Congruence in psychology - what is it, examples

Congruence in psychology - this is when your actions, words and everything connected with you are in agreement and in accordance with each other.

Let's look at a more detailed definition.

Congruence is the consistency of your thoughts, words and actions with each other. That is, this is the complete correspondence of your verbal and non-verbal signals to each other. As a rule, it comes from a state of internal harmony and comfort of a person with himself.

This concept itself was invented by the American psychologist Carl Rogers .

In English, the term is written and sounds like " congruence [ˈkɔŋgrʊəns] ".

Synonyms are the words: authenticity, genuineness .

Each person you talk to has little mechanisms that look at what you say and determine whether you are the person you say you are or not.

Why is it so important?

What does congruence give?

All the benefits and benefits

Congruence gives you the following benefits:

1. Allows you to be natural and be yourself. Projection of the real self.
2. Don't feel pressure from others.
3. A healthy ecosystem of emotions.
4. Be relaxed and feel good.
5. Sincere and attractive presentation and expression of oneself.
6. Less effort and less unnecessary energy expenditure.

The formula for self-confidence is when every action you take is consistent with your thoughts, emotions and your ideal life.

How to achieve it

How to develop this quality in yourself:

• Be sincere and honest with yourself and everyone around you. This is the main position.
• When communicating with people, don’t try at all, don’t make any effort.
• Be as natural as possible.
• Do not change your tone of voice and do not adapt to someone else's tone and manner of speech.
• Don't resist your current state! Accept it completely.
• Don't close or hide your emotions.

Sincerity and honesty towards yourself and everyone around you is the key

Communicate with all people sincerely and honestly. In any case, answer people's questions honestly.

This is super important.

It is very easy to start lying to yourself and other people.

The question is that many men and women on this planet do not think about the fact that if you start lying even at a microscopic moment, this is already a path that makes you feel worse .

The point is that if you are sincere and honest with yourself and the people around you, then you cannot feel bad about it. There is nothing in this paradigm that will have a bad effect on you.

Then all questions about what congruence is are immediately closed. Because if there is internal harmony, then no one will destroy it.

From here, the corresponding correct words and actions will be generated from the correct state.

When is a person congruent?

• when he speaks and acts in accordance with his values ​​and goals
• when a person is calm inside and calm on the outside
• when a person’s words and deeds do not diverge
• there is no internal conflict about one’s own actions, thoughts and desires
• when what you do here and now is in harmony with your deepest values. We can say that one of the manifestations and necessary conditions of congruence is an honest, trusting relationship with oneself.

A congruent person attracts people with him, people listen to him and are ready to follow him. A person whose words, actions and non-verbal body language express the same thing is perceived as “sincere.”

If we see that the actions and attitude of the person himself do not correspond to each other, we can talk about incongruence. The presence of incongruity in some context almost always indicates internal conflict.

What is it like to communicate with a congruent person?

How to easily recognize congruent and genuine people during communication, what qualities they possess:

• A congruent person is, first of all, one who never lies or lies to others.
• Such a person is attractive and inspires trust.
• Such people want to open up , because you are also drawn into his sincere and open communication without falsehood.
• Such a person knows how to easily find a common language with other people.

The more you match the behavior that is most authentic and natural to you now, the more people will trust you, because they see who you are.

Congruent relationships with people are, first of all, relationships built on complete sincerity, openness and trust in each other.

For example

Let's look at examples of congruent behavior:

1. If a person is really in a relaxed mood, and in his words and presentation he corresponds to his state and energy, then in this case there will be congruent communication and natural communication.
2. If a person is truly at high energy and his words and actions fully correspond to this, then the person will also be congruent. In general, there is nothing wrong with high energy.
3. I'll give another example of a guy's congruence towards an unfamiliar girl . The guy sees this girl, he really likes her and is attracted to him. He approaches her and immediately speaks of his intentions. He openly says that he is very attracted to the girl, that she is very pretty and he likes her. He doesn't fuss, doesn't beat around the bush, doesn't talk about strange and inappropriate things. The guy simply sincerely shows his intentions and desires , without hiding anything.

We describe in more detail how a guy can naturally communicate and get to know a girl without wasting energy, here at the link.

Why learn to notice congruence and incongruity?

• By determining the level of congruence of other people, you can find out how sincere and confident they are in their words, which is generally useful in a world where not everyone and not everything is useful to believe
• In the work of a consultant, one of the signs of successful steps towards solving a problem is an increase in the client’s congruence. And the very presence of incongruity in some context may indicate a potential problem or pain with which the client is unable to interact constructively - use this in your work as a marker for searching
• When we communicate with people, our own congruence inspires trust in the listener. A congruent person wants to believe and can “lead.” Interestingly, we read and note precisely nonverbal signs of congruence, while we do not have to agree with what the person says.
• Noticing our own incongruity in some situations, we can quickly detect our internal conflicts and use this information as a reason and hint to deal with them, making our lives independent of the attitudes and problems of the past

Congruence in an anecdote: A conversation between two friends: - Listen, why do you love your boyfriend so much? – He has great sex! – Does he know a bunch of super poses? – No, it’s just that when he has sex, he doesn’t do anything else!

Reasons for incongruent actions in people

Trying hard in front of others

A person tries to impress and uses too high a tone, although this does not correspond to his inner calm state.

He speaks too quickly, tries too hard, and puts in unnecessary effort. He can do this both consciously and unconsciously.

A person cannot maintain such communication for a long time, because this is his incongruent state. If he was really wound up and had a high emotional high, then he would be congruent.

Trying not to try

Overly playful communication, trying to appear relaxed and smooth in front of people, although you are not - this is incongruence on your part.

For example, you try to make your voice too low in front of a girl when yours is actually louder.

The problem is that if you forcefully struggle to maintain high energy and a strong presentation of yourself, then you will quickly get tired and will not be able to communicate like that for a long period of time.

As a result, you will eventually begin to leak yourself, or your interlocutor will do it.

Deep reasons, what is the root cause of everything

Let's look at the underlying causes of incongruity:

• People try to demonstrate high-status behavior when communicating, actually have high status
• At first, a person may be able to retain this behavior, but after a while it no longer works.
• The reason is that you don't have this high value, and you don't like it, and you resist it!

This is the reason for the emergence of internal resistance.

When you resist what is, you become incongruent.

How to regain a girl's self-confidence: informed and wise tips for women on how to gain self-confidence.

How to become a liberated person: an article about how to overcome shyness in communication, how to get rid of shyness and modesty.

We describe how to build a relationship between a guy and a girl with complete mutual understanding, trust and sincerity at this link.

How to solve a problem - a useful exercise

Develop this high-status behavior and build it in the most natural and natural way.

The exercise of “non-resistance” is useful for developing congruence.

Choose a quiet, calm place and communicate with all the people there. Be completely yourself and don't resist anything.

The key to the exercise is that when you feel the need to do something that you don't want to do, you still DON'T do it.

Main key points of this exercise:

• If you are nervous, it means you are NOT trying to hide your nervousness and are letting it come out. You express it verbally or non-verbally, through gestures.
• You should not and are not obliged to say or do anything forcibly.
• Whatever you feel , you naturally speak and voice it.
• After 20 minutes of communicating with different groups of people, you will feel the fire. Your brain will wake up and be carried away by this process. Read more about how to be passionate about the process and motivation here.
• The benefit is that instead of playing someone else's role, you are yourself .
• At first there will be awkwardness because your brain is not awake. It's all simple.
• Ask yourself: How am I feeling right now? – and correspond to this state.
• Your brain wakes up and engages from this natural and congruent position. The brain understands that people accept your natural state and who you are at the moment .
• Don't run away or leave the interaction too early. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions.
• Don't resist anything!

The concept of incongruity and incongruity

The concept of incongruence was mentioned above, but let's look at it in more detail. What kind of person can be called incongruent?

An example would be a simple situation. The students successfully wrote the test, and the teacher indifferently tells them: “Children, I want to praise you. You did a great job, I’m glad.” Meanwhile, the teacher’s face does not express anything, his gaze is indifferent, his posture is closed (arms crossed on his chest). A typical example of a discrepancy between nonverbal behavior and spoken words.

Simply put, we are talking about a mismatch of information transmitted over a communication channel. Sometimes it appears by itself, when a person does not admit that he is dissatisfied with something, but his appearance speaks for itself.

Considering individual examples, one can verify that the role of inconsistency of components in communication is very significant. Whatever you say and show with your own behavior of your own free will, there are a number of other signals (in intonation, gaze, body position) that betray reality. Do additional signals contradict what was said? Communication may not go well, despite the fact that you are convinced that everything you said was correct and as expected of you. The interlocutor or an outside observer may subconsciously perceive the difference.

Another example. After a quarrel with your loved one, you decide to improve your relationship. You are unhappy with him, yourself, the situation, but you close your eyes to it, say that you want to start over. You probably want to believe what you say. The interlocutor also wants to believe this, but you or he still subconsciously demonstrate disappointment, uncertainty about the desire for reconciliation and doubts about the ability to correct the situation. Unconvincing speech, intonation, etc. may give you away. Not everything in behavior confirms the voiced message. Congruent communication implies the coincidence of verbal and nonverbal manifestations. It is important to notice these correspondences not only in yourself, but also in others.

In what cases is it useful to distinguish between such manifestations? Examples

• the saleswoman claims that the product is “normal”, but her behavior raises doubts;
• a child with a noticeable abrasion on his forehead says that he “fell himself,” but his appearance indicates that he is shielding someone;
• a friend claims to know a shortcut to his destination, while looking around uncertainly.

There can be many such examples. A person claims one thing, but based on non-verbal signs another is suspected. If this is important to you, do not cast aside doubts and suspicions, analyze what you hear and see.

When is incongruity useful and how to identify it

In some contexts, incongruity is beneficial. We may be ruminating about a future vacation during a boring work meeting or a long parent-teacher conference at school. We can remember the pleasant moments of a recent visit to the dentist. These internal processes allow you not to concentrate on unpleasant moments in the present, to distract yourself from the irritating factor.

Do you want to recognize incongruence in your partner's communication? This cannot be achieved without careful tuning of perceptual systems.

It is recommended to master the “art of reflection”, paying attention to the nuances:

1. hands
   : their gestures, relaxed or not, clenched or not, palms “looking” up or not;
2. breath

   : calm and relaxed or intermittent and tense;

3. legs

   : relaxed posture or tense (swaying, twitching).

Facial expression is important: eyebrows, mouth, sidelong glance, “crooked” smile, clenched teeth. Analyze, listen to the voice, tonality, monitor the tempo of speech and its volume. Recognize emotional patterns (uncertainty, anxiety).

How to respond to incongruity

If you feel uncomfortable with a noticed incongruity, one response is to ignore it. You can decide for yourself that you have recognized it, but do not check your guesses. This is not always appropriate.

Example: you are worried about your sick mother, you suspect that her condition has worsened, but she claims that everything is fine. You can use the so-called meta-commentary: “I look at you and don’t see that everything is fine.” This statement confronts a person with the contradiction you have identified. Usually the interlocutor reveals new facts to this remark, from which you can form a more detailed picture.

Causes

There are two most common causes of incongruent behavior:

• The desire to appear better
  . Trying to make the right impression, a person commits actions that are inappropriate for his condition. This happens consciously and unconsciously.
• The desire to convince others of a high status
  that in reality does not exist. The person is dissatisfied with the current situation, resists it, and demonstrates incongruent behavior. At first, a person copes with the task, but gradually becomes exhausted, and internal resistance appears.

Unconscious and conscious incongruity is harmful to the individual and requires careful analysis.