Most people believe they are more authentic than the people around them, and they expect to become even more authentic in the years ahead. A major review of the research argues that this pattern is a clue to what authenticity really is: less an accurate reading of the self than a flattering one.
The review was written by Constantine Sedikides of the Center for Research on Self and Identity at the University of Southampton and Rebecca J. Schlegel of Texas A&M University. It was published in Nature Reviews Psychology on June 28, 2024.
Four ideas of the true self, and the one that fits best
The authors weigh four competing views. Authenticity could be self-accuracy (seeing yourself as you are), self-consistency (acting in line with your inner standards), self-ownership (feeling that your actions come from you) or self-enhancement (seeing yourself in a favourable light).
Self-accuracy fares poorly. If authenticity required unbiased self-knowledge, most people would be inauthentic, yet self-reported authenticity tends to cluster at the high end of rating scales. In one study the people who believed their self-assessment was unbiased were the ones who listed the most favourable traits about themselves.
Self-consistency also runs into trouble. In one study people rated their Big Five traits and then how authentic they felt in five roles: student, employee, child, friend and romantic partner. They felt most authentic in roles where they saw themselves positively, regardless of their general trait scores. Diary studies found the same: people felt most like themselves when they were behaving at the desirable end of a trait, or simply feeling good.
The evidence for self-enhancement is the strongest. People endorse what the authors call “a favourable authenticity trajectory”: they believe they have recently become more authentic and will become more so soon. The number of favourable traits people list about themselves predicts their sense of authenticity; the number of unfavourable traits does not. People also believe they are more human than others, judge their own changes more kindly than the same changes in a close friend, and see their authentic selves as more moral than other people’s. Raising self-enhancement in experiments raises authenticity, and the reverse also holds. Self-ownership gets real support too, the authors write, including a study in which weakening belief in free will lowered reported authenticity.
Why it still matters for health and relationships
Whatever it is made of, feeling authentic goes with good outcomes. It is linked to meaning in life, greater well-being and lower anxiety, stress and depression, and in two daily diary studies inauthenticity predicted a struggle to find meaning. In a set of studies using language analysis, more authentic-sounding speech went with more liking between strangers in a chatroom, more views on TED talks and more investment for pitches on Shark Tank. Authenticity also helps sell products: wine and beauty products branded as authentic are liked better and bought more often.
The benefit is not universal. The link between authenticity and well-being is weaker in people high on Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism.
The costs of being yourself
The authors list real drawbacks. People can call prejudiced views “authentic” and defend them on that basis. Students who prize authentic self-presentation can come across as entitled or arrogant. At work, authentic expression that clashes with colleagues’ values can read as narcissism and provoke a backlash, partly because observers are poor at telling who is genuinely being authentic.
Their answer is a Goldilocks rule. Authenticity that ignores others and authenticity that bends entirely to others both do worse than a balanced version, which was the strongest predictor of well-being in the study the authors cite. Their bottom line is that authenticity is best understood in terms of self-ownership and self-enhancement, not self-accuracy and self-consistency.
Study Details:
- Title: Distilling the concept of authenticity
- Authors: Constantine Sedikides, Rebecca J. Schlegel
- Journal: Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(8), 509-523
- Publication Date: June 28, 2024
- DOI: 10.1038/s44159-024-00323-y