(This is the Mercury Profile we would have sent to Dr King had he requested one)

Primary Tone Learning Style
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

An Inventive mind

You are an innovative and original thinker, who embraces ideas which are in some way ahead of or behind their time. These ideas might be connected with technology like computers, the latest digital cell phones, wind farms or traditional steam engines. Yours is an experimental mind well suited to technical or scientific work. However, you like to rebel against the prevailing orthodoxy and your mind is often out of step with the mainstream. You may also be committed to ideas about society and humanity in general: politics, conservation, ecology, community projects, race relations. Many people with your mental style come up with new Utopian ideas about how to organise society.

Mental staying power

Concerned with social and humanitarian problems, such as universal equality, from a conceptual point of view, you may find yourself out on a limb for a while with your progressive, controversial or unusual ideas until the rest of society catches up. That's OK because you have the mental steadfastness to hold onto your ideas over long periods of time. For you "truth" comes before social acceptability. It can be lonely being a trend-setter. However, you are more able than most to detach ideas from emotion while maintaining the larger conceptual framework. Others may regard your ideas as eccentric. You may not think so. To you your ideas seem perfectly rational and logical. To others they are weird. Alternatively, that rebellious streak in you may enjoy being different. You may value your radical ability to challenge mainstream thinking and come up with unusual interpretations of events or solutions to problems. Indeed, as this is your special contribution to society, you may like to foster this talent .

An independent thinker and learner

Indeed, freedom of thought is important to you. You can even be rebellious just to establish your independence, resisting pressure to conform. Often when given a task you'd prefer to be left alone with a free rein to get on with it. Mentally restless you have your own ways of working. It might be you like to have your Walkman on while reading. To you its natural, to others it's puzzling. You do like to function in conjunction with others, seeking mental stimulation through friendship and you might become involved with group and organisational work. You may also have friends who aren't human!

How you learn

You have a tendency when approaching new information to resist it initially until you have decided whether it will fit into your own current conceptual framework. If it does, then you will learn it and retain it for a long time. If not, then one of three things can happen. Firstly, you might reject it outright, which others might regard as closed mindedness. Secondly, you may store it away in a mental "pending tray" until you find a piece of information which links it into your conceptual framework, at which point you re-access it and might choose to learn it. Now, the third possibility is an interesting one. Occasionally, when a new idea challenges an existing one, in a way that seems valid, the old idea, and much that is connected to it, has to go. Whole concepts can be jettisoned in order to embrace the new in a way that is akin to mental revolution. For years you might have been committed to a certain idea. Then one day, it goes out the window without a second glance and you become just as comm itted to the new idea. Like a lightening bolt, your thoughts can seem to change direction, suddenly and abruptly. To you there is always a perfectly rational and logical reason for this. Perhaps you saw a flaw in the old system or concept. Perhaps a new idea was more captivating and was incompatible with the old. This pattern does not imply fickleness or lack of reliability. This is natural for you; your mind breaks moulds and moves forward. The change of mind may have been brewing for some considerable time before it happens and may even reflect a matter of personal integrity.

Learning is a choice

Long term memory and steadfastness of thinking are your strengths. You become very committed to information that you have decided to learn. If you've "forgotten" something it's because you never chose to take it on board in the first place. Consequently, your school reports may have been a mixture of extremes, with good grades in some subjects and poor in others. It's less to do with your ability than with the choices you made. It also may have depended on whether the original spin of your mind was appreciated and valued by your teachers. You may have experienced success in unexpected ways, both at school and throughout your life.

An objective thinker

You can handle conceptual and abstract ideas better than many people. While others are concerned with practicalities, you can work with and enjoy ideas for their own sake. Objective, logical and detached, you can seem rather cool to others for whom feelings and thoughts are more closely intertwined. You may regard them as allowing emotion to cloud their judgement. However, they can see things that you can't, so it's worth giving them space to reflect and listen to their viewpoint.

Communicating with others

What helps you to learn?

• Recognise that you may not choose to take in all the information that is offered to you. Once something is learned, however, it is never forgotten. You like to learn at your own pace when no-one is pressuring you.

• Writing things down and saying them aloud helps you to learn.

• Find common themes and connections between ideas. Mapping your ideas on paper may help you fit them into the conceptual framework in your head.

• Computer aided learning may appeal.

• Metaphorical stories and drama may also help you to explore ideas.

What others can do to help you learn

• You need to be allowed and encouraged to learn in your own way.

• Ask you questions.

• Encourage you to think about the idea behind an invention.

• Allow opportunities to be inventive and experimental.

• Tell stories and anecdotes.

• Provide opportunities for discussion and debate. Encourage you to summarise your ideas after a discussion as this helps you put information into a framework.

• Provide plenty of books, audio books, taped lectures, radio programmes, journals, magazines, newspapers and videos.

Quotes from people with this Style

"I flatly refuse to believe that I am stubborn."

"I have clear ideas on how I think things should work and see people who don't embrace equality as quite backwards."

"I certainly won't learn to calculate astrology charts by hand, that's the work for a computer."

"Unless I'm really interested in something, I only half listen."

"Some of my best work has come from being given the opportunity to be inventive."

"Going into technology deflects away from the ideas behind the technology, which is what's really interesting."

"I will not stand for injustice if I can do anything about it."

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal." Dr. Martin Luther King.