Emotional Response & DISC Behaviours

The Role of Emotional Response in Shaping DISC Behaviours

In the previous article, we explored the link between personality and mental health, focusing on the relationship between emotional response (neuroticism) and poor mental well-being. Individuals with heightened emotional responses are often vulnerable to stress, struggle with coping mechanisms, and face challenges in interpersonal relationships.

Emotional response refers to the tendency to experience negative emotions and distress. These responses are often triggered by daily interactions and events, leading to states such as anxiety, guilt, and depression. Individuals prone to these negative emotions may find routine events overwhelming and perceive minor problems as significant sources of distress. While these experiences can be intense, such individuals remain in touch with reality and can still function effectively.

For DISC practitioners, an important question arises: how does emotional response impact the Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Compliance (C) dimensions? Although emotional response is not part of the original concept introduced by Marston, it offers valuable insights.

Consider self-consciousness, a form of emotional response characterized by heightened awareness of being observed or evaluated by others. It relates to behaviours such as impression management and reactions to social feedback. Being observed or ignored by a group or given an ambiguous feedback tend to heighten their self-consciousness. This could in turn generate feelings of embarrassment, social awkwardness and inferiority.

Consider a high I person with an equal dose of high emotional response. A high I is extraverted, socially active and gregarious. When it is combined with high emotional response, he is socially aware – knowing what is going on in the environment on a social level and is sensitive to social feedback or cues. While this seems characteristic of the high I, he is however possessed by a sense of caution on how he ought to behave socially. He tends to fit social norms, being careful of what and how he comes across socially and he is generally well behaved. There is in addition the constant attempt to impression-manage how he wants others to view him. If this sounds exhausting to you, you are right. High self-consciousness individuals fear being judged by others contributing to stress.

Conversely, a high I individual with low emotional response may still be outgoing, socially active and gregarious but is less concerned with others’ opinions and social norms. He is not too bothered with what others think of him and consequently does not see the need to fit into social norms. He is free with what he does and says. While this stress-free approach might be appealing, it can also lead to perceptions of social insensitivity and disregard for social cues. Without the emotional response awareness, the risks of being oblivious and insensitive to the environment are raised.

If emotional response impacts the behaviours of the D, I, S and C dimensions, does this enlighten you to understand how two persons with similar profiles behave differently?