The Ten States

A Rich Profile

The Ten States were created empirically, using well-established statistical tools, to distill thousands of AgileBrain® profiles into a set of highly differentiated segments, different from each other in meaningful ways.

LIS supplemented the AgileBrain data with a wide range of standard psychological inventories, including the “Big Five” (the foundation of MBTI, DiSC, and Enneagram), Strengths/Talents assessment, Holland Occupational Personalities, Emotional Intelligence Scale, Rokeach Values Survey, Locus of Control, Perceived Stress Scale, Brief COPE assessment of coping styles, Imposter Syndrome scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence scales, a series of well-being indicators, and full range of demographics.

Significantly, the data was also enriched with a full set of Acxiom data, from activities and home ownership to P$YCLE and Personicx. This cross-assessment analysis means that the Ten States can be understood from a complete 360-degree psychological perspective.

Close examination of a client’s AgileBrain® Profile and State offers many benefits to clients and agencies alike. The richness of the information can shed light on your customers and prospects:

Areas of hidden conflicts or blocked desires
Degree of emotional openness or reticence
Intensity of their emotional needs and valence (negative or positive)
Levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness or insecurity
Strengths, sense of self-efficacy, and locus of control

These characteristics go well beyond the “nice to know” for strategic marketers, with direct implications for:

How prospect and customers might best be engaged
The messages, themes, and benefits that will best resonate
The motivational energies that can best impel them toward happier, more fulfilled lives

The description of each state ends with these kinds of tips and suggestions to maximize the effectiveness of your points of contact.

Amiable Optimism

Aspiring Agreement

Cautious Concealing

Connection Craving

Diligent Struggling

Equality Seeking

Focused Striving

Mission Questing

Relief Seeking

Stress Revealing

Behind the 10 States Ten States by Strength

Working with Clients

DO

Review your client’s 10 State assignment before the debrief.

Use the Probing Questions and other insights you glean from the 10 State Profile to probe issues that you think might be present or absent in your client.

Come back to the 10 State assignment after the debrief to check what you learned.

DON'T

Please don’t share the 10 State assignment with your client: we don’t want to “label” people.

Assume that every 10 State attribute is present in your client; the States are developed based on large numbers of respondents with similar emotional need patterns; each person is unique.

The Ten AgileBrain States by Need Strength and Valence

Each state represents a meaningful share of the adult population, and each state varies meaningfully in terms of emotional needs. The ten states are summarized in the chart below.

Distinctive Sets of Emotional Needs

The chart above shows the distinctive patterns of emotional needs associated with each of the Ten States. These “semaphore flags” represent patterns of activation of positive promotion motivation (blue) and negative prevention motivation (orange). The “lit up” cells correspond to the AgileBrain® matrix, the revolutionary model of human emotional needs based on the first principles of four life domains and three levels of aspiration.