Page 12 - Appendix samples booklet

What is the theory behind ISC?

The origin of DISC lies in William Moulton Marston (1893-1947) work. He was a

lawyer and physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard that also invented the

first functional lie detector polygraph, authored self-help books, and created the Wonder

Woman comic. Marston proposed a model, theorizing that the behavioral expression of

emotions of normal people could be classified into four primary types, based on self-

perceptions and relationships: Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance

(DISC).

A checklist of adjectives marked as descriptors of the respondents themselves

based on Marston’s theory was developed by Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist,

who, used it for selecting personnel purposes since 1948. In 1956, Clarke’s personality

profile assessment was published as the Activity Vector Analysis (AVA), a psychometric

questionnaire designed to measure four personality vectors: emotional control, social

adaptability, aggressiveness, and sociability.

About 10 years later, Walter Clarke Associates developed a new version called Self

Discription, which was also used to create the original DISC Personal Profile System in the

1970s by John Geier, that conducted hundreds of clinical interviews. Geier’s company –

Performax – got the order for the assessment booklets back from the printer with a typo

– the letter I was not capitalized – and the company decided to copyright DiSC as their

brand to differentiate from others DISC assessments. Performax eventually became

Inscape Publishing, that improved the instrument’s reliability and published versions

along the way, including an online version of the paper profile. In 2012, Wiley, founded in

1807, acquired Inscape Publishing.