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Press Contact: Cynthia Shannon, cshannon@bkpub.com, 415.743.6469
Origins of the DiSC® Model
Sample from the 8 Dimensions of Leadership
In 1928, physiological psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) published Emotions of Normal People, a book that laid the groundwork for what would become today’s DiSC assessments. Marston was interested in theories that helped explain emotions and their physical manifestations. In Emotions of Normal People, Marston proposed that people express their emotions through four primary responses.
According to Marston, the four primary types of emotional expression are related to how a person perceives him- or herself in relation to the environment. Marston organized these self-perceptions in a two-axis model. While the original model was quite technical, it can be best understood in terms of favorability and power. The first axis shows whether a person perceives the environment as favorable or unfavorable. The second axis shows a person’s perception of his or her own power within the environment. Specifically, this second axis measures whether a person views him- or herself as more or less powerful than the environment.
By weighing a person’s self-perceptions of these two axes, Marston proposed that his or her emotional state could be described using one of four behavioral styles. While Marston didn’t develop a psychological instrument to measure his theoretical model or determine one’s primary behavioral style over time, many researchers have continued to develop and refine such instruments over the past 80 years, ultimately resulting in the DiSC Behavioral Profile. While the labels for the four original styles have since been updated, Marston’s original theory remains the archetype of modern DiSC instruments such as the DiSC model described here.
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