To be or not to be, that is the question



Authenticity, Psychological Adjustment, and Social Motivation

Michael H. Kernis and Brian M. Goldman

University of Georgia

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” “To thine own self be true.” (Shakespeare)

Playwrights, musicians, philosophers, and psychologists have long concerned themselves with notions of authenticity. Shakespeare, for example, wrote often of themes related to being “true” to oneself and presenting a “false” self to others (citation). Philosophers such as Lacan, Nietzsche, and Rorty take aim at the construct of authenticity by denying the existence of a coherent, unified self, preferring instead to endorse the “self as social chameleon approach championed by Gergen, among others... (p. 77 of Cote and Levine, Identity Formation, Agency, and Culture (look at their chart on p. 124.) Camas… The Grateful Dead, purveyors of “psychedelic” enlightenment, exhort their diehard fans to “. . . wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.” The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests that they participated in were said to promote “higher states of consciousness” that elevated participants’ understanding of their roles in the material and “cosmic” universes. In this paper, we present a new multicomponent conceptualization of psychological authenticity and its implications for a wide range of psychological functioning. We begin with a brief historical overview. Following this, we present our conceptualization of authenticity and report research findings bearing on this conceptualization.

Historical Overview

Within psychology, those within the “humanist” tradition have mainly carried the authenticity “torch”. Maslow (1968), for example, suggested that authenticity comes when individuals discover their true inner nature. This “discovery” emerges after individuals satisfy their higher order psychological needs for belonging and esteem. What remains to be achieved after these needs are satisfied is called “self-actualization.” Stated differently, individuals turn toward satisfying their “being” or growth-oriented needs after satisfying their other physiological and psychological needs. Focusing on growth-oriented needs provides fuller self-knowledge and increased acceptance of one’s true or intrinsic nature, furthering one’s path toward self-actualization (Maslow, 1968). Rogers (1961) asserted that authenticity reflects congruence between one’s self-concept and immediate experience. He observed that maladjustment often stems from the lack of congruence between one’s immediate experiences (or behaviors) and one’s self-reflections. In such instances, people may deny, distort, or ignore immediate experiences to preserve their self-concepts. Ironically, the self-concepts that once reflected reality no longer do. Instead, they are replaced by rigid, defensive self-concepts that assimilate only what is acceptable according to standards that either are directly imposed by significant others or “introjected” to be self-administered. We return to introjected regulation later in the paper. For now, we note that these discrepancies between individuals’ experiences and their self-concepts are fostered by “conditions of worth” that involve the withholding of love and acceptance except when externally based standards or expectations are achieved or satisfied.

More recently, scholars emphasize the importance of self-regulatory processes to authenticity (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1995, 2000; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1995, 2000) holds that authenticity is a byproduct of self-regulation that reflects high levels of self-determination (i.e., intrinsic or identified regulation). In contrast, self-regulation based on meeting other people's (external regulation) or one’s own (introjected regulation) expectations or demands promotes inauthentic functioning (see Sheldon & Kasser, 1995 for an empirical example). Considerable research confirms the benefits of self-determined regulation in many different domains, including academic achievement (Ryan cite), compliance with medical regimens (Williams cite), religiosity (Ryan cite), and political involvement (Koestner cite).

Our own research has shown that, apart from these self-regulatory processes, the extent to which people frame their goals as “congruent with their true selves” also has important implications for psychological health and well-being (Goldman & Kernis, 2003). Participants in this study selected a set of eight strivings they were currently undertaking from a broad list of academic strivings (developed by, Elliot, 19?). To assess self-regulatory styles, participants rated for each striving the extent to which each of eight factors reflected their reasons for engaging in it. The factors fell into four categories that reflected varying degrees of self-determination (Ryan & Connell, 1989). Reflecting the most self-determination, intrinsic regulation involves doing things purely for the fun and enjoyment they provide. Identified regulation involves a moderate degree of self-determination. Here, people freely engage in activities because of their consistency with personal values and/or their positive contribution toward growth and development. External regulation reflects the least self-determination in that it involves doing things because an external source forces it or to obtain a tangible reward or avoid punishment. Introjected regulation involves minimal self-determination because although the regulatory processes are internal to the person, they are “external to the self” (Deci & Ryan, 1995). Specifically, activities are undertaken to avoid guilt and anxiety, because one “should” or because one’s self-esteem depends upon it. For purposes of analyses, we combined participant’s responses into an overall self-determination index by adding introjected and external scores and subtracting this sum from the total of identified and intrinsic scores. Therefore, higher scores indicate greater self-determined regulation.

In addition, we asked all participants to engage in the following true self induction:

Take a few minutes and think of whom you really are as a person.

Think about those qualities you possess, your wants and desires,

your hopes and fears, your feelings and thoughts that characterize

who you really are as a person. Not whom your parents, family,

boyfriend or girlfriend, and friends think you are, but whom you

think you are when you are answering only to yourself.

Following this induction, participants rated each striving on how much it reflected who they are as a person (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). We computed a total true self goal score by adding each of these responses obtained for the eight goals. Finally, all participants completed Ryff’s (1989) multidimensional measure of psychological adjustment, as well as measures of life satisfaction and affect. Approximately four weeks later, participants again completed the adjustment and well-being measures.

Our first goal was to replicate previous findings indicating that self-regulatory styles predict a wide range of positive outcomes. More importantly, we anticipated that our true-self goal measure also would predict these outcomes even when the impact of self-regulatory styles was controlled. We conducted separate analyses for each of the six Ryff subscales, life satisfaction, and affect. In each instance, Time 2 scores were regressed simultaneously onto the overall self-determination and true self goals indexes. In all but one instance, the more self-determining individuals’ self-regulatory styles, the higher their psychological health and well-being. More important, the true-self goals index also uniquely predicted greater psychological health and well-being on all but one measure (and marginally for another). Taken as a whole, these findings are impressive in that they demonstrate unique positive relations of self-regulatory styles and goal representations with a range of psychological health and well-being variables.

Next, we conducted a more stringent set of analyses to determine whether the self-determination and true-self goal measures predicted change in the health and well-being measures. These analyses are more stringent because less variance is available (after controlling for Time 1 scores) to be accounted for. Not surprisingly, then, the unique contributions of both the self-determination and “true self” goal indexes were less pervasive, though they consistently were in the same direction as before. The self-determination index uniquely predicted increases in life satisfaction, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, and autonomy. In addition, the true-self goal index uniquely predicted increases in life satisfaction, positive affect, self-acceptance, purpose in life (marginally so), positive relations with others, and environmental mastery. Thus, we were able to predict positive change in all but one of the psychological health and well-being measures with either the self-determination or true-self goal index (and sometimes by both).

In other research, Kernis, Paradise, Whitaker, Wheatman, & Goldman (2000) reported that self-determined regulation (i.e., intrinsic and identified self-regulation) is related to higher levels of, and more stable, feelings of self-worth, whereas the reverse is true for non-self-determined regulation (introjected and external regulation). Clearly, the extent to which people experience authenticity in their goal pursuits, as expressed through self-regulatory styles or goal representations, confers positive benefits on a variety of psychological health and subjective well-being measures.

Sheldon et al. (1997) took a different approach to authenticity. First, they operationalized authenticity in terms of subjective authenticity across social roles. For each of five social roles (student, employee, child, friend, and romantic partner), participants indicated their agreement with the following statements: “I experience this aspect of myself as an authentic part of who I am; This aspect of myself is meaningful and valuable to me; I have freely chosen this way of being; I am only this way because I have to be ®; I feel tense and pressured in this part of my life®”. Second, they operationalized authenticity as the consistency of trait profiles across roles. Participants rated the extent to which they enacted each of a series of Big Five trait markers when in each of the five aforementioned roles. Consistent with the idea that authenticity/integration confers positive benefits for the individual, analyses indicated that greater subjective authenticity and cross- role consistency each related to lower anxiety, depression, stress, and physical symptoms, and higher self-esteem levels.

McGregor and Little (1998) examined the extent to which people displayed a sense of integrity in their everyday personal projects and the relation of “project integrity” to psychological heath. Participants rated each of their current personal projects on: 1) How important is this project to you at the present time? 2) How committed are you to the completion of this project? 3) To what extent does this project reflect who you really are? 4) To what extent is this project consistent with the values which guide your life? 5) How personally meaningful is this project? The researchers created an overall index of psychological health by combining scores on the following subscales from Ryff’s measure: growth; purpose in life; positive relations with others; and autonomy. As they predicted, greater project integrity related to greater psychological health.

The research reviewed in this section indicates that personal consistency, self-determined regulatory styles, and integrity in one’s goal pursuits are integral to psychological health and well-being. Each of these constructs is also relevant to the construct of psychological authenticity, to which we now turn.

A Multi-component Conceptualization of Psychological Authenticity1

We define authenticity as the unobstructed operation of one’s true, or core, self in one’s daily enterprise. More specifically, we suggest that authenticity has four discriminable components: awareness, unbiased processing, action, and relational orientation. The awareness component refers to having awareness of, and trust in, one’s motives, feelings, desires, and self-relevant cognitions. It includes, but is not limited to, being aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses, trait characteristics, and emotions, and their roles in behavior. An important aspect of this component is being aware of one’s inherent polarities, or, as Perls (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951) put it, being aware of both “figure” and “ground” in one’s personality aspects. In his view, people are not exclusively masculine or feminine, extroverted or introverted, dominant or submissive, and so on. Rather, one aspect of these dualities predominates over the other, although both aspects exist. As individuals function with greater authenticity, they are aware that they possess these multifaceted self-aspects, and they utilize this awareness in their interchanges with others and with their environments. In short, the awareness component of authenticity involves knowledge of one’s needs, values, feelings, figure-ground personality aspects, and their roles in behavior.

Note that this perspective on awareness differs from other recent social psychological perspectives of self-concept structure, most notably, the construct of self-concept clarity (Campbell, 1990, 2002; Campbell et al. 1996). Campbell defines high self-concept clarity as a self-concept that is internally consistent, held with confidence, and temporally stable. From this perspective, an individual who endorses as self-descriptive both introverted and extroverted is low in self-concept clarity. While we agree that some degree of internal consistency in self-judgments is healthy, we disagree with using simple yes/no judgments as the benchmark for assessing such inconsistency. In our view, one of the major problems with such judgments is that respondents make them without reference to situational contexts. Likewise, Mischel and Shoda (cite) have shown that personality consistency (or coherence) is best thought of in relation to specific situational contexts. Consistent with this view, Sande and Goethals (cite) have shown that people prefer to think of themselves in ways that are complex and multifaceted, rather than simplistic. In short, decontextualized yes/no self-judgments are unnecessarily constraining, as they do not permit individuals to indicate that whether they enact specific personality characteristics often depends on the situation. Another shortcoming of only yes/no judgments is that they do not permit respondents to endorse possessing trait characteristics to varying degrees. The notion of figure/ground in personality that Perls promotes is that while one aspect of a trait duality predominates, the other, while weaker, is not absent. From this perspective, to deny the existence of the weaker aspect reflects self-concept fragmentation, not clarity. So as not to digress further, we close by suggesting that more complex assessment techniques are needed to differentiate between the views espoused by Campbell and by Perls (and us) and we urge researchers to develop such techniques.2

A second component of authenticity involves the unbiased processing of self-relevant information. Stated differently, this component involves not denying, distorting, exaggerating, or ignoring private knowledge, internal experiences, and externally based evaluative information. Instead, it involves objectivity and acceptance of one’s positive and negative aspects, attributes, and qualities. Some people, for instance, have great difficulty acknowledging that they may not be very skillful at a particular activity. Rather than accept their poor performance, they may rationalize its implications, belittle its importance, or completely fabricate a “new” score. Others may have difficulty accepting and incorporating into the self the various “ground” aspects of personal qualities, as if some “alien” and not they, possesses these qualities, though at some level, they are aware of its existence. Still others have difficulty acknowledging certain emotions in themselves, such as anger or anxiety, and instead misrepresent them as sadness or boredom, respectively. These defensive processes are motivated, at least in part, by self-esteem concerns, and we would expect to find them both for negative and positive information. For example, people may delude themselves into believing that a triumph over a clearly inferior opponent validates their own extremely high level of ability, or they may take it for what it is –the one-time defeat of an inferior opponent.

Our view of the unbiased processing component of authenticity is consistent with recent conceptualizations of ego defense mechanisms. The recent upsurge of interest in defense mechanisms has been fortified by findings linking individual differences in defense styles to a wide range of physical and psychological outcomes. Notable in this regard is Vaillant’s longitudinal work showing that adaptive defense styles that involve minimal reality distortion predict greater psychological and physical well-being many years into the future (e.g., Vaillant, 1992). In contrast, maladaptive or immature defenses that involve greater reality distortion and/or failure to acknowledge and resolve distressing emotions relate to numerous psychological and interpersonal difficulties, including poor marital adjustment (Ungerer, Waters, Barnett, & Dolby, 1997).

A third component involves behavior, specifically whether people act in accord with their true self. In our view, behaving authentically means acting in accord with one’s values, preferences, and needs as opposed to acting merely to please others or to attain rewards or avoid punishments through acting “falsely.” Harter (1997) identified three distinct motives that underlie the display of false-self behavior among adolescents. The first motive involves devaluation of the self in which actors dislike themselves or significant others dislike them. The second motive involves wanting to please or be liked by others. The third motive involves wanting to experiment with different selves as a form of social role-playing. “Those citing motives emphasizing devaluation of the self report the worst outcomes in that they (1) engage in the highest levels of false self behavior, (2) are more likely not to know who their true self really is, and (3) report the lowest self-esteem coupled with depressed affect. Those endorsing role experimentation report the most positive outcomes (least false behavior, most knowledge of true self, highest self-esteem and cheerful affect), with the approval seekers concerned with impression management falling in between (1997, p. 90).”

We believe that, at times, role experimentation may be a reflection of authenticity inasmuch as it may reflect an extension of one’s true self in action. Adolescents are constantly experiencing new situations, meeting new people and so forth. Identities may feel new or experimental in these novel contexts. They can reflect authenticity, however, to the extent that they are informed by what one knows to be true of the self. Moreover, role experimentation may be a catalyst for self-improvement and growth. In contrast, in those instances where one deliberately enacts an identity opposed to one’s true self, role experimentation is likely to be inauthentic. As an example, recall the Seinfield episode in which George Costanza thinks about how he would normally react and deliberately does exactly the opposite.

Admittedly, instances exist in which the unadulterated expression of one’s true self may result in severe social sanctions. Here, we would expect authenticity to reflect sensitivity to the fit (or lack of) between one’s true self and the dictates of the environment and an awareness of the potential implications of one’s behavioral choices. Authenticity does not reflect a compulsion to be one’s true self, but rather the free and natural expression of core feelings, motives, and inclinations. When this expression stands at odds with immediate environmental contingencies, we would expect that authenticity be reflected in short-term intrapsychic conflict. How this conflict is resolved can have considerable implications for one’s felt integrity and authenticity. Rather than focusing exclusively on whether authenticity is or is not reflected in one’s actions per se, focusing on the manner in which processes associated with the awareness and unbiased processing components inform one’s behavioral selection is likely to be useful. For example, even though a person reacts to pressure by behaving in accord with prevailing social norms that stand in contrast with his or her true self, authenticity may be operating at the awareness and processing levels, but not at the behavioral level. In this instance, although authenticity is compromised at the behavioral level it may be preserved at the awareness and unbiased processing levels. In short, sometimes the needs and values of the self are incompatible with those of society. In these instances, authenticity may be reflected in awareness of one’s needs and motives and an unbiased assessment of relevant evaluative information. In some instances, the resulting behavior may also reflect authenticity, but in other cases, it may not. In short, we are suggesting that the awareness, unbiased processing, and behavior components of authenticity are related to, but separable from, each other.

A fourth component of authenticity is relational in nature, inasmuch as it involves valuing and achieving openness and truthfulness in one’s close relationships. Relational authenticity involves endorsing the importance for close others to see the real you, good and bad. Toward that end, authentic relations involve a selective process of self-disclosure and the development of mutual intimacy and trust. In essence, relational authenticity means being genuine and not “fake” in one’s relationships with close others.

Goldman and Kernis (2002) developed the Authenticity Inventory to measure these components of authenticity. Table 1 includes a summary description of each authenticity component and sample items from our Authenticity Inventory (Goldman & Kernis, 2002). We now turn to research in which we have used the inventory.

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Insert Table one about here

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Authenticity and Psychological Health and Well-Being

Overall, we expect that greater authenticity will be reflected in more favorable psychological health and subjective well-being. In our first study, we report the relationships between authenticity and self-esteem level, contingent self-esteem, i.e., feelings of self-worth that are dependent upon the achievement of specific outcomes or evaluations, a form of fragile self-esteem (Deci & Ryan, 1995; Kernis, 2003; Paradise & Kernis, 1999), daily affect, and life satisfaction.

Our participants were 79 introductory psychology students (19 males and 54 females) who completed the following measures: (1) Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-esteem Scale, a well-validated measure of global self-esteem level; (2) Contingent Self-esteem Scale (CSS; Kernis & Paradise, 2002), a 15 item scale that assesses the extent to which individuals' self-worth depends upon meeting expectations, matching standards, or achieving specific outcomes or evaluations; (3) Life Satisfaction (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), a 7 item measure that assesses how satisfied individuals feel about their lives in general over the past few days; and (4) Positive Affect/Negative Affect Scale (Brunstein, 1993), a 20 item measure that assesses experiences of positive and negative affect over the past few days.

Participants also completed the 44-item Authenticity Inventory (AI Version 1; Goldman & Kernis, 2001). The inventory is comprised of four subscales: the awareness subscale was composed of 15 items (M = 55.99, SD = 5.73, α = .74); unbiased processing had 10 items (M = 33.43, SD = 4.03, α = .51); behavior had 13 items (M = 43.76, SD = 4.84, α = .73); and the relational orientation had 6 items (M = 21.34, SD = 2.82, α = .32). The total (composite) scale was composed of 44 items (M = 154.52, SD = 13.02, α = .83). Zero-order correlations were computed between each of the measures of well-being, total AI scores, and subscale AI scores. The correlation matrix is displayed in Table 1.

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Insert Table two about here

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The findings from this study offer initial support for our conceptualization and assessment of multiple components of authenticity. Total authenticity scale scores were positively related to self-esteem level and life satisfaction, and negatively related to self-esteem contingency and net negative affect. Importantly, these findings suggest that authenticity is related to feelings of self-worth that are not only more positive, but that are more secure as well (i.e., less contingent on specific outcomes; Kernis & Goldman, in press). Our findings also indicated that greater self-reported authenticity was related to the frequency of experiencing negative emotions (i.e., less net negative affect), as well as more global appraisals of individuals' perceived satisfaction in life (i.e., more life satisfaction). Taken as a whole, these findings provide initial empirical support for the contention that authenticity is related to healthy psychological functioning and positive subjective well-being.

Authenticity, Goal Strivings, Psychological and Interpersonal Adjustment

In other research, we sought to flesh out the implications of authenticity for a variety of realms of psychological and social functioning. First, authenticity as an individual difference construct may be particularly important in delineating the adaptive features of optimal self-esteem. Optimal self-esteem reflects favorable conscious and nonconscious feelings of self-worth that are non-defensive, stable, and not dependent upon specific outcomes or evaluations (Kernis, 2003). As Kernis describes, the favorable feelings of self-worth that characterize optimal self-esteem arise naturally from successfully dealing with life challenges, the operation of one’s core, true, authentic self as a source of input to behavioral choices, and relationships in which one is valued for whom one is, and not for what one achieves (Kernis, 2003). At least two major implications follow from the assertion that authenticity promotes optimal self-esteem. First, individuals’ goal pursuits should provide opportunities for self-determination, expressing one’s true self, and positive self-feelings and competence. Second, high levels of authenticity should relate positively to global measures of psychological and interpersonal adjustment should reflect individuals’ these same qualities.

Goldman, Kernis, Piasecki, Herrmann, & Foster (2003) examined how authenticity relates to the meanings with which people imbued their personal projects, defined as the “… activities and concerns that people have in their lives. All of us have a number of personal projects at any given time that we can think about, carry out, and sometimes (though not always) complete.” Participants then were given approximately 10 minutes to generate a list of personal projects that they were engaging in or intended to begin over the next month or so. Following this, participants selected the eight projects that “together provide the most complete and informative overview of your life” and rated each on a total of 31 characteristics or dimensions. Many of these were selected from MGregor and Little (1998); a few were generated specifically for this study. Items tapping into the same meaning dimension were combined to form categories that were deemed relevant to authenticity (see Table 3). As noted earlier, we anticipated that participants high in authenticity would engage in projects in which they felt competent, autonomous, and that contributed to their sense of self-worth. The findings we report here were obtained from a sample of 111 undergraduate students. The most interesting and consistent findings emerged for the awareness component of authenticity (12 items, @.??), so we limit our discussion to this component. First, scores on the awareness subscale were correlated positively with striving authenticity, r = .23, p < .02. This score indicates that higher scores on the awareness subscale, the more individuals viewed their strivings as reflecting their true selves, the greater the autonomy they experienced with respect to goal initiation, the more personally meaningful the goal, and the more consistent the goal was consistent with broad values. Clearly, these characterizations suggest that authentic individuals have opportunities to chose goals that will allow them to express who they really are and that are representative of their core values. Second, awareness subscale scores correlated, thought not significantly with a higher amount of striving commitment, r = 17, p ................
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