The processes that the RoUCa grid seeks to map take place in fractions of a second or seconds rather than minutes or hours. Once you see the behaviours that the framework is trying to model it become quite intuitive.
To work out someone’s behaviour and assign them a personality primarily we want to work out if they perceive the environment “Globally” or “Locally” and interpret it syntactically (“How” things are) or semantically (“What” things are). Secondarily we want to determine the “openness” of their “Wiper”, the speed of their hypermentalizing – how quickly they proceed around the grid. Thirdly we want to determine the extent to which their Trigger is tripped (the RoUCa grid tries to negate the person-situation debate but this is one area where it raises its head).
Most people are “Whats” and they will tell you so through their opinion. They will say What they think this or that is primarily rather than How things are. When confronted with error their primary response will be to Bargain or Deny. The difference between being Globally or Locally biased is much less pronounced with the majority having a mild leaning one way or another.
The RoUCa grid is a lot easier to see or do that to explain. Unfortunately to gain any acceptance, it’s up to me to be able to explain it reasonably robustly and rigorously.
The explanation below is more of an ongoing working draft that I am expecting to refine over time rather than a definitive explanation. I expect to find rough edges and have them pointed out to me. While it is possible to break any model by reducing it to absurdity, I think it provides a simpler and more complete model of personality that any other put forward so far (but then I would say that).
The RoUCa grid should be simple and intuitive to use once you see people reacting to Uncertainty and Capital and being Hows or Whats. Once you do, you’ll see it everywhere, if you don’t it might be that you need to review this page or the more straight-forward page again.
If you are still left confused you’ll have learnt something about yourself which would be no use in me trying to explaining.
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The main idea behind the RoUCa grid is to provide a way of diagnosing behaviour.
It seemed strange to me, as a species, our interactions are increasing both in number and relatedness but we hadn’t come up with a way come up with a way of defining them.
Even in fields such as medicine, behaviour is “symptomized” where two individuals may both be given the same broad-brush diagnosis as they display a certain number of characteristics from a given list, despite not exhibiting the same ones.
Ultimately our behaviour is a response to an “Event” the environment.
Our personality exists at some point between integrating the information from an Event that we sense and enacting a response.
For us to be able to respond to an Event in the environment, at least, we must be able to sample information from it, integrate this information and enact a response.
Events can be decomposed into lotteries. A lottery requires an element of syntactic information and an element of semantic information. We can think of this as placing a bet requiring an element of “Uncertainty” and an element of “Capital”, an estimation of precision and accuracy, or being able to say How and What is going on.
For it to be worthwhile, an organism must receive some benefit in enacting a response to the environment. This can include avoiding a loss as well accruing a gain.
Humans, amongst other animals, have acquired the ability to recognise the signature of certain Events in the environment. This ability requires us to be able to store and recall that signature and also match it to the parameters of an Event occurring in the environment.
We are able to produce (from wherever we store it) a “Scenario” – a Global, allocentric view, of an Event – and a “Situation” – a Local egocentric view of an Event.
This is the starting point for the RoUCa Grid.
We have two processes going on, giving us four elements. A Scenario which is decomposed into Uncertainty and Capital and a Situation which is also decomposed into Uncertainty and Capital.
To achieve the maximum benefit in response to the environment we want a response which we predict will provide us with the highest Reduction of Uncertainty (RoU) and the highest Capital (Ca).
Hence the RoUCa grid.
We can arrive at this point by following the four axioms of John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.
This prediction is U and is the heart of the RoUCa grid.
Deriving U is done automatically and pre-consciously. It is private from us and other Individuals in the environment. The “Automatic” sector is comprised of pRoU, aRoU, pCa and aCa.
A derivation of U is private to an Individual unless they disclose it. It may be unique to an Individual or if successful or generally accepted be common amongst others.
In forming U a bias is generally exhibited towards either Global or Local information in the environment by an Individual.
The ability of an Individual to integrate information from the environment (to give pRoU, aRoU, pCa and aCa) gives the U they form a resolution.
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Unfortunately for us not all Us we come up with are feasible to enact. We must be able to judge if we can obtain the benefit we have predicted from the environment or not. For instance, robbing a bank might be a quick way to obtain a large amount of money, but even if you were successful you still face the consequences of losing it all and spending time in prison if you’re caught.
To determine whether a response is feasible we must decompose U in the same terms that we used to form it; both Global and Local RoU and Ca.
These terms are well known by psychologists but by a different name. They are four of the “big five” common personality traits reached through the lexical hypothesis of personality.
Neuroticism (N) is an assessment of Global RoU
Openness-to-Experience (O) is an assessment of Global Ca
Conscientiousness (C) is an assessment of Local RoU
Agreeableness (A) is an assessment of Local Ca
A Neurotic person is one that is sensitive to Uncertainty in the environment and if Conscientious will look to Reduce it. A person that is Open-to-Experience will see Capital in the environment but won’t relinquish their own unless they are Agreeable.
In terms of maximising benefits C and O are positive relative traits as they focus on Reducing Uncertainty and increasing Capital.
N and A are negative relative traits as their presence increases the perception of Uncertainty and decreases the Capital held. They are though necessary to judge whether U is feasible. Without N you might end up robbing a bank and without A you might be unable to cooperate and so find yourself being outcompeted by groups in your environment.
N, C, O and A form the “Cognitive” sector of the RoUCa grid.
An Individual is aware of information in the Cognitive sector. At some point between information from the Automatic sector being used to form U and this signal being passed to the Cognitive sector, consciousness emerges.
As such our personality emerges as a response to the environment.
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The signal from U passed to the Cognitive sector faces being attenuated by the Wiper. An Individual’s Wiper can be dependent on their nature, nurture or nutrition. It affects their capacity to judge the feasibility of U by limiting the capacity of an Individual’s Cognitive sector.
An Individual with a narrow Wiper has the capacity to decompose U limited, whereas an Individual with a wide-open Wiper faces less attenuation of U.
In addition, an Individual’s Wiper either originates from the left-side, where their decomposition of U will be biased towards RoU or the right-side where the decomposition of U will be biased towards Ca.
Individuals who have a left-sided Wiper are generally “Hows” and those who have a right-sided Wiper are generally “Whats” in their interpretation of the environment.
Engineers might like to think of the Wiper as being a low pass filter. The more open or greater the Wiper the more resolution from U is passed on to the Cognitive sector.
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A feasible response to the environment may well be enacted.
If so, information of the Individual’s interpretation of the environment is then made public and any biases may then be revealed.
It is from here that we can make inferences about an Individual’s personality. Our premise being that the U they have composed is the one they determine to provide their best response to the environment.
N.B. An Individual’s response may well be deceitful (i.e. they are lying). This doesn’t bother us. We are interested in the composition of their response in terms of RoU and Ca which we can still decompose from their response, whether it is truthful or not.
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A response to the environment that returns the expected result allows an Individual to resolve the RoUCa grid. The signal flows back around the grid and generates another U. U’. If there is no difference between the expected and realised outcome, that is U and U’ are more or less equal, the signal can flow out through the Joy pathway and the grid resolves itself.
If there is a difference between the results expected and realised additional iterations U’’, U””, etc. are generated to try and match expectation and realisation so that the grid can be resolved.
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If additional iterations cannot resolve the grid an Individual needs a method to prevent them from continually enacting a response, which they deem as Cognitively feasible, and losing the resources that are require to generate these (unsuccessful) responses.
Eventually an Individual’s “Trigger” is activated. Like the Wiper this varies between Individuals and may be dependant upon their nature, nurture or nutrition.
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When an Individual’s Trigger is activated it opens up their Emotional sector.
Like the Automatic and Cognitive sectors the Emotional sector decomposes the environment in terms of both Global and Local RoU and Ca.
Whereas the Automatic and Cognitive sectors attempt to align the Individual to their environment, the Emotional sector (and Influencing sector to be introduced later) attempts to orientate the environment to the Individual. That is they wish to preserve U, their prediction of what should happen. An Emotional response by the Individual is one where they think the environment should change to meet their expectation rather than their adjusting to align with its actuality.
– Think of a stereotypical response of a person getting a parking ticket or missing a bus. Their response in an attempt to get their expectations met. –
The extent that an Individual goes to (how far their Trigger is pulled) to attempt to orientate the environment to their wishes gives a magnitude to the Emotional response. For example one Individual might be a bit miffed at getting a parking ticket another might have a full-blown meltdown.
When the Trigger is activated an Individual is said to be confronted with error. An Individual’s response to confrontation with error is one of the key points in understanding an Individual’s personality.
Psychology already has a workable theory for emotions in the Kübler-Ross stages of grief of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
These can be seen as analogues for Emotionally decomposing the environment in terms of Global and Local RoU and Ca.
Bargaining being an Emotional reaction to unexpected Global Uncertainty
Denial being an Emotional reaction to unexpected Local Uncertainty
Depression being an Emotional reaction to unexpected Global Capital
Anger being an Emotional reaction to unexpected Local Capital.
To avoid confusion with clinical terms in the RoUCa model we can swap the term depression with curTailment of Expectation (T) and to avoid confusion with Agreeableness swap the term anger for Resistance (R). We don’t need to make further changes to Bargaining (B) or Denial (D).
The Emotional responses appear as the inverse to Cognitive responses. Whereas N anticipates Global Uncertainty to be reduced, B speculates that Global Uncertainty should be raised as an Individual tries to negate the error they are confronted with. Likewise with D, that Local Uncertainty should be raised, that the outcome achieved shouldn’t have happened. T and R perform the same task when expectation of O and A aren’t met by the environment.
Where Cognitive “sidedness” might reveal an Individual as a How or a What they will typically display “not-What (T and R) or “not-How” (B and D) Emotional responses respectively.
– The clearest place to see this response in action is on reality TV or programs following the police at work. Most people are Cognitive Whats and Emotional not-Hows. When a suspect is arrested they are confronted with error (typically criminals that get caught are not very good at judging Cognitive feasibility) initially they react with either B (it wasn’t that bad officer) or D (I didn’t do it) behaviours. When the handcuffs go on they react with R and eventually try T as they can’t orientate the environment to their expectation.
I find it fascinating that this process more or less plays itself out in every encounter on these programmes.-
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All emotions (small e) are a mismatch in expectation and actuality. In the RoUCa model Emotions (big E) are mismatches that result in a loss compared to expectation for the Individual. The environment has an efficiency to it given by the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms – another agent in the environment would not just donate benefits to another, just as we are would not donate our resources to it. We experience Joy when we receive a larger benefit than we expected. This pathway allows us to escape the RoUCa grid even when our expectations are met but not exceeded. Although we don’t feel Joy from achieving the mundane, we can resolve the grid through the pathway and shift our attention to other Events or proceed to a resting state.
If we do find Joy in the environment, rationally it makes sense to repeat the behaviour until the environment is exhausted through this loop. This process leads to positive feedback (in process rather than sentiment) and can be seen in asset bubbles.
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An Individual may also seek to reduce the friction in the environment in realising their expectations. They will seek to Influence the outcome of an Event to obtain the result they’ve predicted/expect.
“Influencing” behaviour is the addition of any supplementary lotteries to the environment.
This may be reflected through body language, prosody and especially intimation of unfairness.
The RoUCa grid does not specifically define introverts and extraverts. Extraversion arises when Influencing behaviour is not judged as Cognitively unfeasible.
The lotteries added to the environment may affectively add or subtract Global or Local RoU or Ca to the environment affecting the Event.
Influencing behaviours are public to the environment, though strangely may appear private to the Individual. As an Individual has to resample the environment to judge the effect (i.e. the environment’s response to the affect) this is signal goes through their Automatic sector to create another iteration of U.
It can be quite hard to explain to an “Extravert” that what their point isn’t more valid through their addition of Influencing behaviours, when to them it has been incorporated in the latest iteration of U they are judging the environment from.
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Individuals also differ in the speed at which they go through this process. When a RoUCa grid cannot be resolved and the trigger is activated an Individual may spin around it creating iteration upon iteration of U.
When this happens, we might say that someone is stewing or ruminating over something. The process of cycling though the grid is hypermentalizing.
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