From Calamity to Sanity Post Series: SCARF explains your threat and reward states

As you are seeing by now, one of the foundation chapters in the book lays down some concepts that help make sense of what our brains, young and old, are doing for us, to us and against us. Surprising as it may seem. our brains are not always that helpful, especially during times of complexity and uncertainty. Like now.

The next series of posts will explore a brain-based model that explains why we go into the mind states of survival/threat (Red Brain) and engagement/reward (Blue Brain). When I wrote that the brain does a lot of stuff to us above, I’m calling out the significant proportion of brain activity that is below our awareness. Think iceberg, most of what goes on is below the surface.

One significant dynamic that operates all of the time when we are conscious is the pain-reward ‘system’. Our brains are always assessing, without our knowledge or permission, the likely pain or reward outcome of actions and goals.

When we have a task to do that we don’t like, many of us will procrastinate. This is the ‘away’ response to the anticipated pain of the work. Watch people for any length of time and you will see avoiding behaviours everywhere.

Desire lines or paths

Indicate the avoidance the pain of taking a longer path

When an activity, or a. planned activity results in the neurochemistry of pleasure, our brain gets a reward ‘hit’, and we lean into, or move ‘towards’ these stimuli. Chocolate is well known for its dopamine-releasing chemistry, and eating chocolate is something that is easy to lean into.

It maybe comes as no surprise that the away response is stronger that the toward: we respond more strongly to pain or threat than reward. This is the fabled carrot and the stick phenomenon in the brain. This idea also links to the Red and Blue Brains - the Red Response is stronger, faster and more contagious.

So to SCARF - a model, steeped in brain research, that explains the social dynamics of moving away from pain or toward reward.

SCARF stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. Consider these to be social resources that we need to be at our best. Neuroscience research has shown that when we ‘receive’ these resources from people around us, we experience the neurobiology of reward - we feel good and we tend to be at our best.

When one or more of these ‘needs’ are denied us we tend to respond with the neurobiology of threat. We move into our Red Brains, and our behaviours become more self-centred, we are less aware and we have fewer alternatives available to us. The more triggers across the five dimensions, the greater the threat or reward. People who are triggered in all five at the same time are very unhappy people indeed. This is when we see the worst of human behaviour. Just think toilet rolls during the current pandemic…

The more I research and use this model, the more I see that it is a biological model. I see animals, especially mammals, responding to these same stimuli. To see this in action, you can watch videos on Fairness in Capuchin  Monkeys (https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg) or one of many videos on blanket drops and magic for animals. The latter shows response to uncertainty, while the monkey video clearly shows response to fairness.

In the coming series of posts, I’ll be exploring each of these dimensions individually. You’ll see why your existing pandemic is creating multiple layers of pain and threat responses.

If you want to read more about SCARF, check out David Rock’s book Your Brain at Work, or read this scientific paper: SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others