The idea that you are in touch with your true self is at the heart of many theories of psychological adjustment. When your actions start to deviate from your inner compass, this can become distressing and depersonalizing.
Meg thinks of herself as someone who can be a good friend to others. She values her honesty, tact, and kindness. Much to her distress, she learns third-hand that others find her distant and aloof, but worse, unkind. How did she get so far from correctly sensing her own most valued attributes?
A Theory of Self-Congruence
According to a new paper by University of Hildesheim’s Carolin Huber and colleagues (2025), when you are behaving in ways consistent with your true self, you will experience the positive state of authenticity. More formally, self-congruency produces “state authenticity.”
One problem in prior research on the self-congruency hypothesis is that people rate themselves as most authentic when they’re engaging in positive forms of behavior and as inauthentic when they’re not. However, the German authors think it’s still worth exploring the self-congruency → authenticity relationship. Prior studies may not have taken everything into account.
Let’s get back to Meg. She’s still trying to figure out…
