FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE CONGRUENCE TECHNIQUE

Abstract

Summary.-This paper reports on the replication and refinement of a technique for assessing the discrepancy between public social behavios and private interaction proclivities. Generally, we replicated previous findings that this discrepancy predicts concurrent signs of maladjustment. The technique will prove valuable to those interested in the psychology of incongruence. Ford and Hook (1993) recently reported the Public-Private Congruence Technique as a way to assess the incongruence or the discrepancy between public behavior and private experience. The technique was used in the context of social interaction wherein incongruence was defined as the presentation of prosocial behaviors (like smiling and reciprocal conuersation) in the context of private experiences of a less amicable and sociable nature. Essentially, an individual's overtly prosocial glow can belie a covert desire not to be engaged in an ongoing interaction with others. Subjects are measured on this incongruence by examining seven artistically rendered pictures which illustrate the target, with whom the subject is instructed to identify, engaged in various social interactions; privately, the target wishes to terminate or to have avoided these interactions (e.g., smiling and conversing while privately wishing to escape the interaction). For each picture the subject completes a 5-point scale measuring how frequently the subject has been in the target's incongruent situation. An advantage of the technique's score (the mean frequency) is that it measures a psychological discrepancy-high public versus low private prosociability-without using a literal discrepancy value (like X - Y) which can be attended by a number of quantitative and conceptual liabilities. Ford and Hook (1993) reported high reliabilities as well as significant validity indices for the technique. They also found that the correlation between public-private incongruence and maladjustment (see Rogers, 1961) was stronger for college-age women than men. The present study was done to replicate and extend the findings for Ford and Hook's (1993) study of 50 women subjects. In this study we individually tested 45 college-age women on the seven public-private pictures and an over-all incongruence score was obtained for each subject. Two days later the subjects completed the following scales: anx