KYKO was developed based on the following premises:
Behavior is motivated by the inner states such as desires, needs, wants and motives.
Human behavior becomes observable when the inner states are energized. When we are hungry we look for food. When we are thirsty we look for water. When we want to be safe, we lock our gates and house, follow rules and regulations, buy insurance and save monies for the rainy day. When we are lonely we look for our friends, attend parties and join some clubs to share hobbies and our interests. When we want to project our image, we share our success stories, use a big car, live in a bungalow and buy branded stuff.
Psychodynamic Theories
Behavior is a function of our genes
Our behavior has descended from the family tree of a common ancestor. We inherited specific traits from the genes of the members of our family tree. It could be from our parents or grandparents or even from a grand uncle. We vary in the expression of our certain behavior because of variations in their genes. For example, we are stubborn because we have inherited the stubborn gene from a member of a family tree of our ancestor.
Evolutionary and Genetic Theory
Behavior is a function of our environment
Our environment in a significant way shapes our behavior. In a favorable environment, we experience pleasures and develop our positive traits. A person must experience love in order for one to give love. In an unfavorable environment, we experienced pains and develop our negative traits. When we are bullied we tend to be rebellious. When our family members are sacrificed in a war, we tend to seek revenge on our enemies.
Such behavior is controlled by our feelings. If you are nice to me I will be nice to you.
Likewise if you are nasty to me I will be nasty to you. Our behavior is also controlled by our thinking giving us a choice between being nice or nasty regardless of a favorable or unfavorable environment.
Behaviorist, Cognitive and Humanistic Theories
Behavior is a function of cognition
Our behavior is a product of our interaction with the environment. We learn through our social interactions, books, documents, observation, remodeling and from a significant other. We learn by observation and watching others. It implies that we can be trained or cultivated to grow our potentials and become a better being.
Social Cognitive Learning Theory
Human beings lie in the continuum of relatively healthy and unhealthy in their mental and psychological dispositions. (Sigmund Freud Psychoanalytic Theory)
Sigmund Freud posits that our psychological health is a function of the environment.
A favorable and conducive environment helps us to self-actualize and enhance our psychological health. On the contrary, an unhealthy or toxic environment de- actualizes causing us to deteriorate in our mental dispositions in line with the postulation of
Sigmund Freud that human being lies in the continuum of normal and abnormal. Clearly, human personality is not static; it is dynamic and is constantly changing for better or worse with new experiences.
Human personality lies in the continuum of dynamic and static
Evolutionary and Cognitive Theory
Static personality has a recognizable pattern of behavior found in simple humans that is persistent and consistent across situations and over time. On the contrary, dynamic personality patterns of behavior are found in complex humans where the patterns of behavior vary between situations and across time.
A dynamic personality may inherit some smart genes from the family line of their ancestors. Deprivation of dominant desires and basic needs could also further develop the dynamic aspects of our personality for our survival and growth.
No two human beings are alike even if they are identical twins growing up in the same environment due to genetic difference.
Evolutionary and Genetic Theory
No two persons are the same. Each person has a unique pattern of behavior. Every human being is unique like our thumb print. Putting a number on the typology of personality is too simplistic as the number of personality is infinite.
Based on the above premises, a five dimensional model of personality was established.
KYKO Five Dimensional Model of Personality
KYKO five dimensional personality models were established based on multiple theoretical constructs from renowned, well tested group of psychologists. Bernard attempts to combine their compatible views to predict patterns of behavior The five dimensional of personality profile are as follows: –
- Self-Actualizing Dimension
- Have high drives
- Take initiatives
- Show great enthusiasm
- Become highly motivated intrinsically
- Are active and energetic
- Work grudgingly
- Lack initiatives
- Have low drives
- Show boredom
- Are not motivated
- Lacks energy
- Lack interests
- Become passive and phlegmatic
- Are eager to grow one’s potentials
- Takes initiatives to learn new things
- Are trainable
- Seek continuous self-improvement
- Want to progress in life
- Personalities with low growth needs
- Show no interests in self-development
- Are indifferent to training
- Reluctant to improve oneself
- Not willing to learn
- Work long hard hours
- Chase after goals
- Responsible and committed to their job
- Accountable for one’s actions
- Focus on producing results
- Works at a slow pace
- Avoid taking responsibilities
- Are reluctant to chase after goals
- Not result oriented
- Lack of commitment
- Strong values system
- Good Intellectual skills
- High integrity
- Accept reality – living in the present rather than affected by the past and worrying about the future
- Highly ethical
- Positive attitude
- Possess strong principles
- Honest and trustworthy
- Treat others fairly
- Work toward building a better tomorrow
- Prone to temptation
- Weak values system
- Untrustworthy
- Negative attitude
- Unethical
- Low integrity
- Without principles
- Infringing others’ right
- Distorted thinking
- Egocentric Dimension
- Power- the need to take charge and lead others
- Ambition- the need to chase after position and status
- Recognition – the need to display achievements and gaining social status
- Aggression – the need to attack and provoke others
- Dominance – the need to control the environment
- Want to make decision and lead
- Enjoy competing with others
- Seek authority and status
- Want praises and recognition
- Believe they have the power to make things happen
- Are confident
- Live up to their image
- Want prestige
- Seek challenges in life.
- Are status-conscious
- Buy branded goods
- Live in styles
- Want to be in the limelight
- Confident and persistent to accomplish what they set out to do
- Are gentle
- Accommodative and lenient
- Lack confidence
- Are indecisive
- Subservient
- Soft-natured
- Permissive
- Humble and shy
- Keep a low profile
- Avoid being in the limelight
- Sociocentric Dimension
- Affiliation: Spending time with other people.
- Nurturance: Taking care of another person.
- Play: Having fun with others.
- Succorance: Being helped or protected by others.
- Like companionship and shower affection on them
- Emotional and sensitive
- Romantic and sentimental
- Seek social activities
- Make a lot of friends
- Help, cooperate and support friends
- Like to work things out together in teams
- Like partying
- Work together as a team
- Emphasize espirit de corps
- Promote group identity and cohesiveness
- Believe in working synergistically and symbiotically
- Enjoy doing solitary activities
- Aloof and detached
- Avoid parties
- Find difficulty in expressing their feelings
- Like to do things alone
- Have few friends
- Avoid social functions
- Security Dimension
- Follow rule and regulations
- Save monies for the rainy day
- Do things in systematic and methodical order
- Plan, organize and schedule their activities
- Buy insurance to protect themselves and to safeguard their future
- Prefer the status quo and would resist changes
- Want certainties of what they are doing
- Obey the laws and traffic rules
- Experiment with rules and regulations
- Tend to violate rules and regulations
- Spend monies lavishly
- Unmethodical and unsystematic in doing things
- Disorganize, unscheduled and messy
- Indifference in insuring themselves
- Prefer changes
- Prefer to work in a dynamic and turbulent environment
- Likely to beat the traffic rules
- Manipulative Dimension
- Are analytical and insightful
- See the world with many possibilities
- Flexible in their dealings
- Size up people and situations
- Adaptable to people and the environment
- Able to influence and persuade and convince others
- Lack foresight
- Docile and fixed
- Straightforward and naïve
- Susceptible to others’ influences
- Gullible and too trusting
- Maintain the status quo
- Hold on to traditions and customs
Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in slightly different ways.
Kurt Goldstein
Kurt Goldstein is the pioneer to introduce the concept of self-actualization. He defined self-actualization as the motive to realize all of one’s potentialities. He posits that an individual has the tendency to actualize one’s capabilities optimally to maximize one’ abilities to determine the path of one’s life.
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow in his five hierarchy of needs put self-actualization as the highest level.
Maslow explicitly defines self-actualization to be “the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for one to become actualized in what one is potentially.
This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” The late famous pop singer, Michael Jackson is clear example of a personality with high desire for fulfillment. He perfected the art of singing and dancing due to his great passion, joys and satisfaction of entertaining others.
Personalities with high desire for fulfillment have the following characteristics among others: They
On the contrary, personalities with low desire for fulfillment
Clayton P. Alderfer
Clayton P. Alderfer in his reaction to Abraham Maslow Five hierarchy of needs developed a three hierarchy of needs known as Existence. Relatedness and Growth needs. He put growth needs as the highest level. He posits that one’s has to grow one’s potentially continuously in order to be creative, productive and do meaningful tasks.
Based the above Alderfer’s concepts, Bernard redefined growth needs as the need, desire and want to seek knowledge, skills, competencies and treat learning as a life- long process.
Personalities with high growth needs will have the following characteristics:
David Mc Celland
Mc Celland in his Achievement Motivation theory proposed that they are two groups of people – the high achiever and the low achiever. The high achievers have an intense desire to accomplish goals in life while the low achievers are not bothered about chasing after goals. Bernard incorporates David Mc Celland need for achievement as part of self-actualization – a prerequisite to grow one’s potentials in order achieve one’s life goals.
Personalities with high need, want and desire for achievement have the following characteristics:
On the other hand, personalities with low need want or desire for achievement
Carl Rogers
Rogers posits that we, as human beings have underlying “actualizing tendency”, which aims to grow and develop our capacities and move us toward autonomy. This tendency is directional, constructive and a process for us to live a good and meaningful life. He conceives self-actualization as the peak of human development when a person becomes a fully functioning man. Bernard believes that when a person reaches this stage he or she has reached the highest level of maturity seeking goodness and wisdom and living a constructive, useful and meaningful life. Personalities who reach the peak of human development have the following characteristics:
Personalities who are immature and underdeveloped tend to drift along aimlessly; living a frustrated life filled with uncertainties, guilt, remorse and anxieties. They have the following characteristics:
Egocentric is defined as a desire or need for self-importance, pride, respect, recognition, and to control the environment – the part of a person’s self that is distinct and focus on self-image. Personality psychologists often deliberate in the interpretation of egocentric needs.
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow in his fourth hierarchy of needs posits egocentric needs as the desire for self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.
Mc Celland
Mc Celland in his 3-factor theory conceives egocentric needs as the desire for power.
This need is indicated by a person’s desire to dominate and control the behavior of others.
Such persons prefer jobs that provide them an opportunity to acquire leadership with power. There are two aspects of power accordingly to McClelland. These are positive and negative. Positive use of a power is necessary when one desires to achieve results through the efforts of others. The negative use of power is possible when a person uses power for personal aggrandizement.
Henry Murray
Henry Murray focused his study on the basic needs in personality which he called psychogenic needs. He posits that these needs are innate and are largely at the unconscious level of our minds. Murray develop a list of egocentric needs as listed below:
Bernard combines the compatible views of Maslow, Mc Celland and Murray to develop the second dimension of KYKO model. He defines the egocentric needs as a need, desire and wants for power, status, fame, style, image, recognition, respect, dominance and to take charge and control the environment.
Personalities with a high egocentric dimension have the following characteristics:
On the other hand, personalities with a low need for power, esteem, and taking charge and control others and the environment:
Sociocentric is defined as oriented toward or focused on social relationship.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow interprets sociocentric needs as the desire for love and belongingness in his third level of hierarchy of needs. As an individual, we need to love and be loved by others.
As social creatures, we need love, affection and sense of belonging with our friends and work groups. Our love and belonging needs include friendship, intimacy and desire to have a family
Murray
Murray conceives sociocentric needs as the desire for intimacy, to experience warmth, close, communicative exchanges and to spend time with other people. His list of affection needs is as below:
Mc Celland
Mc Celland views sociocentric needs as the need for affiliation, friendship, interaction and to be liked.
Personality with a high need for affiliation enjoys social interaction, working in group, making and sharing his or her interests with others.
Clayton Alderfer
Alderfer conceives sociocentric in his Relatedness needs as a desire for social involvement with family, friends, co-workers and employers.
Bernard incorporates the concepts of Maslow, Mc Celland and Murray and Alderfer to develop the third dimension of KYKO model. He defines sociocentric needs as a desire or need for love, care, belongingness, affiliation, social interaction and acceptance. People with high need for love, care, and companionship are compassionate and have a deep well for feelings. They
Alternatively, people with low need for love, care, affiliation and companionship are unemotional, individualistic and prefer to work things out on their own. They
The term security connotes the meaning of safety, protection, and well-being and out of danger.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow in his second hierarchy of needs interprets security needs as a desire for personal security from crime, financial security, health and well-being, and a safety net against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts.
These needs have to do with people’s yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work, this safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, and the like.
Murray
Murray interprets security as materialistic needs – a desire for obtaining and keeping things and making things neat and organized. His list of materialistic is as below:
• Acquisition: Obtaining things.
• Construction: Making things.
• Order: Doing things in a neat and organized manner.
• Retention: Keeping things
Clayton Alderfer
Alderfer notion of security is manifested in his existence needs, the first two levels of Maslow – physiological and safety needs.
Bernard incorporates the concepts of Maslow, Murray and Alderfer to develop the fourth dimension of KYKO model. He defines security needs as a desire for safety, order, structure, system and protection.
People with high need for security want safety, order, system, certainties and protection.
Contrarily, personality with low need for security want autonomy and freedom and are adventurous and carefree. They
The fifth dimension of KYKO model is the manipulative dimension developed base on the premise that human personality lies in the continuum of dynamic and static.
Dynamic personality portrays a pattern of behavior that varies across situation and over time. Static personality portrays a pattern of behavior that is persistent and consistent across situation and over time. The former pattern of behavior is complex, quite unpredictable and unrecognizable while the latter is simple, predictable and recognizable.
People with high need for survival and to satisfy dominant needs have a helicopter vision, see things from many angles and know many ways of making things happen. They
On the other hand people with low need for survival and to satisfy dominant needs have tunnel vision and see one way of getting things done. They
Conclusion
Clearly, the interpretations of KYKO personalities in the five dimensions as shown above are supported by a group of tested and renowned psychologists based on their premises and theoretical constructs. Hence, KYKO interpretations of human patterns of behavior are free from personal bias.