Properties of persons and situations related to overall and distinctive personality-behavior congruence

Congruence is the degree to which one's personality matches one's behavior in a particular situation. On four separate occasions over several weeks, 202 undergraduate participants described a situation they encountered the previous day and their behavior. Analyses considered overall congruence as well as dis- tinctive congruence, adjusted for the match of personality and behavior to the normative personality and behavior profile. Overall congruence was strongly associated with better psychological adjustment; dis- tinctive congruence was not. Similarly, situation strength and affordances for autonomy, relatedness to others, and competence were strongly linked to overall congruence, but only weakly associated with dis- tinctive congruence. Behaving in accordance with one's true self is only related to positive psychological outcomes when it is accordance with normative standards.

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