Go watch some ducks for a while. Ducks have four active programs - random waddle, mate (but only in spring), find food, fight. (And there's also sleep as a rest mode.)
Ducks switch between programs very obviously, because they have very short attention spans. It's fun to look at.
Humans work the same way. We have a slightly wider range of responses, a longer attention span, and the self-referential ability to model actions before performing them. But the principle is the same.
People who lack self-awareness and have no idea about metaprogramming will switch between responses in the same way that a duck does. All it takes to switch modes is the right kind of stimulus. This makes them very predictable, very boring, and very easy to manipulate.
A lot of politics and economics is based on the practical application of this principle.
It should be at the root of any discussion of what democracy actually is. You can't be me, I'm taken
