Congruence is the acceptance of oneself as a whole person. What is congruence, or why are good manners harmful?
Congruence- this is the consistency of different elements, objects, components of any structure, their coordinated work and compliance with each other, thanks to which harmonious work and integrity are achieved general structure. This definition is generalized, as it is understood in a broad sense, i.e. its application in various fields of activity and sciences: communication, psychology, mathematics, philosophy, sociology.
Congruence is a synonym - consistency, coincidence, correspondence, proportionality, comparability.
The concept of congruence as a term has its origins in the English language, from where it was borrowed by compatriots for use, since there is no analogue of this term. The concept of congruence is most popular in psychology. Practical psychology interprets the term congruence as a harmonious functional action of certain components, characteristics, structures of a person’s life, which provides an overall harmonious picture of a person’s actions. This meaning speaks of the congruence of verbal and non-verbal information, promises and actions, internal state and external behavior, life goals and their fulfillment. Congruence mainly manifests itself in the consistency of the external manifestation of actions with internal feelings.
The congruence of a person is determined by his ability to understand his feelings and experiences and express them in behavior with himself and with others. Congruence also manifests itself when the value judgments of two people in relation to some object or object converge.
What is congruence
The term congruence, which is actively used in various sciences, comes from the Latin congruens, which means coinciding, proportional, also means conformity and correspondence.
Congruence is in mathematics a term that denotes the equality of angles, segments, and various figures.
Congruence in Geometry This is a concept from elementary science, its properties can be described by the corresponding axioms, hence the axioms of congruence. Two figures are congruent if at least one of them has the ability to move into the other using movement.
Congruence in physics is understood as the quantitative equivalence of qualitative equivalent states of a process or phenomenon.
Similar to congruence is the concept of authenticity, which refers to authenticity and truthfulness, in this case the truthfulness of acting in accordance with one's thoughts and attitudes.
Congruence of a personality gives her the opportunity to do absolutely everything, speak, breathe, live in accordance with her own values and rules. If a person looks peaceful on the outside and his soul is calm, then he is congruent. You can also easily observe the congruence of a person in his conversation - if what he says is harmoniously correlated with the form in which he says it. In the process of congruence, there is a non-judgmental acceptance and awareness by the individual of his current feelings, worries and problems, which are later expressed in conversation and behavior, in ways that do not have a traumatic impact on others.
So what is congruence? This is the dynamic state of a person when he is free and truthful, does not feel the need for psychological protection, hiding, putting on masks.
Congruence occurs when feelings inner world accurately reflected by human consciousness and manifested in behavior when people can be perceived as they really are.
Congruence in communication means a special mode of activity of the facilitator. Congruence expands the boundaries of understanding between partners and makes communication more understandable and clear, since a person trusts the interlocutor, and he does not need to include a defensive reaction, he listens attentively to his partner, without being distracted by defending himself. When a person sees that he is treated with greater trust and absolute understanding, he himself becomes more congruent and focused on more open communication. As a result of such communication, the personality can change, become more congruent, holistic, active and capable of resolving many internal conflicts, which saves energy for more relaxed behavior in communication.
Congruence in communication means that even one interlocutor who masters it can contribute to much better mutual understanding, bringing partners closer together, improving and optimizing their communication.
Congruence in psychologists helps to express the true feelings and sincerity of the consultant towards the client. This process is very important, because the client will trust the psychologist, and it will be easier for him to look into the client’s soul.
It also talks about the opposite feeling, that is, incongruence; it can be observed if a person feels a discrepancy between his actions and true thoughts. It can be seen on a person’s face, when, for example, it is unpleasant for him to do something, but he must, then his face, naturally, will not express joy. There are also projections from one person onto another when it seems to him that he is incongruent, although this may not be the case. You can simply misunderstand the meaning of the actions and completely misinterpret his actions.
It is also necessary to explain where incongruity comes from. Because they demonstrate status in their behavior, they try to surpass their interlocutor, although often in reality, there is absolutely nothing behind these praises. A person may behave this way for some time, even correspond to a false status, but such a game does not last for a long time. And the reason here is that the person does not have any high status, and he understands this, and he does not like it and he resists it. So, internal resistance appears when a person resists true, natural feelings, he becomes incongruent.
Around the half of the twentieth century, various scientists began broader studies of the features social behavior and so different theories emerged that denote human behavior in society.
Among them are Heider's theory of structural balance, Newman's theory of communicative acts, Festinger's theory, Osgood and Tannenbaum's theory of congruence, which was developed completely separately from the others. Osgood and Tannenbaum proposed the term congruence as a replacement for Heider's concept of balance and Festinger's concept of consonance.
Osgood and Tannenbaum's theory of congruence is that in order to achieve balance in the cognitive system of the perceiving subject, he must simultaneously change his attitude towards the relational partner and towards the object that matters to the two of them and is evaluated by both of them.
The theory of Osgood and Tannenbaum differs in that it attempts to predict the change in attitude that occurs in a person under the influence of the desire to establish consistency within the cognitive system to two objects at once, if we talk about a triad. This theory is more often used in mass communications, hence the example in this area. When a recipient gives a positive assessment to a communicator who gives a positive assessment to some object that the recipient himself evaluates negatively, then incongruity arises in his cognitive system, since on the two sides of the assessment - his own and the positively perceived assessment of the communicator, they do not coincide.
The way out of this situation is to change the recipient’s attitude towards the communicator’s personality and towards the subject of assessment at the same time. Osgood and Tannenbaum introduce specific concepts: “associative statements” and “dissociative statements” for their application in the semantic differential technique, used in the study of social stereotypes and then applied to the theory of congruence.
Newman's theory of communicative acts states that for an individual who is in a state of discomfort, which is caused by inconsistency in relationships towards a partner and also towards the subject of their common interest, it may be a way to overcome this discomfort in the imbalance - improving communicative acts between people, in the process of which the position of one of the partners changes and agreement is achieved.
All these theories sound different, but essentially explain the same thing. Therefore, one can trace the fundamental idea of all cognitive theories. The main idea that scientists pursue in their theories is that the cognitive side of the personality cannot be disharmonious or unbalanced; if it is, then there is immediately a tendency to make changes in some way to correct this condition and restore the internal balance of the cognitive system .
Congruence is in psychology
In psychology, congruence means the correspondence of external manifestations to the internal feelings of a person.
In psychology, congruence is a person’s behavior that expresses his inner emotional condition and attractions, brings experiences of integrity, a surge of strong energy, and a feeling of comfort. This is manifested by nonverbal reactions: consistency of actions and facial expressions, words and intonations, movements and their compliance with the situation.
Congruence in psychology, as a term was introduced by psychologist Carl Rogers in his person-centered psychotherapy.
Congruence in the interpretation of K. Rogers represents the correspondence of the ideal “I” of a person, and the consistency of the “I” and experiences in the life of an individual and also describes it as a dynamic state of a psychologist, structural elements psyche (attitudes, feelings, experiences, emotions) and life experience of which can be freely and adequately released in relationships with the client. And unlike feelings, a person experiences his own feelings and opens them, showing them to others absolutely sincerely.
In Rogers' theory, congruence is completely different from sociological theories. He personally defined the term congruence, in his interpretation, it represents the correspondence of personal experiences and consciousness, you can also add communication here, that is, the correspondence of experience, consciousness together with communication, and so you can add emotions, feelings and other categories of human life that are important and can relate to experience and consciousness.
Along with the description of his theory, Rogers also provides an illustrative example for better understanding. For example, a person in a dispute experiences obvious irritation and this immediately affects his behavior and physiological reactions. Although he himself says that he is calm and simply defends his point of view. The discrepancy between feelings and self-perceptions is clearly manifested here. Also a very simple example: a person came to a party without company, did not meet anyone, so he was bored the whole evening and he understood this perfectly well, but when he said goodbye to the owner, he said that he had a great time and was not bored at all. This is an example of congruence between experience and notification. This kind of incongruity is very similar to lying. But by performing such an act, a person seems to protect himself from unnecessary reactions.
If a person very often acts in this way, talks about one thing, but thinks about something completely different, that is, very often mismatched, incongruent, he puts himself at risk of a serious disorder in understanding himself, his feelings, desires and thoughts, and will require psychotherapeutic influence to maintain integrity. This person will have to rediscover himself as he is, pay attention to his feelings and learn how to recognize them and act on them. A full-fledged healthy personality is always congruent, this indicates her mental health, the adequacy of her perception of herself and other people. A congruent person, even if he understands that, for example, he is worried about some feelings in relation to some object, he will always show them or talk about them, if this is in relation to a person, he will try to make contact and somehow then he will share his feelings in order to figure out the reason for his worries.
Congruence should be a quality inherent in people in the profession who interact with colleagues or clients. When a teacher is congruent, he is open in his relationships with students. He is the way he is in life and he is not influenced by any factors that would make him an ordinary teacher, who only sees his task as dryly giving the material and leaving it at that. A congruent teacher admires the success of his students, their knowledge, ideas, thoughts, and if he also does not like something in the behavior of his students, he will immediately tell them about it, will not harbor anger towards them, but will clearly make it clear what he thinks and how they should behave. He will be cold if he feels that way, and positive and warm in attitude if he feels like it. He does not need to lie to his students, since lies beget new lies, and he does not want them to lie and deceive him too. He understands his feelings and the actions associated with them; he does not need to project them onto his students. Because he's alive and interesting person, who wants to teach his students to be the same, and not an impersonal being programmed to put knowledge into the heads of students who are sometimes completely resistant to teaching.
Such congruence in psychology is considered very tempting, because it means that a person can behave as he pleases, say whatever he wants, show coldness, ignore, openly show hostility, aggression, because the outlet of these emotions is outward, and not hiding them within oneself makes a person a psychologically healthy person. No matter how it is. If all people behaved the way they wanted and said whatever they wanted, the world would be pure chaos. But thanks to the norms and rules of society, the value orientation of society, a person becomes educated, learns to adequately express his emotions and restrain inappropriate feelings, sometimes demonstrates opposite feelings if there is a need to hide the true ones. If a person knows how to speak as she thinks, but at the same time thinks about what exactly to say, how to correctly convey information so that it does not go beyond socially acceptable boundaries, she is full and healthy. But there are still people who cannot adapt to the rules of society; their behavior is called behavior that deviates from the norms of society.
Congruence gives a person certain advantages. A person can allow himself to be himself, to be at ease, to design himself, and not allow others to put pressure on him. A congruent person has a healthy emotional system, since he gives emotions a natural and adequate outlet, thanks to this the person feels good, he is relaxed, and does not get stressed over trifles, does not waste energy on coming up with excuses for himself, an explanation for his actions. A congruent person knows how to present and express himself competently, sincerely and in the right light. Every action of such a person is consistent with his thoughts, emotions, experiences and life, in which everything goes in its own order.
To achieve congruence, it is necessary, most importantly, to be honest with yourself, your experiences, emotions and sincerely express them in relation to others. When communicating with others, there is no need to offer excessive efforts, to prove something; it is better to spend this energy on improving oneself, on self-improvement. You need to be as natural as possible, within the limits of what is allowed. When communicating with other people, you don’t need to think about the tone of your voice and how to adapt to the manner of someone else’s voice. You need to accept your current state completely and not hide your sincere emotions.
Hello, dear readers. Remember. You have probably found yourself in such a situation yourself or seen a friend in the company of other people who is filled with anger, aggression or discontent. At the same time, he tries to maintain composure, calmness, and maybe even tries to look happy and satisfied with life.
Today we will talk about human feelings, emotions and actions. Congruence in psychology is the correspondence between a person’s internal state and external state. When emotions coincide in various components and characteristics. A person acts in harmony with himself.
This definition is found in mathematics, physics and psychology when various elements correspond to the given structure. People say, do as your heart tells you. Not every person is capable of this. Some act differently, pursuing certain goals, others are not always able to understand their true state.
Let's look at why congruence is so important, what benefits it provides, and whether its absence can lead to negative consequences.
Meaning
The term "congruence" means how a person feels. His actions do not contradict his words, his facial expressions do not contradict his state of mind. Without unnecessary evaluation and control, he evaluates his feelings, experiences and problems. There is no pretense in the behavior. Life ceases to be a theatrical stage; the show does not always have to go on.
The term “congruence” comes from the English word, since it has no analogues in the Russian language. It includes such concepts as coherence, coherence, proportionality. I would add honesty and sincerity to this list.
Advantages
I think that each of you has an acquaintance whom you do not trust for no reason. Perhaps he is not your colleague and you meet extremely rarely, but every meeting leaves a heavy touch of melancholy. This man is hiding something.
Of course, it is not necessary that your interlocutor is incongruent. Perhaps you simply did not understand and did not accept his manner of communication. It all depends on your ability, that is, the ability to capture the emotions of other people, to empathize at the subtlest level. The person hasn’t said anything yet, but you already understand perfectly well that he is sad, happy or angry.
It is not difficult to understand how this behavior is useful for business and interpersonal communication. Even if you experience negative emotions. I can give many examples from life when an honest conversation between two people led to a positive “final”.
A young man of one of my acquaintances for a long time, in all unimaginable sins, found a reason to start a scandal out of the blue. One evening, in a calm atmosphere, she asked: “Do you want to leave me? Is this the reason for your eternal discontent?”
The guy admitted that he was not satisfied living together, he is tired of problems. According to the girl, at that moment she was absolutely sincerely ready forever, which she immediately said. He was delighted by the fact that no one was thinking of keeping him and decided to give this relationship a try, and a few months later the couple got married.
In fact, this conversation did not take place in words, but at some level of the subconscious. There were no phrases of great importance. The man was afraid that the woman would encroach on his freedom, but feeling that the girl was not going to limit him in anything, he gave her up without any questions asked.
Flaws
The principle of congruence is tempting, but if people always said and did whatever they wanted, it would lead to irreparable consequences. The girl from the previous story found best time, a place and words to express your own feelings. If everything had happened differently, no one knows how this story would have ended.
Even the most cruel words. You can understand the most unpleasant person, and feel for him, if not with tremulous tender feelings, then at least with confident neutrality.
It is not enough to be able to say what you want, you also need to act in what environment. If you want to understand all the intricacies, I can recommend Jack Schafer's book " We turn on charm according to the methods of the special services».
Author former employee FBI and in his work he talks about non-verbal tricks that allow you to win over people using the ability to be congruent. No NLP, just honesty and openness. I think this is correct.
OK it's all over Now. Be congruent and don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter. Until next time.
“Congruence” is a word that we know from the school geometry curriculum. Geometric figures (or bodies) are congruent if one of them can be translated into another using movement - shift, rotation or mirror image. But after finishing school, we learn that this term can have other meanings, including in the sphere of human relations. Let's try to figure them out.
The Latin word congruō means “I agree, I agree.” And in natural sciences, as in exact ones, congruence means the equivalence of objects to each other. But moving to humanitarian sciences the literal “coincidence” begins to take on a new, metaphorical meaning. This is how it appeared psychological definition congruence.
This pattern was formulated by La Rochefoucauld: “As soon as a fool praises us, he no longer seems so stupid.”
Its history began in 1955, when the “Congruence Theory” of American psychologists Osgood and Tannenbaum was published. Its main thesis was that in order to overcome cognitive dissonance (a conflict of ideas and ideas in the mind of an individual), a person simultaneously changes his attitude towards two contradictory sources of information.
For example, you have a friend N, whom you have a great attitude towards and consider him smart and a good man. And then he praises some phenomenon that you don’t like at all - for example, a new bill. This creates a contradiction: you are used to positively assessing N’s judgments, but his position no longer coincides with yours. To restore harmony, you can decide that a) N is a fool and you are disappointed in him b) N is smart, and your position needs to be reconsidered c) N is mistaken in something, but your position is not so correct. Last option - The best way harmoniously restore the balance of assessments, which the authors of the theory called congruence.
This example also works in reverse side- let’s say you don’t like some person and suddenly you accidentally discover that he is crazy about your favorite artist or highly appreciates your achievements. And he doesn’t seem so unpleasant anymore, does he? This pattern was formulated back in the 17th century by the writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld: “As soon as a fool praises us, he no longer seems so stupid.”
Another American psychologist Carl Rogers developed a theory of personality in which the concept of congruence has a completely different meaning than in social psychology. For him, “congruence” is “a term we use to denote the exact correspondence between our experience and our awareness of it.”
Let's give an example again. Let's imagine that you are sorting things out with a loved one and you feel obvious irritation and anger that you are unable to hide. But since becoming subjective and losing face by giving in to emotions means showing weakness, you do not want to admit your anger and continue to believe that you are just defending your point of view logically. At such a moment you are incongruent - you have lost the correspondence between the experience, its awareness and expression.
It’s interesting that congruence migrated from psychology to NLP, and from there to the theory of pick-up artists. The developers of plans to conquer women are sure that congruence is required quality for the confident alpha male.
Or let's say you were dreaming of getting a scooter for your birthday, and your friends unexpectedly give you a poker set. You don’t want to upset your friends and, smiling sourly, thank them for the wonderful gift. In this case, you understand what you feel, but cannot express it - incongruence is obvious.
And here a serious contradiction arises between ethics and psychology. Rogers believed that congruence is the key to internal harmony of the individual: a person does not suppress anything in himself, does not deceive himself in anything, which means he becomes himself and better understands his desires. On the other hand, if we start expressing everything we think and feel, we will cause a lot of discomfort to others and will certainly violate a number of secular conventions. And everyone chooses the balance point themselves.
It’s interesting that congruence migrated from psychology to NLP, and from there to the theory of pick-up artists. The developers of plans to conquer women are sure that congruence is a necessary quality for a confident alpha male. But, unlike Rogers’ theory, simply being yourself is still not enough for happiness.
"If you are a weakling and uninteresting Gray mouse, then you can be super congruent, showing who you are, but you won’t be cool,” says one pick-up artist guide. - If you're cool but not congruent, you're trying too hard (trying to be something you're not). Past again. To be considered attractive, you must have both characteristics." We must pay tribute to the author - there is a certain logic in this.
How to say
Incorrect: “Why are you yelling at me? What kind of incongruent reaction is this?” Correct: "inadequate"
Correct: “You need to strive for congruence and acknowledge your true feelings.”
Correct: “These two silhouettes are congruent - one is a mirror image of the other”
CONGRUENCE (With. 315) - 1) a person’s ability to accept without judgment, understand his real feelings, experiences and problems, as well as to adequately express them in behavior and speech; 2) the coincidence of assessments given by a person to a certain object and another person who also evaluates this object. The term, like many others, was borrowed relatively recently from in English and is absent in most domestic psychological dictionaries. However, in the lexicon practical psychologists he is in last years is used more and more often (almost exclusively in the first meaning).
English word congruence comes from Latin congruens, in the genitive case congruentis- proportionate, corresponding, coinciding, and means correspondence, conformity (for example, compliance with the law, etc.). This word is used in various areas scientific knowledge, in particular in mathematics, where it means the equality of segments, angles, triangles and other figures in elementary geometry. In physics, congruence is understood as the quantitative equivalence of qualitatively equivalent states of any process. The term is also used in medicine in a specific sense, which is not at all surprising, given the traditional Latinization of medical terminology.
In the middle of the 20th century. To explain various phenomena of social behavior, different authors have proposed several theories that are similar in content, united in social psychology under common name"cognitive correspondence theories". This is the theory of communicative acts by T. Newcomb, the theory of structural balance by F. Haider, and also the most famous in our country (and described in some detail in several publications “ School psychologist") theory of cognitive dissonance by L. Festinger. This series would be incomplete without mentioning the congruence theory of Osgood and Tannenbaum, developed independently and first outlined in a publication in 1955. As G.M. Andreeva points out, “the term “congruence” introduced by Osgood and Tannenbaum is synonymous with the term “balance” Heider or Festinger's "consonance". Perhaps the most accurate Russian translation of the word would be “coincidence,” but a tradition has developed of using the term without translation.” (Andreeva G.M. et al.. Modern social psychology in the West. M., 1978. P. 134).
The main idea of all theories of cognitive correspondence is that the cognitive structure of a person cannot be unbalanced, disharmonious, but if this is the case, then there is an immediate tendency to change this state and again restore the internal consistency of the cognitive system.
Thus, in Newcomb’s theory of communicative acts, the idea is held that for a person, a means of overcoming the discomfort caused by the discrepancy between the attitude towards another person and his attitude towards a common object is the development of communication between partners, during which the position of one of them changes and thus, compliance is restored. The main thesis of Osgood and Tannenbaum's theory of congruence is that in order to achieve correspondence in the cognitive structure of the perceiving subject, he simultaneously changes his attitude towards both the other person and the object that they are both evaluating. Most often this theory is found practical use
in the field of communication, respectively, examples are usually given from this field.
By the way, another aspect of this phenomenon is that when someone unpleasant to us shows affection for something that we also like, our dislike for him decreases, and may even be replaced by sympathy. However, La Rochefoucauld drew attention to this: “As soon as a fool praises us, he no longer seems so stupid.” Here, by the way, it’s worth thinking about this. As a rule, we are convinced that our views and passions are shared mainly by worthy people. Isn’t it because they seem nice to us because they share our views? A more sober view here would be very useful. And our opponents are by no means entirely nonentities and fools. Perhaps we were simply too quick to reconcile our dislike of their position and of themselves. As for Rogers' theory, the concept of congruence has a completely different meaning in it than in social psychology. By his own definition, “congruence is the term we use to denote the exact correspondence between our experience and our awareness of it. It can be expanded further to denote the correspondence of experience, awareness and communication."(Rogers K . A look at psychotherapy. The Becoming of Man. M., 1994. P. 401). Here, however, one should keep in mind the difficulties of literal translation of Rogers' text. The fact is that English word(sic) means both experience and experience. We are probably talking about experience; by experience we are accustomed to understand something else.
Rogers himself illustrates his idea clear examples. Let's imagine that someone in a discussion with his partner experiences obvious irritation and anger, which is clearly manifested in his behavior and even in physiological reactions. At the same time, he himself is not aware of his feelings and is convinced (for the purpose of self-defense) that he is just logically defending his point of view. There is a clear discrepancy between the experience and his sense of self.
Or let’s imagine a person who spent the evening in a boring company, was clearly burdened by the wasted time, moreover, he is fully aware of the feeling of boredom possessing him. Nevertheless, when parting, he declares: “I had a great time. It was a wonderful evening." Here the incongruity is not between experience and awareness, but between experience and message.
According to Rogers, such a mismatch leads to a serious discord between a person and himself and requires psychotherapeutic intervention. A mature healthy personality is, first of all, a congruent person. He is able to be aware of what is happening in his soul and behave in accordance with these experiences. It is clear that congruence is thus an integral professional quality everyone whose activity is connected with communication with other people - first of all, psychologists themselves, and also, not least, teachers (Rogers especially emphasizes this). “If the teacher is congruent, it is likely to promote knowledge acquisition. Congruence implies that the teacher should be exactly who he really is; In addition, he must be aware of his attitude towards other people. This also means that he accepts his true feelings. Thus, he becomes frank in his dealings with his students. He may be excited about things he likes and become bored by conversations about topics that don't interest him. He can be angry and cold [ teacher?!- S.S] or, conversely, sensitive and sympathetic. Because he accepts his feelings as belonging to him, he has no need to attribute them to his students or insist that they feel the same way. He - living person, and not an impersonal embodiment of program requirements or a link for the transfer of knowledge” (ibid., pp. 347-348).
The picture turns out to be very seductive. I am a living person, which means I have the right to be angry and cold, to ignore what doesn’t bother me, to openly show hostility towards those I don’t like, etc.
Here, however, a paradox arises. From time immemorial, a well-mannered, socialized, civilized person is considered to be one who, being able to adequately express his feelings, at the same time knows how to hide them when necessary, moreover, sometimes arbitrarily demonstrate other, even opposite, norms in accordance with the norms accepted by social agreement. From the point of view of common sense, the ability to say what you think is valuable, but at the same time it would be good to also think what you say.
Congruence in psychology is one of the key concepts. There is currently a lot of talk about it and often research is carried out related to the content of this concept.
And it’s not surprising, because this concept is an important component of the life of every person striving for the heights and their own wealth. To imagine what congruence is, you need to analyze this term in more detail. By the way, it is not purely psychological and has different definitions in different sciences.
Basic meaning
The meaning of the concept of “congruence” in psychology is defined as a state of complete independence. It is necessarily accompanied by the absence of fear or embarrassment to show others his emotions, while the individual does not feel shame for them, and his verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal communication are harmoniously related and have high level development, close to perfection.
It turns out that a congruent person is never embarrassed to express what he is thinking, and does it in such a way that everyone around him fully understands him. It is worthwhile to dwell in more detail on the second part of the definition we are considering. So:
- Verbal speech is the ordinary words that people say out loud in the process of communication.
- Nonverbal speech consists primarily of gestures and facial expressions. Otherwise, psychologists call it body language.
- Paraverbal speech is closely related to a person’s ability to speak, but it is expressed not in words, but mainly in intonation.
Thus, only a person whose speech is coherent and whose body language and intonation fully correspond to it is called congruent. Agree that it is much easier to believe a person who clearly expresses his thoughts and uses the correct gestures than an individual with an incomprehensible look, arms crossed on his chest and muttering something incomprehensible.
View from the outside
For example, in everyday life they talk about it as the ability to empathize with other people, but in psychology it means the ability to correctly identify the emotions of your interlocutor. It turns out that a person’s congruence is visible to everyone in different ways: the more empathy is developed, the more the congruence of another is visible to this person.
Recipe for success
According to psychologists, a congruent person can achieve everything in life and reach the top. Such people, for example, make good and successful entrepreneurs. And this is quite natural, because businessmen in the course of their activities have to communicate a lot with partners, colleagues and clients.
Congruence and incongruence play a role not only in business, but, in principle, in any field human life. The ability to persuade and make speeches is very valuable for politicians, law enforcement officers, teachers and representatives of other professions.
By the way, all prominent historical figures were very congruent people, take Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, etc. If they did not know how to persuade, they would hardly be able to captivate many people with their ideas and lead them.
In personal life
Separately, we should talk about the meaning of congruence in personal life person. She plays important role in communication with representatives of the opposite sex. It is always easier for a person who is confident in himself, knows how to speak correctly and express his emotions, to build relationships with others.
By the way, it’s worth talking about congruence as a quality that is important not only in love, but also in relationships with people in general. A person who is able to correctly express his feelings and thoughts enjoys well-deserved respect and inspires more trust than some introverted individual. Congruent people always have a lot of friends and acquaintances, and just acquaintances in general.
Psychologists say that congruence is a quality that is not innate. You can develop it in yourself, but for this you need to work hard on yourself. The main way to become congruent is to associate more with such people and imitate them. But you shouldn’t go too far, otherwise you might lose your personal qualities, completely becoming like those around him. Author: Elena Ragozina
