Natural and adapted personality styles
Have you ever been answering questions in a personality type test and thought: ‘well, that depends on the situation’? Do you sometimes feel like different persons at work and at home? Well, most of us do. One way to look at this is by becoming aware of the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘adapted’ personality styles.
Natural personality style
Your natural personality style is your ‘default’ way of doing things: how you are without putting effort in it. It is how you tend to behave when you are in a place where you feel comfortable. These intrinsic preferences that show up spontaneously, unconsciously, and typically don’t change a lot throughout your lifetime.
Adapted personality style
Your adapted personality style is how you behave in a particular context in order to be successful in that context, such as in your job. You behave in ways that (you think) are valued and expected in the environment you are in. This isn’t being inauthentic: it is just how you learned to adjust to different situations.
This explains how your personality can look differently in different contexts. The culture of your company or family influences the way you show up in these environments. And environments you spend a lot of time in play a role in shaping your personality and preferences.
How can we find our natural and adapted personality styles?
The distinction between these two styles is made by some providers of the DISC personality type assessment. DISC is a model that looks at the different ways people behave. It consists of a diagram along two axes (introversion/extraversion and people-oriented/task-oriented), thus creating four personality types that each correspond with a letter from the acronym ‘DISC’.
Partly because it is a relatively simple framework, the DISC assessment is one of the most popular personality tools for businesses. It helps people to understand themselves and their colleagues better and work together more effectively. Sometimes companies use it as an aid in hiring decisions or to see if an employee fits the preferred characteristics for a certain role.
How do DISC assessments measure natural and adapted personality styles?
Assessments typically first ask you how you see yourself: you have to choose from a number of options what you are most likely to do or what word most represents you.But some assessments then also ask you who you are not: you have to indicate which from the given options is least like you.
The assessment then generates your adapted style from what you answered is most like you – how you see yourself. Your natural style is generated from what you answered is least like you – what you reject. The idea is that people are better at describing who they are not than at who they are. Our own idea of who we are is often blurred by an idealized or otherwise inaccurate self-image.
One DISC assessment company published a white paper explaining the theory and science behind this self-identity framed by negation, conluding that “when we say we are NOT something is a stronger reaction and a clearer indicator than when we say we ARE something.”
DISC versus other personality models
Distinguishing between natural and adapted personality styles works well in the DISC model, because its four different types differ from each other in terms of behavior. After all, it is relatively easy for us to adapt our behavior as needed. This also explains why many people identify with more than one quadrant in the DISC model.
Other personality systems are inherently more oriented toward natural styles, as they seek to describe our hard-wired personality. For example, the MBTI types are based on cognitive patterns and the Enneagram types on motivations. These change less over a lifetime than behaviour does, but are also less visible. This in turn explains why these models are more prone to mistyping.
Where can I take an assessment?
There are several online options for DISC assessments that also measure natural and adapted personality styles, both paid and free. It may be interesting to take several different tests or take the same one several times while thinking of your behavior in a different environment.
Why is this important to know?
There might be no difference, indicating that you are not adapting a great deal in different situations. If your two personality styles are dissimilar, this means that you are, in the assessed context, behaving differently than what your natural tendency would be. This reflects a higher degree of adaptability.
Both are fine, but too much difference over a long time can create tension. Adapting your behavior away from what is natural to you comes at an energy cost. If you find that your styles are different and that you are experiencing stress or mental exhaustion, you may want to ask yourself if you can change your responsibilities to be more in line with your internal constitution.
What is the link with culture?
On this website, I try to bring personality and culture together by showing that they are profoundly interrelated. Both personality and culture influence what a person does and thinks. Cultures, of course, exist in many forms and on many levels: a family, a company, and a country all have a culture.
As environment has an impact on what you do, we can imagine that over time, it can even influence who you are. Imagine having spent all of your life in a culture that greatly values, say, competition. Over time this value gets so deeply engrained into your way of doing things and suit the culture so effortlessly that you will hardly know anymore that it is something that you had to learn.
Some people’s personalities fit their culture’s standards like a glove, while others always have to exert efforts to live up to what is considered valuable in their culture. There is a variety of the DISC model that provides insight in this: the Global DISC has mapped national cultures on top of the four personality styles.
The difference between natural and adapted personality styles can also help us understand why individuals from separate cultures who behave differently can have the same personality type. Personality type shows up differently across cultures.
