DISC personality types · Statistics
C was the most common primary style (36.7%) and I the least (18.3%). Seven in ten people had a blend.
Fig 01 · Primary style, n = 1,135
Among 1,135 people who finished our free DISC assessment, 36.7% led with C (Conscientiousness), 25.0% with D (Dominance), 20.0% with S (Steadiness) and 18.3% with I (Influence).
Primary style is the highest of the four scale means. 118 people (10.4%) had an exact tie for first place; ties resolve in the order D, I, S, C, which gives D a small lift.
Fig 02 · Four single styles and twelve blends
The most common single result was CS, The Refiner (13.8%). Its mirror, SC, was second. The four opposite-corner blends (DS, SD, IC, CI) together made up 11.7%.
| Rank | Result | Name | People | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CS | The Refiner | 157 | 13.8% |
| 2 | SC | The Steward | 149 | 13.1% |
| 3 | C | Conscientiousness alone | 132 | 11.6% |
| 4 | DC | The Finisher | 95 | 8.4% |
| 5 | CD | The Standard-Bearer | 93 | 8.2% |
| 6 | D | Dominance alone | 81 | 7.1% |
| 7 | I | Influence alone | 81 | 7.1% |
| 8 | DI | The Pacesetter | 76 | 6.7% |
| 9 | ID | The Rainmaker | 48 | 4.2% |
| 10 | IC | The Translator | 41 | 3.6% |
| 11 | IS | The Connector | 38 | 3.3% |
| 12 | S | Steadiness alone | 36 | 3.2% |
| 13 | CI | The Trusted Voice | 34 | 3.0% |
| 14 | DS | The Stalwart | 32 | 2.8% |
| 15 | SD | The Backbone | 26 | 2.3% |
| 16 | SI | The Host | 16 | 1.4% |
Fig 03 · Primary style by country
Only the United States and Australia had more than 100 people. Every other country is grouped, because a split on fewer than 100 would be noise presented as a finding.
| Where | People | C | D | S | I |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 466 | 35.4% | 22.3% | 17.8% | 24.5% |
| Australia | 123 | 40.7% | 25.2% | 21.1% | 13.0% |
| 68 other countries | 546 | 36.8% | 27.3% | 21.6% | 14.3% |
C leads everywhere. In the United States I comes second (24.5%); elsewhere D does. With 123 Australians the margin of error on any one share is roughly nine points, so treat that row as a sketch.
Method
The instrument is SMP DISC Styles v1: 40 original statements, ten per style, each rated on its own five-point scale and balanced with reverse-keyed statements. Each style gets a mean from 1 to 5. The highest is the primary style, and a second letter is added when the runner-up sits within 0.4 of it.
We counted everyone who reached a results page in the assessment's first seven weeks online; the window closes on the date at the foot of this page. Each person is counted once, on their first result. People who opened someone else's shared result are excluded. Styles were recomputed from the four scores carried in each result link, and 10 records with out-of-range scores were dropped.
Answers are scored in the browser and never stored with a name or an email, so there is no age, gender or job data to split by. Device was 52.7% desktop and 47.3% mobile.
Read this before quoting a number
This is not the general population. It is people who searched for a DISC assessment and finished 40 questions, a majority of them on a desktop, which usually means at work. Careful, task-first people are more likely to do both.
The scales are also not equally easy to agree with. Average scores across everyone were C 3.78, S 3.55, D 3.53 and I 3.30 out of 5. With no norms applied, a scale that is easier to endorse wins more often, which is part of why C leads.
Forced-choice DISC instruments, which most publishers use, produce different distributions by design. Figures from different instruments should not be compared as if they measured the same thing.
Common questions
In our data it is C, Conscientiousness: 36.7% of 1,135 people led with it, ahead of D (25.0%), S (20.0%) and I (18.3%). Other publishers report S or I as the most common, from different instruments and different samples. None of these is a census. The honest answer is that it depends on who was measured and how.
Among the four primary styles, I was the least common in our sample at 18.3%. Among all sixteen possible results, the rarest was SI, The Host, at 1.4%. Rare does not mean better or worse; it means fewer of the people who took this assessment answered that way.
Yes. 70.9% of results carried a second letter, because the runner-up style sat within 0.4 of the leader on a five-point scale. Only 29.1% had one style standing clear of the other three.
Yes, with the sample described: 1,135 self-selected people who completed the free SeeMyPersonality DISC assessment in its first seven weeks online (the window closes on the date at the foot of the page). Please link to this page so readers can see the method and the limits.
About this page
Michael Hodge, BSc Psychology (University of Wollongong), founder of SeeMyPersonality, wrote the assessment and ran this analysis. Research and review standards. The figures will be refreshed as the sample grows, and the date below will change when they are.
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