Authenticity isn’t just a buzzword. Researchers have found that authentic people enjoy better psychological health and a greater sense of meaning in their lives.
“There’s a really strong link between feeling authentic and life feeling meaningful,” said Rebecca Schlegel, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University. “You have essentially a good story about why you do the things that you do.”
Authenticity is a popular subject to study, Schlegel said, but psychologists, philosophers and other scholars are still working to define this elusive concept.
Many people think that authenticity means being yourself. Others believe that authenticity is synonymous with honesty, truthfulness or kindness, Schlegel said. But having studied authenticity extensively, she defines its essence as self-determination.
“The key to feeling authentic is ultimately that ownership piece. ‘Do I feel like I’m doing this because I want to? I have a reason, and it’s consistent with my values that I’m doing this,’” she said.
Authenticity isn’t a static trait, but an ongoing process with important stakes, said Jeffrey Hanson, an associate professor of philosophy at New College of Florida.
“Authenticity is this process of genuinely deciding what to think, what to value, and who to be,” he co-wrote in a 2022 article published in Frontiers in Psychology.
“It’s a matter of becoming someone rather than being someone,” he said.
Authenticity can protect psychological health
In this quest, people identify with an ideal self of their choosing and become more authentic as they work committedly toward that vision, he said — whether it’s becoming a good parent, skillful musician or compassionate doctor. They care enough that they’re prepared to be judged as having succeeded or failed, Hanson said.
An ideal self must be realistically attainable, he said. And its nature shouldn’t be nefarious. One can’t be an authentic burglar or loan shark.
Through multiple studies, “we find over and over again that people think that behaving morally both makes you feel more authentic and seem more authentic to others,” Schlegel said. “We all share an intuition that the truest self for everybody is a good self.”
Inauthenticity bears hallmarks, too, Schlegel said: “You’re not even sure why you’re doing the thing. Or you’re doing it purely to please somebody else and you don’t endorse it.” According to her research, inauthenticity can strain psychological health. It’s linked to higher levels of anxiety, stress or depression. It predicts struggles with finding meaning in life.
In contrast, authenticity protects psychological health, Schlegel wrote in her research. Authenticity has been positively associated with self-control, better decision-making, problem-focused coping and satisfaction with relationships, she noted. It strengthens bonds between people, whereas “inauthenticity is linked to disparagement of others through humor and aggressive behavior,” she wrote.
Not only does authenticity predict greater well-being, but also a sense of meaning in life, she said.
Meaning in life consists of three qualities, Hanson said: “purpose (having goals to work toward); significance (a sense that one matters); and coherence (feeling that the world and one’s experiences make sense).”
And one can’t will the ideal self into being, he said.
“The meaning in life is the very act of striving to take the self that I actually am now and bring it into conformity with the self that I ideally wish to be. I’m going to have to attain meaning from life through the process of struggling to realize that ideal,” he said.
How to pursue your ideal self
Watch for moments that feel natural.
“Introspecting on who I am” isn’t usually fruitful, Schlegel said. It can be hard to understand yourself accurately.
Instead, pay attention to moments “that feel most natural,” she said. “‘This is something that I care about, and it’s coming naturally to me.’ We know that people feel most authentic when situations are fluent, when they feel like they naturally kind of fit.”
Try to find these moments in relationships, jobs, hobbies and other domains in your life, she said.
Make choices that fit you and your values.
In search of your ideal self, find pursuits that you are “willing to endorse as your own. Make them yours in a way that only you can,” Hanson said.
Even if a pursuit is a good goal objectively, it doesn’t mean that it’s an authentic one for a particular individual. For example, Hanson said that he has been interested in philosophy since his teen years, so he has “endorsed” being a philosophy professor. In contrast, becoming a chemistry professor would not be authentic or as meaningful for him, even if it’s “objectively fantastic,” he said.
At times, we all must do things that don’t feel authentic — that are “expedient or utilitarian,” Hanson said, for example, taking courses or working at jobs we dislike.
However, the big decisions in your life should “make sense, meaning that you have a good reason for why you did it,” Schlegel said.
Values are key to authenticity. “I think the true self is a little more amorphous than any one skill, any one disposition. It’s ultimately about those values, and can you find a path in what you’re doing that’s ultimately congruent with those values?” she said.
Expect hardships and negotiate your way through.
Adversity is inevitable, Hanson said. We suffer romantic breakups, fail to land the job that we wanted or don’t achieve a cherished goal.
Do we become “despairing and miserable and retreat from reality?” he said. “Or do I really want to become the person who is capable of maintaining an ideal goal while nevertheless having to do so in the face of opposition, setback, tragedy, heartbreak or loss?”
Stay flexible on the journey to an ideal self, Hanson said. He recalled a student whose entire goal — whose ideal self — was aimed at being admitted to one particular university. When he was rejected, he told Hanson that “it was the worst day in my life.” He went to a backup college with a plan to transfer after his first year. After one semester, though, he realized that he didn’t need that first-choice college to feel fulfilled. He decided to stay and told Hanson, “This is the place for me.”
“We have to maintain an attitude of openness to being surprised by a possibility that we didn’t envision in the first place,” Hanson said, “and surprised by the possibility that something that we didn’t know that we wanted really was the ideal for us all along.”