predicting human behavior | the Wakefield Doctrine

‘of here and then’ the Wakefield Doctrine (…an idle moment in the day of a clark)

December 4, 2014 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

(saw this in a couple of sites, but I think the source is: www.tn4me.org)

Had an odd* thought yesterday.** I was driving through a rural part of the state in late morning and the weather was not very nice. There was a slight drizzle and the temperature was in the low to mid 40s. I happened to glance into the woods that lined the road, and the thought came to me, “oh man! if I lived here in the 1400’s I would not be enjoying today. There’d be no place to go inside to get out of the weather….”

Given that all I had to do for the next 20 minutes was to guide several thousand pounds of metal, over twisting and turning country roads, at velocities not achieved by the human race until the early 20th Century, it was only natural I should think, “Imagine being an aboriginal clark living in this part of New England during the Early Woodland Era! damn!” (sure, go ahead and do some wavy images things in your head for a visual… )

We can easily imagine the lives of scotts at such a point in history. Hell, this era would have been paradise for our Predatory friends! (“Hey Still-waters-run-Deep I want you to meet a cousin of mine, she’s a little …. no! she didn’t have to leave her village, come on! don’t be scared!“) Yeah, scotts would have done well.
Even rogers would have had a place in society in the pre-historic New England, (“psst, did you hear what they are saying about that girl from the other village… well, if I even thought to do that, I would hide my head… you don’t think she’s prettier than me, do you?“)

But clarks. We know there were clarks in the neo-post-archaic-woodland New England. But how did their days go? I mean, an Outsider is an Outsider no matter what the year is, but at some points of history there was a fairly lethal side to not being a part of… (“he’s your son too! tell him to come back out of the forest and stand up straight and not mumble, your uncles’s cousin is a nice girl who would be perfect for little ‘runs Deep’)

* odd adjective, \ˈäd\ :

1. unusual or peculiar in appearance, character, etc
2. occasional, incidental, or random: odd jobs.
3. leftover or additional: odd bits of wool.
4. being part of a matched pair or set when the other or others are missing: an odd sock; odd volumes.
5. out-of-the-way or secluded: odd corners.
7. odd man out a person or thing excluded from others forming a group, unit, etc

a quality of thought or, even, an act or action which varies (according to the ‘Everything rule’¹) as perceived by each of the three personality types:

rogers: ” …probably bad, no, wait you said odd, as in different and not like anything else? well, that’s certainly not good, that’s for certain…but maybe, did it say anything about me?”
scotts: ” …hey! hold up a second…. is it a threat? is it a threat that can be chased away? neither… maybe it will run away when the others don’t? that might be fun”
clarks: ” …hmmm, interesting, similar to what, precisely? maybe there’s something, well, not exactly like the others but still…oh yeah, I see! wouldn’t that be nice”

** yeah, I know!

1) ‘the Everything rule, (short for: ‘everyone does everything at one time or another‘) holds that an experience or an occupation, a blind date or a surgical procedure, giving birth and riding a bike are all parts of life and are experienced by everyone (well, mostly everyone…I haven’t ridden a bike in I can’t tell you how long)… the value in this rule is that it can simplify the use of the Wakefield Doctrine, as a tool for better understanding the people in our lives.
Very often a person will say, ‘hey my son wants to be a professional skier, but he can’t get his head out of the books, isn’t professional skier a scottian job?‘ or perhaps you might have a friend come up to you in the dressing room at the Y and confide in you that they have to see a specialist, but can’t make up their mind which of 2 physicians to choose. They proceed to describe one as: precise, well- informed, concise, well, just a little rigid but the wall of their office was covered with diplomas and everything while the second specialist, well, they made (your friend) laugh and seems very confident, but kept being interrupted and seemed a touch impulsive…. which should they choose? (You are being asked, because your friend knows you have this ‘Doctrine thing’ that makes you able to read minds or something, fun at social occasions, helpful in emergencies but, sometimes, a little ….creepy.)

the Everything rule simply reminds us to put ourselves in the worldview of the other person. This is not easy, it takes much study and learning of the characteristics of each of the worldviews, but when we do, we see that sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, predicting human behavior, the Wakefield Doctrine

Go!!!! Cynthia!* the Wakefield Doctrine ( “..uri, vinciri, verberari et interfecta est gladio Pharao et doctrina post scribere!”)

December 3, 2014 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

if you look closely, the label says (I’m not making this up) “Collectible Anniversary Edition’

..how cool is this Wakefield Doctrine? I was just in the kitchen to get coffee, and, as is my habit, I went through the cupboard to get a piece of bread and… (Wait! It occurs to me that this story won’t make any sense without a little context. Before I got to the kitchen this morning, I was thinking about writing a Post. Actually I was concerned that I didn’t have anything interesting to write about this morning, worse, I was worried that I had ‘lost’ whatever it was, that I thought that I used to believe that I had, when I wrote Doctrine blog Posts. OK! That’s the proper set up to appreciate what happened next… in the kitchen….. this morning…like 10 minutes ago.)

….anyway, I’m looking for bread and I notice a fresh, un-opened bag of hot dog rolls, way in the back and thought, ‘better get these up to the front, or else I’ll forget they’re there‘. As I re-positioned the bag I saw, printed on the bottom: Stop n Shop Official Supermarket of the Patriots and so naturally I said to Phyllis who was also in our small kitchen, preparing her morning coffee, ‘who the fuck cares that this is…. why??!…. what the hell?!’

‘Why’, I thought out loud, ‘should/would/could anyone get something out of knowing that their supermarket is the official supermarket of a football team? Do these benefits apply to the Players and their families? Are they required to shop only at Stop n Shop? Or maybe, they have special privileges when shopping, like the gladiators were supposed to have earned when victorious in the Coliseum?’
I calmed down and thought, ‘well, clark, you have a Wakefield Doctrine, what does it tell you about why people should care about hot dog rolls being associated with a professional sports team?‘

If we were having this discussion a couple of years ago, I would have gone immediately to the rogerian worldview and then the scottian worldview. (As a matter of fact, Phyllis said this morning, ‘you should ask glenn, he’s all into the sports and has clothing with team names in shirts and jackets and hats.’ glenn is a scott and a sports fan. I used to kid him. “holy shit! glenn! You never told me that you were a player for the Red Socks!! If it weren’t for that team jacket I never would have guessed!! damn!” and he would laugh and say, ‘fuck you’)

But today is the 3rd of December 2014, not July 27th 2007, so I didn’t follow that path to understand how the Wakefield Doctrine could add to my understanding of foodstore chains and affiliation marketing. Instead, I invoked ‘the everything Rule’ and asked myself: how would a scott experience seeing the label (photo above) and how would a roger and a clark. Because, as we all know, each of the three worldviews are, in fact, separate (personal) realities.
(That) our ‘personality types’ are simply our coping strategies for dealing with the kind of world we wake up in…. being it waking up:

as a clark (Outsider motto: ‘ok the world is out there waiting…try not to mess up‘) or
opening our eyes as a scott (Predator motto: ‘I’m hungry!!!!/I’m horny!!!!!/I’m thirsty!!!!!/I’m bored!!!!!/I’m tired!!!!!… oh, Good Morning dear!”) or
even if we wake up in bed as a roger (Herd Member motto: “perfect…if only I… as long as they, life is good!“)

Out of time, guys! I’ll leave to all of you to solve the, ‘Mystery of Why the Hell Anyone Would Base Their Foodstore Selection on the Basis of Affiliation with a Professional Sports Team’ on your own, tell us in the Comments below what you have concluded!

* Cyndi is doing something critical as a final step in earning her Master’s Degree today…. I believe she said it was defending her ‘Portfolio’ and, naturally, I offered to help.**

**(one of my favorite jokes! one that originated back in the 1990s when I was playing Death Orb at the campus of the University of Rhode Island on a hot July day. I was playing and a young man came out of the building to smoke a cigarette and I thought it was a good time to take a break myself. We got to talking and he explained that he was scheduled to do his ‘oral defense’ of his dissertation in a week. So, I said, ‘hey! I’ll give you $5.00 if you’ll promise that if you find you’re doing a bad job (of defense) and they (the Dissertation Committee) have you on the ropes, you answer your final question by saying, “oh yeah?!?!! well fuck you!!” and walk out’. The guy laughed, of course, but I never saw him again, so I suspect that he didn’t take me up on my dare.

so go to Cyndi’s blog Pictimilitude and contribute whatever positive energy you can!

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

the Wakefield Doctrine (what it is, how it works, what it can do) ….did I leave anything out?

December 2, 2014 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Over the course of the weekend, I had the pleasure of conversations with Lizzi and Denise and zoe. A recurrent theme/sub-topic was, of course, the Wakefield Doctrine. While the Doctrine is always a reference point for me, it helps to talk to people who, while having an excellent grasp of our little personality theory, help me get a perspective on the efforts being made here at the blog.

I came away from the weekend with the sense that I need to get back to the basics in these Posts. Not an earth-shaking realization, I’m aware that there is a cycle that manifests in the Posts over time, writing as if every Reader was here for the first time and, (eventually) moving to where nothing, (in a post), would make sense to anyone other than a die-hard fan. So, the pendulum will swing

what it is….

as a personality theory, the Wakefield Doctrine proposes that we all are born with the potential to experience the world in the context of one of three characteristic worldviews (personal realities); the reality of the Outsider (clarks), the world of the Predator (scotts) and the life of the Herd Member (rogers). The Doctrine maintains that, at a very early age, we find ourselves in one (of these three), and we grow up and develop our social and interpersonal skills and coping strategies that are best-suited to allow us to survive and thrive in this reality.

clarks being Outsiders become withdrawn and creative, imaginative and fearful, relating themselves to the world as if the world was ‘out there’.
scotts growing up in the world of the Predator (and Prey), acting and reacting, ever alert to threat or opportunity, mercurial in temperament, relating themselves to the world through their direct expression of instinct, experiencing life through action instead of reflection.
rogers are those who grow up in the world of principle and objective Value, the world is quantifiable, not so much predictable as reliable…relating themselves to the world around them as a part of the greater whole, a higher expression of (a) fundamental truth.

how it works…

the Doctrine is simple, or nearly impossible…depending on whether you have the desire and capacity to apply your imagination to the day-to-day reality around you. The Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective. A way of looking at the world, and the people (in it) and the behavior (of these people). The goal, of this applying of a particular perspective, is to ‘understand the world as the other person is experiencing it’. All that is required is a willingness to imagine and the discipline to learn the character of the three worldviews. (Note: the examples of behavior provided for each the three personality types in this blog, are not the measure of a person’s worldview! They (these characteristic behaviors) are are just examples of typical (to each of the three) responses to everyday situations. What you are actually trying to do, (or should be trying to do) when you observe another through the perspective of the Wakefield Doctrine is: inferring how that person relates themselves to the world around them.

(hey! that bears repeating! The first step in using the Wakefield Doctrine is to: (correctly) infer how the other person is relating themselves to the world around them. Please note that I did not say, ‘how the other person is relating to the world around them‘, I said, ‘how they are relating themselves to the world around them‘.
With one you are considering only how a person chooses to act, in the other, you are, of necessity, attempting to infer the reality, the context, the situation that is required to make (their) choice of action most appropriate.)

what it can do…

with the proper use of the Wakefield Doctrine, as a perspective, you can:

know more about the other person than they know about themselves
predict their future choices in most any situation
change and improve your own life (by virtue of knowing yourself better through understanding the people around you)

you know, stuff like that.
Unlike most personality type systems and theories, the Wakefield Doctrine will not give you ‘the Answer’ and it totally will not let you change the other person.
the Wakefield Doctrine ‘is for you, not them’.

but it is fun. you can watch people, (we’re betting that you enjoy that anyway) and you will know more about the people in your life without having to ask awkward questions ( “er… honey, you know I love those Louboutins and what you’ve done with your hair, but it’s only going to be the kids teachers and some other parents.“).

of course, the self-inderstanding and self-improvement is a little more…. effort. But! if you’ve made it this far reading today’s Post I know that you have what it takes to enjoy our little Doctrine.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

‘Thanksgiving Day 2014’ the Wakefield Doctrine (our traditional Thanksgiving Day re-Post* it’s almost become…dare I say it? a tradition!)

November 27, 2014 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) on this eve of Saint rogers’s Day!

Thanksgiving Day¹ is the holiday that, if we did not already know that there exists a personality type referred to as a roger, someone else would have pointed it out to us. Perhaps the task would have fallen to an Art Professor in a land grant college somewhere in the Midwest. We can imagine the epiphany …in the middle of the night (during his sabbatical devoted to the study of the works of Norman Rockwell)
“ My god! Norman’s work is not just a robust and healthy celebration of paedophilia! He has been trying to tell us to transform our culture! …for all good Americans to come forth and show their appreciation of patriotism, consumerism and child-abuse!!”

We have, from time to time, been accused of indiscriminate use of hyperbole in these pages, however, just consider the astounding level of pervasiveness of the ‘Holiday of Thanksgiving’. It is not enough to close the Post Office system and all other government agencies² , no it is not, this Holiday actually attempts to compel normal, rational, adult people to sit in front of the television and watch a Parade involving giant balloon representations of out-of-print newspaper cartoon characters! Who the hell watches the Macy’s Day Parade on purpose?!? Throughout the entire morning of Thanksgiving, you simply cannot escape the pageantry and spectacle, broadcast live and has as the ’emcees’, News Anchors from the major networks morning news shows! ( ” Thats right, Matt! That’s Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift on the Snoop Dog float… it says here that her eye makeup took 12 hours and 6 pounds of aluminum foil chips to create!!” ). Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting done in ‘live-action’, the whole country is exposed to hours and hours of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… more than 3 hours of parade music and floats (” … hey, Anne isn’t the next float from your hometown”? “That’s right Al! it’s my old Alma mater, the East Clydesdale High School Marching Band playing a medley, ‘Straight outta Compton’, ‘Fuck tha Police’ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ )

Why do we say Thanksgiving is the most rogerian of all holidays? Simply because Thanksgiving is about the how, not the why. As a holiday and a cultural event, this particular holiday tells it’s participants exactly what to do; what to eat and how to cook it! Taught from childhood, every member of our culture knows precisely how (and) where they are expected to spend the Holiday! Thanksgiving is about family! and if there is anything that rogers fake better than anyone, it is the joyful appreciation and celebration of the family.

But don’t just take my word for it! Following is an excerpt from a Post of the Wakefield Doctrine that was written over a year ago! (and nothing says credibility better than…age)

We all know that “the holidays” are experienced differently by each of the three (clarks, scotts and rogers) and therefore the demands of the celebrations are a very effective illustration of the nature of each. But if there was no Thanksgiving, a roger would have invented it! (Actually, they probably did). Think about it! A holiday celebration that is:

based on a factual historical event (sort of)

the protagonists (of the story) are religious refugees, persecuted and driven away together on boats

food, specific food and a not-to-be-deviated-from Menu

ritual menu and a full schedule of events

shopping in herds, as the climax of the celebration (Black Friday)

a moral taught to the young: we came here, those strangers who helped us were different, (…we had a feast and wiped out their culture)

I will be so bold as to suggest that there is no more rogerian a holiday than Thanksgiving! And since we are on the subject of rogers and holidays, (sort of), is there any human activity that is more one sided, over-hyped, ‘expectations-sure-to-fall short’, ( not counting sex on the eve of a relationship breaking up), than Parades? I don’t care if you are a trombone player in the middle of the herd or someone sitting in their living room watching it on TV, nothing says roger better than Parades!

http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1hp2f_en-vogue-free-your-mind_music

1) the Day that the indigenous people of the North American continent made a gift of their lands and cultures and cuisine to their new European friends.

2) you do know about the Post Office and rogers, don’t you?

~~~~~ *** ~~~~~

* first printed for Thanksgiving in 2011 this Post has been one of the more popular Posts when re-printed. New Readers? the joke in the title has to do with two things: a) we kid rogers a lot, on their worldviews, ‘i.e. the quantifiable world, the presence of abstract Truths, the celebration of tradition ( exemplified in the horribly, yet indefinably seductive notion underlying the expression heard coming from many a roger while something really cool is happening, “this is wonderful. we’re making a memory here!“) …be it our child’s high school graduation, their First Day at School, the pinning of the Prom corsage, the wedding night…. anything is a potential victim to the spontaneity-eating, life-force-sucking, Dewey-Decimal-imposing of a ‘historical perspective (or pre-perspective)’ to an event in the here and now…. 2) and, of course we’re so aware of the inherent irony of creating and celebrating a Thanksgiving tradition. In our defense, the Doctrine does tell us that we are not just a clark or a scott or a roger. We are ‘a clark’ or ‘a scott‘ or ‘a roger‘ by virtue of the fact that these are the worldview that we grew up, developed, learned to deal life in…. and, in fact is our personal reality (aka predominant worldview), however, since everyone has the potential to become a clark or a scott or a roger, we always retain the potential to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. This fact is why the Wakefield Doctrine is as much fun as it is, why it’s the best approach to self-improving ourselfs and why, sometimes, as a New Reader you might think, ‘I guess I must be a roger because…. but then I’m sure that I must be a scott, except sometimes….’ sorry, only one worldview to a life…however, if you have very robust secondary and tertiary aspects…well! good on you!.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

scotts the Wakefield Doctrine (“…then obviously we have to do ‘scotts’ in 12.5 minutes, I mean it’s only logical!”)

November 25, 2014 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Given that most of the current week is, at least in our North American culture, focused on a celebration that is the essence of the rogerian worldview, I thought I’d get a quickie in about scotts*.

The very young human who is left to grow up in the worldview of the Predator, develops certain skills and abilities and traits, all appropriate to thriving and surviving in a reality where it’s (metaphorically, at least): ‘kill or be killed’ / ‘eat or be eaten’ / ‘fight or flight’ …pretty much all the time.**

We all have a scottian friend. (unless we’re scotts….then we have a clarklike friend (no! not her! she’s just a roger….the other one, the one who, while you might not speak on any regular basis, when you do get together, (be it a month or 13 years later), she picks up where you left off, without the slightest hesitation…that’s your clarklike friend)

scotts!! they’re the ones who get us in trouble with the Principle in grade school (and) in trouble with the cops in high school (and) …more frequently than we’d care to admit, in trouble with our spouses in adulthood. We all have a scottian friend. They’re the life of the party and the only person who, like a job applicant on her way to her first serious job interview…curriculum vita in hand, are on the guest list with a pre-emptive excuse from someone. (“Hey, sure it got a little rowdy last time… and he might have broken a lamp, but we all had fun, right?!“), That’s your scott.
Have you ever started the annual chore of cleaning out the gutters, and before you get the ladder set into the proper (and safe) 53 degree angle, you hear ” Hey! let me give you a hand!!” and before you can turn around, your neighbor is climbing the ladder, without holding on with his hands and then stops and then decides it’s easier to just get up on the roof and walk along the edge and clean the gutters that way, rather than have to move the ladder…which is not really that bad an idea, until you see him climbing back up the ladder (you’re not sure how he got back down without seeing him)…. with a leaf blower on his back? …yep, that’s your scottian neighbor.

scotts: energetic, loyal, mecurial, helpful, sloppy, hot-headed, impulsive, aggressive, natural leaders, inveterate trouble-makers, sexy, short-attention-span(ned), can’t-do-enough-for-others, can’t-follow-instructions-beyond-‘open-caref….’,
male scotts excel at being:

mob leaders (and)
police officers,
gym teachers (and)
one-term politicians, (and)
surgeons

female scotts excel at being:

elementary school Principles (and)
sales trainers,
being female (and)
real estate brokers,
actress (ages: 7 to 23 and then 43 to 79) (and)
family matriarch

that should hold us, in this ‘week of Herd’! Remember now, the goal of the Wakefield Doctrine is to come to be able to see the world as the other person is experiencing it. Learn the characteristics of the three worldviews, observe the people in your life and when you’re able to correctly infer how they are ‘relating themselves to the world around them’, you will totally know more about the other person than they know about themselves.

… was just Replying to a Comment from Kristi and I think it would be a good way to end today’s post.

“…it (the notion of a secondary and tertiary aspect) is one of the best things about the Doctrine, it would have us believe that, instead of trying to be something we are not (often the biggest encountered on the path of self-developing ourselfs), all we need do is realize the potential that we have to cope with a different world (one shared by ‘the other 2/3rds of the population’). Rather than have to find and learn something new and therefore not genuine to who we are, we need only accept ourselves both ‘as we are’ and ‘as we might have been’. “

* yes, cue the ‘elbows and laughter’….pretty much have them ready, this is about the scottian worldview, after all!

** note to New Readers: the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the notion that we all live, to a certain, but not overly weird degree, in a reality that is personal to us… think about, oh I don’t know, the last time you stood in line at the supermarket and the cashier was talking to the the kid who was supposed to be bagging the groceries and everyone is getting impatient, or maybe, lets say you’re at a child/Teacher conference and even though the Teacher is not only very young, but clearly very, very new at his job, and yet, it’s becoming abundantly clear that he’s beginning to lecture you on child-rearing practices…. thats where worldviews are found.