SCARF is a really useful model - once you are familiar with it it explains so much. It helps make sense of so much of the way our human world works, yet it can be seen in the animal world too. Once you make the model visible, you can see the why ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ people. You also see how the systems that persist in organising humanity actually work.

The F in SCARF is Fairness - it can be thought of as having access to the required resources, to things that satisfy immediate needs. It is also about reciprocity - being seen to be treated equally. Both of these dimensions of fairness make it strongly subject to perception. Fairness is tricky to navigate and difficult to deliver.

The SCARF model describes Relatedness: At the heart of being human is being tribal. In normal circumstances, we feel a need to belong, and all throughout our lives we attach and affiliate ourselves with tribes or teams. With this comes trust and shared access to resources.

In eduction we often refer to the term agency, a strongly related word to autonomy. Agency is defined as the ability (perceived or real) to take action or the availability of choice. Influence on an outcome is another way we experience autonomy. In terms of triggers for children, this seems to be less impactful until the teenage years, when it suddenly rears its head quite strongly. Yet, autonomy can play a big part in social learning around behaviour in children.

Our brains love certainty - we spend a good deal of our time predicting what will happen next based on our experience. Uncertainty gives us a sense of discomfort, anxiety or even fear. When the situation is uncertain, and it then resolves, we often feel relief or even happiness.

Status in the SCARF model is a social need is all about “Where do I fit?” And “How well am I doing?”. Status is a comparative factor - we are constantly comparing ourselves to both other people and (more often) ourselves. We compare ourselves to ourselves through the dimension of time - how much better or worse am I compared to where I was this time last week, last month, last game

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

The alternative and more desirable mind state is much more socially oriented. The ‘Blue Zone’ or ‘Blue Brain’ is a mind state that emerges from a balance of activity in the cognitive, sensory, language and emotional regions in the brain. People who are more active in these areas of the brain have quite different behaviours and attitudes.

Knowing at least a little about the brain can be tremendously helpful. Perhaps surprisingly, not everything that is does, either ‘with us’, ‘for us’ or ‘against us’, is helpful. Most of what the brain is doing is inaccessible to our conscious minds, and the more we know the more we can manage.