Psyfacts

In this section, you will find background information on psychological terms, concepts and models from the LINC PERSONALITY PROFILER Report.

The term ‘Advocatus Diaboli’ (AD) describes a role that is actively assigned to a member of a team, so that this team member critically questions all decisions of the team. The AD plays the ‘devil’s advocate’ by critically questioning even those decision alternatives that seem completely unproblematic at first glance. The purpose of this role is to ensure that potential problems and disadvantages of a decision are recognized in advance. Without such roles, team members often do not voluntarily express their concerns because they (perhaps even unconsciously) do not want to be seen as a negative ‘worrywart’.

Affiliation generally describes the need for social contact. This is expressed in the desire to feel secure and have a sense of belonging to other people and is particularly evident in emergency situations such as stress or illness.

“Active listening” is a method of communication that the listener of a conversation can use to encourage the speaker to talk. For example, the listener can signal through nonverbal encouraging gestures and facial expressions or occasional questions that they are listening attentively. The listener can also repeat what has been heard in their own words to confirm that the statements and feelings of the speaker have been understood.

Ambiguity tolerance is the extent to which a person can live with ambiguous or unclear situations, or even actively seeks such situations when it is highly developed. People with low ambiguity tolerance prefer to avoid uncertainty through rules, laws or regulations. They dislike it when seemingly incompatible things occur together, such as poverty and wealth in the same place. On the other hand, people with high ambiguity tolerance often put themselves in situations or places with which they have no prior experience.

In psychology, attribution refers to the assessment of the causes of certain outcomes, i.e. the perceived reason for the occurrence of a result or behavior.

  • In internal (dispositional) attribution, the causes of one’s own behavior or that of others are attributed to personal factors, such as character traits or attitudes.
  • In external (situational) attribution, the causes of one’s own behavior or that of others are attributed to situational factors, such as construction noise.

The type of attribution also influences how one deals with successes and failures. If someone attributes their successes primarily to internal causes, like their own abilities, this boosts their self-esteem. Conversely, if someone mostly attributes their successes to external factors such as luck, this negatively affects their self-esteem.

Beliefs are internalized certainties, i.e. assumptions and ideas that people have deeply internalized over the course of their development. They vary from person to person, but there are typical stories of their origin.

For example, people who received too little recognition for their achievements in childhood often develop beliefs like:

  • ‘I am not good enough!’
  • ‘I should achieve more!’
  • ‘I am not lovable!’


Beliefs have very concrete effects on daily life, influencing whether someone feels confident in tackling a task, whether they can be satisfied with what they have achieved and whether they consider themselves a lovable and special person.

For a very long time, people have been creating models that enable the precise and differentiated depiction of personality. The approach that comes closest to this ideal is the so-called Big Five model. When psychological researchers search for the fundamental dimensions of personality (-> factor analysis), they repeatedly encounter the same five basic dimensions:

  • Dimension 1: Extraversion vs. Introversion
  • Dimension 2: Conscientiousness vs. Flexibility
  • Dimension 3: Openness vs. Consistency
  • Dimension 4: Cooperation vs. Competition
  • Dimension 5: Sensitivity vs. Emotional Stability


This means that if you know the expressions of these five basic dimensions of a person, you can describe their personality very accurately, because you also have information about many other personality traits that are connected to or subordinate to these fundamental five. For example, the basic dimension of ‘Conscientiousness’ includes traits such as orientation towards order, performance, and discipline.

In the stress of everyday work, many people burn through their energy resources. The result often leads to burnout. This term refers to a prolonged state of psychological, physical and emotional exhaustion. An increasingly rapid downward spiral leads the affected individual from initial excessive ambition to an intensification of work effort, which then leads to the suppression of personal needs. This is followed by social withdrawal, a feeling of inner emptiness, and anxiety, which eventually culminate in despair and depression. The process can take from a few months to several years and is often recognized much too late. Self-reflection and a conscious approach to oneself, one’s own body and its energy reserves can help break this spiral in time.

In the process of organizational development, consultants are referred to as ‘Change Agents’. Unlike in the classic client-consultant relationship, the focus of the Change Agent is on organizational development processes and the responsibility and management of changes in terms of processes, structures, technologies and corporate culture.

Cohesion is the unity within a group that results from all the forces that motivate members to stay in the group and fight for the group.

Control beliefs refer to a person’s conviction that they can either determine and control the things that happen to them in life themselves (“internal control beliefs”) or that there is another power that has at least as great a share in their own fate as they do (“external control beliefs”). We internalize these thought patterns in the course of our development. They play a major role in the interpretation of events (e.g. Who is to blame?) and the view of one’s own life (e.g. What do I have in my own hands?).

Internal control beliefs are particularly widespread in countries with an individualistic lifestyle, while external control beliefs are associated with topics such as religion (God determines what happens), fatalism (everything is fate) or nihilism (everything is random). In contrast to self-efficacy beliefs, control beliefs are not about being able to solve a problem or not, they are only about who is responsible for the problem.

Competencies are abilities, skills and knowledge elements that enable a person to perform highly in a specific situation associated with a competency. Competencies are always linked to performance, meaning the stronger a competency is, the greater the potential performance capability in that area. Competencies can also be learned and are always related to a specific topic. For example, networking competency relates to successfully initiating contact with other people.

Coping refers to the different problem-solving styles that people develop to deal with stressful situations. There is a distinction between problem-oriented coping, where individuals try to work on the problem itself, and emotion-oriented coping, where the attempt is made to change one’s own feelings and thoughts about the problem that has arisen. Each person tends to certain problem-solving strategies that they apply in most situations. However, there is not ‘one right style’ that is always the best. Depending on the situation, different styles are most successful. For this reason, people can significantly benefit from expanding their repertoire of problem-solving styles. A sensible way to do this is through analysis of one’s own personality and targeted personality development.

Decision heuristics are thought patterns that enable us to make quick decisions, even on complex or inherently difficult topics. However, they also always carry the risk of making decisions too hastily and not carefully considering all information in the decision-making process.

Cognitive dissonance describes incompatible thoughts, opinions, attitudes, desires or intentions that create an internal conflict in a person. This internal conflict is perceived as unpleasant and triggers the need to reduce this dissonance. There are two ways to do this:

Example with alcohol: I know it is harmful to health, but I´m still going to drink it (cognitive dissonance).

Solution: The dissonance is relativized/changed
–> I have been drinking alcohol for a long time and I am still healthy. So it can’t be that bad.

Solution: The amount of dissonance is reduced overall by adopting new consonant arguments
–> The party is better with alcohol; I forget my worries when I drink; everyone else drinks too.

Our handling of cognitive dissonances is connected to how we cope with difficult situations (Coping). Both can be learned and changed through self-reflective behavior.

People who think divergently tend to approach problems in an open, playful and unsystematic way. It is typical that critical objections and thought blockades are switched off in the process. Often, a connection to a person’s creativity is seen here. In contrast to divergent thinking is convergent thinking, which describes a more conventional way of problem-solving where people approach problems systematically, logically and rationally. This type of problem-solving is often associated with intelligence.

Factor analysis is a statistical method used to reduce a large number of various factors to as few fundamental factors as possible. Crucially, the remaining factors (personality traits) represent the basic building blocks of every person’s personality. All other personality traits can be assigned to one of these basic building blocks and are therefore subordinate to them. This is why factor analysis helps us identify the key characteristics of personality that we need to measure and describe in order to characterize a person’s personality.

Groupthink refers to a dangerous mode of thinking that people fall into when they are members of a loyal group, where the members’ efforts for harmony override their motivation to realistically evaluate alternative paths and information. Everyone wants to agree and no one pays attention to the looming danger of failure.

In the Halo effect, knowledge about a specific trait of a person dominates the overall impression of that person. This one salient trait overshadows all other traits like a halo, causing other characteristics to be neglected and no longer objectively assessed.

Traits particularly predisposed to the Halo effect include attractiveness and eloquence (the ability to express oneself exceptionally well). Everyone is susceptible to this bias; even if one is aware of it, it cannot be prevented. It can only be made conscious. This effect is a major problem, especially in selection decisions. It can be counteracted, for instance by systematically using assessment forms, i.e. asking and evaluating all candidates according to a consistent pattern.

Highly sensitive people perceive stimuli of all kinds from their environment more intensely than the average population and typically process them more deeply or intensely. This leads to more intense sensory impressions, which need more space and occupy the affected individuals for a longer time than others. Often, those who are not affected lack an understanding of these longer processing times, which can lead to stress and a feeling of being misunderstood in highly sensitive individuals.

The focus of the Leader-Member-Exchange Theory (LMX) by Graen & Cashman (1975) is on the relationship between a leader and each individual employee. According to LMX, effective leadership is primarily achieved through dyadic relationships between the leader and the individual employee, distinguishing it from common leadership situations where a superior exerts power and social influence over the entire workforce or organization.

Motives are the driving forces behind character traits that propel us to want to achieve a specific goal. In the field of motivation research, there are primarily three classes of motives for which a lot of evidence has been found. It is therefore assumed that these are the three fundamental motivational areas that have evolved in human evolution:

  • The power motive (also known as the leadership or dominance motive): The desire of a person to exert influence and dominance, to represent superiority and strength and to be visible to others.
  • The achievement motive: Characterized by great ambition and striving for success, increased risk-taking and perseverance.
  • The social motive (also known as the affiliation motive): People with a strong social motive strive to establish, maintain and restore close relationships with others.

Since motives are an integral part of personality, capturing and depicting the motives underlying behavior enables a deeper understanding of one’s own personality.

Narcissism is understood as strong vanity or self-love, where individuals with narcissistic tendencies constantly strive to be admired by others. Posting selfies and actively using social media are modern manifestations of narcissistic behavior. Narcissists are primarily self-centered and show little empathy. Their strong fear of being slighted often makes their reactions unpredictable. In its extreme form, narcissism is also characterized as a type of inferiority complex, which is compensated for by a strong need for recognition.

Norms are official and unofficial rules of behavior, for example in a group, a company or an entire country (cultural norms). Norms are generally shared expectations and thus unwritten laws about how one should behave if, for example one wants to be an accepted member of a group or a company. Deviant behavior is usually not tolerated and as a result, norms to some extent control our behavior and are internalized bit by bit.

Persistence refers to a personality trait which, when strongly developed, leads a person to continue working towards a goal in the face of problems, resistance and setbacks, without being deterred. Psychological studies show that high persistence is closely associated with professional success, but in its extreme form can lead to problems in social contact with others (stubbornness).

According to Asendorpf (2007), ‘the personality of a person is understood as the totality of his or her personality traits.’ It is the unique structure of relatively constant characteristics that distinguish a person from others. Personality is malleable and describes an interplay of cognitive, emotional and motivational processes within a person.

Procrastination refers to a person’s tendency to continually postpone unpleasant tasks and instead engage in other activities that seem less unpleasant at the moment.

From the perspective of social psychology, the concept of resilience is understood as a person’s ability to withstand and overcome adverse circumstances, even under extremely unfavorable conditions and nevertheless maintain a high quality of life.

Especially today, with increasing pressure and stress, resilience is extremely helpful for mental health and should be developed if it is not yet strongly present.

Self-control is the ability to resist and control impulses. As part of the marshmallow experiment, Walter Mischel examined children to see whether they had the ability to give up an immediate reward (a marshmallow) in order to receive a reward in the future (a second marshmallow after 15 minutes). A few years later, W. Mischel established a connection between self-control and professional success.

The self-concept is our subjective image of ourselves. The self-concept contains all knowledge and evaluations about our personality, attitudes and ideas. It provides the answer to questions such as: What kind of person am I? What makes me special? As a rule, people develop a positive self-concept and try to maintain it. We use a whole range of mechanisms to do this, such as selective perception (only what fits the self-concept is perceived) or selective memory (what does not fit the self-concept is forgotten more quickly). If a child receives too little positive feedback, there is a risk that a critical or even negative self-concept will develop. Unfortunately, the mechanisms described above, which also stabilize a negative self-concept, also work here. It is possible to change a negative self-concept. However, this requires motivation, time and professional support.

Self-efficacy describes a typical human thought pattern. In contrast to control beliefs, it is not about having control over what you do, but about being convinced that you will find solutions to life’s challenges.

Self-efficacy therefore describes the conviction that you can carry out an action successfully. The stronger this conviction is that one is up to a task or challenge, the more likely it is that the person concerned will take on a task. Self-efficacy beliefs can be strengthened but also weakened, for example by previous successes or failures, by observing role models, by statements from the social environment or by interpreting physical sensations such as a racing heart or sweating.

Selective perception refers to the phenomenon that people only pay attention to and process a small proportion of all available and accessible stimuli. We are bombarded with millions of pieces of information every second. Our brain is trained to filter this information according to importance and only allow the information that is relevant to us to pass through. The so-called cocktail party phenomenon is particularly well known in this regard. If you are talking to the person opposite you at a cocktail party, all other conversations become incomprehensible babble because they are not relevant. Unless someone somewhere says your name. This stimulus is let through because it is relevant. You turn your head and want to know who is talking about you.

Sensation Seeking is a character trait that, when strongly pronounced, leads a person to continuously seek experiences filled with intense sensory impressions. The word ‘sensation’ in this context is best translated as ‘sensory impression’ that is continuously sought to avoid feelings of boredom or eventlessness. A high degree of Sensation Seeking is particularly evident in highly extraverted individuals. It is most easily satisfied through contact with other people, as nothing else provides as many sensory impressions for us as other people, to whose perception we are specialized.

People process and store the things they perceive by sorting these things into mental categories. This happens from early childhood. We form categories of similar elements in order to cope with the complexity of the environment. These categories become increasingly differentiated in the course of life. For example, a child first forms the category human, then distinguishes animals from humans, then animal species and finally, for example, dog breeds as a subcategory of the category dogs.

In addition to categories, we also sort our knowledge into scripts. A script contains the appropriate behaviors in a specific social situation. For the wedding category, for example, the script contains smart clothes, a gift for the bride and groom, throwing rice, etc. If a person finds themselves in a situation that is completely new to them, they have no script, which is often perceived as uncomfortable or even frightening. Possible strategies are then: observation, recourse to scripts from similar situations or asking or googling.

Stereotypes are beliefs about the characteristics of a group that are shared by many people in a society. People belonging to a certain group are ascribed characteristics or abilities that are considered characteristic of this group. Stereotypes are not based on facts, but on stories, half-knowledge or propaganda. They are an attempt by our consciousness to have an idea of the nature and intentions of people we do not actually know, so that we do not have to go into a social situation completely unprepared. Examples of stereotypes: footballers are stupid, tattooed people are not very professional, martial artists are aggressive.

Stress is an emotional reaction to stressful stimuli. People interpret events in different ways, so the same event can have very different effects on two people. An event is always stressful for a person if they interpret it as stressful; stress can therefore be defined as the negative feelings and beliefs that occur whenever people feel unable to cope with the demands of their environment.

Transformational leadership describes an approach to leadership in which the relationship between leader and follower is not organized purely in terms of exchange (e.g. work performance in return for pay), but rather the leader exerts a direct influence on the follower through their behavior. The person being led can orient himself towards the leader, shares his vision and thus changes his own behavior or his view of the work (this is the transformation).

A trait (disposition) is a medium-term stable characteristic of a person that does not significantly change at least over weeks or months. Examples include intelligence, creativity, sociability, conscientiousness, etc. Trait theory (dispositional theory) assumes that traits cause individuals to exhibit certain behaviors in specific situations. Although a person’s behavior varies somewhat across different situations, the totality of their behaviors allows for distinguishing between this person and others. The more of these traits of a person one can describe, the better one does justice to them as a person.

Typology is the attempt to categorize many different people into as few basic types as possible.

Advantage: In theory, you can say a lot about a person without knowing much about them.

Disadvantage: In practice, typologies are not very helpful as they represent an inadmissible simplification of personality and cannot do justice to the individual person in any way.

Types are rigid concepts that do not adequately reflect a person’s complex personality. Instead, they tend to create stereotypical ideas. It is particularly critical when typologies are made on the basis of physical characteristics. Personality always represents a combination of different characteristics from all existing types.