A Bit of History, or "The Back Story"
When I was a teenager I used to just sit and watch other people. If my mother took me shopping with her to buy clothes, or get groceries, or anything at all I would spend more time watching how other people acted than I would on the job of searching for whatever it is we were buying!
That did not turn into a lifetime pursuit and passion of studying and researching all about the human condition, though others have been doing that for centuries.
In fact, we can trace the study of human behavior all the way back to Empedocles, who lived around 450 BC. As he observed human interactions, he could see four distinct patterns - or differences. Also, as he looked around the world he lived in he saw four external elements in the world: earth, water, air, and fire. So, he concluded that our personalities were impacted by these four external elements.
Empedocles
Ancient Greek Philosopher
Not quite a contemporary of Empedocles, but close, is the man closely connected to modern medicine today - Hippocrates. He is the one that the Hippocratic Oath is named after. In 400 B.C. he postulated that there were four internal fluids that impacted our personalities. His terms choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholy are still recognized by many today as having an impact on our well being, though not very many people accept them as having the impact on our personality as he believed.
Throughout the centuries since Empedocles and Hippocrates, many have continued to study human behavior and personality. Other notable names you might recognize include Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Sigmund Freud. A key, well-known figure in more recent history is Carl Jung.
The Basics
Of interest to this lesson is a psychologist by the name of William Marston. He was a professor at Harvard in the 1920s and as he studied human personalities he came to the conclusion that all of
William Marston
us operated by the power of two main drivers. We'll learn more about those two main drivers in the next lesson. For now, keep in mind that his studies were built on the work of many, many people before him. His was not the first version, or explanation, of personality.
However, Marston was the first one to use words that began with the letters D, I, S, and C in his descriptions of the four main personality types. Most all of the literature and research today use these same four letters in
the explanation of human personality. He did not put a copyright on his research work, so many people have taken his work, made adjustments and edits, and then published it.
In 1956 a psychologist by the name of Walter Vernon Clarke created the first assessment based on Marston's DISC research. The assessment was a forced-choice series of questions that were intended to help reveal a person's behavioral style. Since Clarke worked for the publishing company John Wiley & Sons, this first assessment was intended to be used as a tool for employers to use in hiring and placing people in different positions.
There have been many, many different variations of the DISC assessment created, sold, and used since then. The particular
version used by Black Box Leadership is sold by a company called Personality Insights. This particular version is used because it provides a very "friendly & accessible" interface for the end user. The emphasis is on a positive approach to understanding personality, and there is sound research supporting the reliability and validity of this version. (For more details, you can click on the link in the RESOURCES section below to download the PDF article explaining how this version of the DISC assessment was tested and determined to be sound.)
Conclusion
The key to keep in mind is that throughout all of human history people have been studying the patterns and differences that make up the uniqueness of our personalities. The DISC assessment itself has been around for quite a number of decades and there is sound research backing it all up.
You can be confident that the information you will learn about DISC, and the results you will get in your assessment report, will be reliable, it is something you can count on and use to improve your relationships and interactions with others.
This lesson does not have a quiz. So, it's time to move on to the next lesson to learn about those two drivers that William Marston came up with.