DISC Assessment - History

History

William Moulton Marston was an accomplished man who was not only a lawyer and a physiological psychologist; he also produced the first functional lie detector polygraph, authored self-help books and created the Wonder Woman comic. His major contribution to psychology came when he generated the DISC characteristics of emotions and behavior of normal people. Marston, after conducting research on human emotions, published his findings in 1928 in his book titled Emotions of Normal People. In this book, he explained his theory that people illustrate their emotions through behavior using the four behavior types called (Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C). Also, he argued that these behavioral types came from people’s sense of self and their interaction with the environment . He included two dimensions that influenced people’s emotional behavior. The first dimension is whether a person views his environment as favorable or unfavorable. The second dimension is whether a person perceives himself as having control or lack of control over his environment. Dominance:perceives ones self as more powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as unfavorable. Inducement:perceives oneself as more powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as favorable.Submission: Perceives oneself as less powerful than the environment as favorable. Compliance:Perceives oneself as less powerful than the environment as unfavorable . Although William Moulton Marston contributed to the creation of the DISC Assessment, he did not create it or even intend to use DISC as an assessment. In 1956, Walter Clarke, an industrial psychologist, was able to accidentally construct the DISC assessment using William Moulton Marston’s theory of the DISC model. He accomplished this by publishing the Activity Vector Analysis, a checklist of adjectives on which he asked people to indicate descriptions that were accurate about themselves. This assessment was intended for use in businesses needing assistance in choosing qualified employers. His assessment was later amended by Walter Clarke Associates and called a self-description. Also, it no longer required a checklist. Instead, test takers choose from two or more terms. Even with all of William Moulton Marston and Walter Clarkes developments, the DISC assessment still had further developments to undertake. John Greier contributed to this assessment by producing the DISC personality profile in 1958 based on the works of Marston and Clarke. Greier conducted hundreds of clinical interviews which assisted him to further progress the fifteen patterns which Walter Clark had exposed. Since then a number of publishers have updated and/or generated their own versions of the DISC assessment. These have had varying degrees of validity and reliability.