyone.

There are millions of guys who are never going to be put in a position to single-handedly defend a wall against enemy attack, who are never going to be in a situation where they are the only person standing between a raging ship’s fire and enough explosives to kill every man on board.

But Dan never got to know how he’d react to a toddler tantrum at four o’clock in the morning. He never had to helplessly hold his wife’s hand while she gave birth. Does that mean his character is more or less known than my father’s? My husband’s?

I dunno. I think there’s something real about the idea that stress is revelatory, but I worry that we ascribe too much mystical power to the pressures of battle. Is “reaction under stress” really more truly relevant to the core of a person’s character than their ability to sustain monomaniacal attention on a single obsession for decades, like the founders of great car and candy companies?

What do you think? What am I missing?

What other books do a great job of exploring psychological scissor points?

1. This isn’t really related to my point here, but my favorite science fiction novel involving someone turning down a commission is Valor’s Choice by Tanya Huff, which is the only complete series my husband and I both like in its entirety. At one point, a 4-star general offers to sponsor a commission and Torin (paraphrased) goes: “I couldn’t possibly be a good officer, sir. I work for a living and my parents were married.” Book two starts off with: “And the moral of the story is, never call a two star general a bastard to his face” and it’s just such a fun bridge.