Feeling like you know who you are: perceived true self-knowledge and meaning in life

Acting on Authenticity: Individual Interpretations and Behavioral Responses

Many individuals in advanced consumer economies prefer authentic producers, products, and services. An important but overlooked question concerns the psychology behind such preferences: How do individuals act on authenticity when they encounter it? We suggest that the answer resides, at least in part, in the distinction between two fundamental but different meanings of authenticity: (a) attributions that a producer is true to its professed set of values ( moral authenticity) and (b) attributions that a producer is true to its assigned or claimed social category ( type authenticity). Although this conceptual distinction has long been recognized by prior theory, empirical studies tend to conflate the two meanings. We provide a brief overview of these two interpretations and, in doing so, argue that they are both conceptually and empirically distinct. To that end, we develop a set of generalizable scales for measuring both meanings of authenticity. We go on to posit that individuals will respond differently depending on which interpretation is evoked. Specifically, we suggest that perceptions of moral authenticity will be associated with higher willingness-to-pay whereas perceptions of type authenticity will be associated with higher online ratings. We then examine diners’ responses to their restaurant experiences across a series of multimethod studies in the field as well as experiments; we also report a replication study in the music domain. Taken together, the findings generally support the notion that individuals’ interpretations of and behavioral responses to authenticity indeed vary across the two meanings of the concept.

Varieties of Conscious Experience and the Subjective Awareness of One’s “True” Self

The subjective awareness of one’s true self is considered a fundamental aspect of authenticity. It is theorized to reflect an experienced disconnect between one’s conscious awareness and actual experiences. In this brief review, I describe some of the early theorizing on the construct and the research that this theorizing has inspired. I then review an emerging direction of research specifically focused on the relationship between subjective feelings of being disconnected from one’s true self and tendencies to become mentally detached from present experience (i.e., mindwandering). This work offers new insights into the nature of subjective true self-awareness; it elucidates for the first time how disruptions to people’s ongoing mental connection to present experience relate to the experience of true self-awareness and it invites theorizing about aspects of authenticity in ways that do not require evaluations of a self-concept. I end the review by speculating on how this work might inspire new empirical and theoretical directions in the psychological study of authenticity and feelings of true self-awareness.

Authenticity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Exploration of Audiences’ Lay Associations to Authenticity Across Five Domains

Existing research has proposed multiple definitions to authenticity. Instead of such a definitional approach, this article takes a bottom-up approach and provides an exploratory assessment of lay associations to authenticity. I conducted a survey that asked participants to list the words they associate with authentic restaurants, people, paintings, brands, and organizations. I find that there is substantial variance among individuals in their associations to authenticity, and the meanings they evoke also change with the domain of evaluation. People also vary in the level of importance they place on authenticity across the different domains. I discuss the implications of these findings for authenticity research and practice in psychology, marketing, management, and sociology.

Sketching the Contours of State Authenticity

We outline a program of research in which we examined state authenticity, the sense of being one’s true self. In particular, we describe its phenomenology (what it feels like to be experience authenticity), its correlates (e.g., emotions, needs), its nomological network (e.g., real-ideal self overlap, public and private self-consciousness), its cultural parameters (Easter and Western culture), its precursors or determinants (congruency, positivity, and hedonism), and its psychological health implications. We conclude by arguing that state authenticity deserves its own conceptual status, distinct from trait authenticity, and by setting an agenda for future research.

Understanding the Relationship Between Perceived Authenticity and Well-Being

A central tenet of many prominent philosophical and psychological traditions is that personal authenticity facilitates psychological well-being. This idea, however, is at odds with numerous perspectives arguing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to really know one's self, or the true self may not even exist. Moreover, empirical findings suggest that reports of authenticity are often contaminated by positively valenced behavior, further potentially undermining the validity of authenticity measures. Despite these concerns, we argue that subjective feelings of authenticity do uniquely contribute to well-being. Specifically, we argue that the relationship between perceived authenticity and well-being may be understood from a social-cognitive lay theory perspective that we label “true-self-as-guide,” that suggests people use these feelings of authenticity as a cue to evaluate whether they are living up to a shared cultural value of what it means to live a good life. We end with a call for future research on the antecedents of perceived authenticity, boundary conditions for the consequences of personal authenticity, and discuss cultural differences in true-self-as-guide lay theories.

Addiction, Identity, Morality

Background: Recent literature on addiction and judgments about the characteristics of agents has focused on the implications of adopting a “brain disease” versus “moral weakness” model of addiction. Typically, such judgments have to do with what capacities an agent has (e.g., the ability to abstain from substance use). Much less work, however, has been conducted on the relationship between addiction and judgments about an agent’s identity, including whether or to what extent an individual is seen as the same person after becoming addicted. Methods: We conducted a series of vignette-based experiments (total N = 3,620) to assess lay attitudes concerning addiction and identity persistence, systematically manipulating key characteristics of agents and their drug of addiction. Conclusions: In Study 1, we found that U.S. participants judged an agent who became addicted to drugs as being closer to “a completely different person” than “completely the same person” as the agent who existed prior to the addiction. In Studies 2–6, we investigated the intuitive basis for this result, finding that lay judgments of altered identity as a consequence of drug use and addiction are driven primarily by perceived negative changes in the moral character of drug users, who are seen as having deviated from their good true selves.

When do circumstances excuse? Moral prejudices and beliefs about the true self drive preferences for agency-minimizing explanations

When explaining human actions, people usually focus on a small subset of potential causes. What leads us to prefer certain explanations for valenced actions over others? The present studies indicate that our moral attitudes often predict our explanatory preferences far better than our beliefs about how causally sensitive actions are to features of the actor's environment. Study 1 found that high-prejudice participants were much more likely to endorse non-agential explanations of an erotic same-sex encounter, such as that one of the men endured a stressful event earlier that day. Study 2 manipulated participants' beliefs about how the agent's behavior depended on features of his environment, finding that such beliefs played no clear role in modeling participants' explanatory preferences. This result emerged both with low- and high-prejudice, US and Indian participants, suggesting that these findings probably reflect a species-typical feature of human psychology. Study 3 found that moral attitudes also predicted explanations for a woman's decision to abort her pregnancy (3a) and a person's decision to convert to Islam (3b). Study 4 found that luck in an action's etiology tends to undermine perceptions of blame more readily than perceptions of praise. Finally, Study 5 found that when explaining support for a rival ideology, both Liberals and Conservatives downplay agential causes while emphasizing environmental ones. Taken together, these studies indicate that our explanatory preferences often reflect a powerful tendency to represent agents as possessing virtuous true selves. Consequently, situation-focused explanations often appear salient because people resist attributing negatively valenced actions to the true self. There is a person/situation distinction, but it is normative.

How Do People Judge Meaning in Goal-Directed Behaviors: The Interplay Between Self-Concordance and Performance

Perceived performance and self-concordance are two sources of information people may utilize to judge meaning in goal-directed behaviors. We contend that either variable can adequately support the presence of meaning, even in the absence of the other. This perspective suggests that non-self-concordant goal pursuits can feel meaningful as long as one feels successful at the goals, and that failed goal pursuits can feel meaningful as long as they are self-concordant. Five studies investigated this potential interaction between performance and self-concordance. As hypothesized, we found a negative interactive pattern such that meaning was maintained when either performance or self-concordance was high. This interactive effect held true for the experience of meaning in personal goals (Studies 1 and 2), courses (Study 3), and work (Studies 4 and 5). This interactive pattern did not emerge when the outcome variable was either positive affect or job satisfaction, suggesting this compensation process was somewhat unique to meaning.

State Authenticity as Fit to Environment: The Implications of Social Identity for Fit, Authenticity, and Self-Segregation

People seek out situations that "fit," but the concept of fit is not well understood. We introduce State Authenticity as Fit to the Environment (SAFE), a conceptual framework for understanding how social identities motivate the situations that people approach or avoid. Drawing from but expanding the authenticity literature, we first outline three types of person-environment fit: self-concept fit, goal fit, and social fit. Each type of fit, we argue, facilitates cognitive fluency, motivational fluency, and social fluency that promote state authenticity and drive approach or avoidance behaviors. Using this model, we assert that contexts subtly signal social identities in ways that implicate each type of fit, eliciting state authenticity for advantaged groups but state inauthenticity for disadvantaged groups. Given that people strive to be authentic, these processes cascade down to self-segregation among social groups, reinforcing social inequalities. We conclude by mapping out directions for research on relevant mechanisms and boundary conditions.

Existential Ennui

Two studies ( N = 649) examined the association between self-alienation (SA; i.e., feelings of detachment from one’s true self) and academic amotivation (AA; i.e., lack of motivation in the academic domain). Based on classical and contemporary theories, a strong link between alienation and amotivation was predicted. A cross-sectional correlation study (Study 1) found that SA significantly predicted AA controlling for relevant variables (e.g., self-efficacy). A four-wave longitudinal design (Study 2) tested the reciprocal relationship between SA and AA within persons. Contrary to the a priori hypothesis that SA would predict amotivation, the path from AA to SA was more consistent and reliable than the other path. The potential bidirectional links between SA and AA, implications, and future directions are discussed.

The True Self: A Psychological Concept Distinct From the Self

A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the true self and identify features that distinguish people’s understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and moral and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable. We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for a variety of issues in psychology.

Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country (USA) and a diverse set of interdependent countries (Russia, Singapore, and Colombia). Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good.

Finding a Life Worth Living: Meaning in Life and Graduation from College

Graduation from college is an important milestone for young adults, marked by mixed emotions and poignancy, and therefore is an especially salient context for studying meaning in life. The present research used experience-sampling methodology to examine the antecedents and consequences of students' experience of meaning in life over the course of graduation. Participants were 74 graduating students who provided a total of 538 reports over the span of three days, including commencement day. Increased levels of state meaning in life during the days around commencement were linked to spending time with people in general and with family in particular, as well as thinking about one's years in college. Thinking about one's years in college mediated the effects of present company on state meaning in life. Graduates who experienced higher levels of state meaning in life during the days around their commencement ceremony had higher trait levels of meaning in life one week following commencement. We discuss how making meaning of a poignant experience has implications for healthy psychological development.

Straying From the Righteous Path and From Ourselves

The present research addresses the relationship between morally valenced behavior and perceptions of self-knowledge, an outcome that has received little attention in moral psychology. We propose that morally valenced behavior is related to subjective perceptions of self-knowledge, such that people experience lower levels of self-knowledge when they are reminded of their immoral behaviors. We tested this proposition in four studies ( N = 1,177). Study 1 used daily-diary methods and indicates that daily perceptions of self-knowledge covary with daily levels of morally valenced behavior. The final three studies made use of experimental methods and demonstrate that thinking about immoral behaviors attenuates current perceptions of self-knowledge. The predicted relationships and effects generally persist when controlling for self-esteem. Based on our findings, we argue that perceived self-knowledge may play a functional role in moral self-concept maintenance and moral regulatory processes.

True self-alienation positively predicts reports of mindwandering

Two studies assessed the relationship between feelings of uncertainty about who one truly is (i.e., true self-alienation) and self-reported task-unrelated thoughts (i.e., mindwandering) during performance tasks. Because true self-alienation is conceptualized as the subjective disconnect between conscious awareness and actual experience, we hypothesized that greater feelings of true self-alienation would positively relate to subjective reports of mindwandering. Two convergent studies supported this hypothesis. Moreover, this relationship could not consistently be accounted for by the independent influence of other aspects of authenticity, negative mood, mindfulness, or broad personality dimensions. These findings suggest that individual differences in true self-alienation are reliably associated with subjective reports of mindwandering. The implications of these findings for the true self-alienation construct, the ways that personality relates to mindwandering, and future research directions focused on curtailing mindwandering and improving performance and achievement are discussed.

Common Sense Beliefs about the Central Self, Moral Character, and the Brain

To assess lay beliefs about self and brain, we probed people's opinions about the central self, in relation to morality, willful control, and brain relevance. In study 1, 172 participants compared the central self to the peripheral self. The central self, construed at this abstract level, was seen as more brain-based than the peripheral self, less changeable through willful control, and yet more indicative of moral character. In study 2, 210 participants described 18 specific personality traits on 6 dimensions: centrality to self, moral relevance, willful control, brain dependence, temporal stability, and desirability. Consistent with Study 1, centrality to the self, construed at this more concrete level, was positively correlated to brain dependence. Centrality to the self was also correlated to desirability and temporal stability, but not to morality or willful control. We discuss differences and similarities between abstract (Study 1) and concrete (Study 2) levels of construal of the central self, and conclude that in contemporary American society people readily embrace the brain as the underlying substrate of who they truly are.

State Authenticity in Everyday Life

We examined the components and situational correlates of state authenticity to clarify the construct's meaning and improve understanding of authenticity's attainment. In Study 1, we used the day reconstruction method (participants assessed real–life episodes from ‘yesterday’) and in Study 2 a smartphone app (participants assessed real–life moments taking place ‘just now’) to obtain situation–level ratings of participants’ sense of living authentically, self–alienation, acceptance of external influence, mood, anxiety, energy, ideal–self overlap, self–consciousness, self–esteem, flow, needs satisfaction, and motivation to be ‘real’. Both studies demonstrated that state authentic living does not require rejecting external influence and, further, accepting external influence is not necessarily associated with state self–alienation. In fact, situational acceptance of external influence was more often related to an increased, rather than decreased, sense of authenticity. Both studies also found state authentic living to be associated with greater, and state self–alienation with lesser: positive mood, energy, relaxation, ideal–self overlap, self–esteem, flow, and motivation for realness. Study 2 further revealed that situations prioritizing satisfaction of meaning/purpose in life were associated with increased authentic living and situations prioritizing pleasure/interest satisfaction were associated with decreased self–alienation. State authenticity is best characterized by two related yet independent components: authentic living and (absence of) self–alienation. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

Judgments of Meaning in Life, Religious Beliefs, and the Experience of Cognitive (Dis)Fluency

The primary aim of the current studies was to test whether religiousness interacted with self-reported levels of meaning in life (MIL) to predict the ease or difficulty in judging one's MIL, the search for meaning itself, and religious doubt. Undergraduate students in Study 1 (N = 111) and adult participants recruited online in Study 2 (N = 206) completed measures of religious beliefs, MIL, cognitive fluency related to MIL, and related variables. Study 3 merged these data sets. In Study 4 (N = 255), online participants completed measures of religious beliefs, cognitive fluency related to religious beliefs, and MIL. Studies 1 and 2 showed that highly religious people with lower MIL reported greater difficulty making their MIL judgments than other people. Study 3 showed that they were also more likely to search for MIL and that disfluency mediated this effect. Study 4 demonstrated that they also reported more difficult judgments of religious beliefs and more religious doubts than their religious peers with high MIL. The current studies demonstrate that the experience of ease or difficulty associated with MIL judgments represents an important yet largely unexamined aspect of MIL. Our findings have implications for understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying responses to meaning threats.

Authentic engagement

Purpose

– The purpose of this case study is to measure the impact of authenticity – the operation of one’s true self in one’s daily activities – on student engagement and learning in the context of information literacy instruction.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study was conducted during information literacy instruction for English 105 classes at the House Undergraduate Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A classroom modeling exercise was developed to help students choose authentic topics of interest. Students then filled out a questionnaire to assess whether choosing authentic topics led to increased engagement and increased learning according to Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards compared to students in the control group. Results were analyzed using an independent samples t-test.

Findings

– The data illustrate that the exercise successfully helped students choose authentic topics and that these students’ motivation to learn was higher than students in the control group. Students in the experimental group also, on average, rated their learning of ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards significantly higher than students in the control group.

Originality/value

– The study provides the first empirical data confirming the positive impact of authenticity on student motivation and learning in the context of information literacy instruction. An implication of the study is that it is possible not only to provide students with resources – as the traditional role of librarians might have it – but also that librarians can have a positive and substantial impact on the content students choose to work on, and the degree to which they care about it. The impact of this particular result could radically change the way instruction librarians view the nature and scope of their pedagogical role in academic libraries.

Sources of life strengths appraisal scale: a multidimensional approach to assessing older adults' perceived sources of life strengths

Both cognitive and psychosocial theories of adult development stress the fundamental role of older adults' appraisals of the diverse sources of cognitive and social-emotional strengths. This study reports the development of a new self-appraisal measure that incorporates key theoretical dimensions of internal and external sources of life strengths, as identified in the gerontological literature. Using a pilot study sample and three other independent samples to examine older adults' appraisals of their sources of life strengths which helped them in their daily functioning and to combat life challenges, adversity, and losses, a psychometric instrument having appropriate reliability and validity properties was developed. A 24-month followup of a randomly selected sample confirmed that the nine-scale appraisal measure (SLSAS) is a promising instrument for appraising older adults' sources of life strengths in dealing with stresses of daily life's functioning and also a robust measure for predicting outcomes of resilience, autonomy, and well-being for this age group. A unique strength of the appraisal instrument is its critically relevant features of brevity, simplicity of language, and ease of administration to frail older adults. Dedicated to the memory of Shanta Khurana whose assistance in the pilot work for the study was invaluable.