About

Dr. David Watterson is an organizational psychologist with 30 years of consulting experience and creator of the Watterson Personality Inventory (WPI), the validated psychometric foundation behind VITALS.

The WPI is a factor-analytic assessment that measures personality, motivation, career interests, thinking styles, and openness to change in a single 40-minute instrument. Unlike assessments that simply describe traits, the WPI was designed to answer the practical question: so what? As President of Watterson & Associates, Dave has spent three decades applying this framework to executive coaching, talent development, and organizational decision-making.

His philosophy is rooted in positive psychology: treating people as whole and complete rather than diagnosing deficits. VITALS' scientific development is conducted in partnership with Bowling Green State University's Industrial/Organizational Psychology program, ranked second nationally, ensuring rigorous validation and ethical oversight.

Dave holds a PhD in Counseling and Personnel Psychology from the University of Illinois and an MA in Clinical and Industrial Psychology from Cleveland State University.

Latest articles

October 5, 2026

Do People Change Their Personality? What the Research Actually Says

Yes, measurably, but slowly and in patterned directions, and far less year to year than most people expect. Here's what six decades of longitudinal research actually found.

Dr. David Watterson

Woman with a dog in a sunlit doorway in the afternoon

October 1, 2026

What Six Personality Dimensions Tell You That MBTI Can't

A four-letter type has sixteen possible outputs. Six continuous dimensions carry categories of information that no type letter encodes. Here is what each one adds, and what none of them can tell you.

Dr. David Watterson

September 23, 2026

Driver, Expressive, Amiable, Analytical: What the Social Styles Model Gets Right (and Wrong)

The four-quadrant Social Styles model is fast, observable, and useful for what it was built to do. Here's where a two-by-two loses information, and why VITALS' Social Style dimension is answering a different question.

Dr. David Watterson

Woman in a kitchen with long afternoon shadows

August 20, 2026

Personality Types vs. Personality Dimensions: What's the Difference?

MBTI gives you four letters. The Big Five gives you five numbers. The difference between a type and a dimension explains why one is more stable than the other, and what each one is actually built to do.

Dr. David Watterson