Last week I shared the first edition of the new series on the “status quo traps”. It was about our tendency to obey social influence, and you can read it here. It’s the most read and shared edition so far, so if you haven’t yet, check it out. And for an introduction to what the series is about, read the overview here.

This week I am taking a slight detour from the series, but we keep heading in the same direction. I look at authenticity, one of the terms that pop up frequently in these editions. It’s a term that I believe we all have an intuitive understanding of. Yet when trying to be authentic, it becomes harder to grasp. So I take a closer look and show why we find it hard to follow Taylor Swift’s advice to “just be yourself, there is no one better”.

As I continue the series, I’ll occasionally drop in these interludes on topics that are complementary to the main theme.

Next week I present the second trap in the series, our impulse to persist in past beliefs and behaviours.

If you enjoy these posts, please share them with the social buttons at the top right. And thanks to those who have already done so for the previous editions.

Just be yourself

I’ve argued that authenticity is one of the benefits of escaping the status quo traps. For example, in the previous post about the trap of conformity, I shared the story about the top regret of people in their final days: they wish they had lived a life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them. They believe their life would have benefited from living more authentically.

This is my intuitive definition of authenticity: being your true self, despite pressure to be otherwise. But in applying the simple advice to “just be yourself”, we quickly face two challenges.

Firstly, this requires you to know your true self. It turns out this isn’t that easy. A Google search offers a starting point, with everything from “the ultimate guide to finding your true self” to lists containing 6-10 steps to figure this out. The fact that these guides exist shows that many of us probably don’t have a well-articulated concept of our authentic selves. So how do we reveal the true self? These guides advise us to introspect, observe our minds and actions and build up a picture of ourselves. We are told to achieve a state of calm and quiet (it seems our true selves avoid stress and noise) and deliberate on who we are. This isn’t bad advice; it’s just difficult to follow, given what we know about how our minds work. Decades of research have shown that we are “cognitive misers” who avoid the effort of thinking through complex problems, preferring simple and low-effort strategies. Finding your true self is difficult, and we’ll likely avoid the hard thinking it requires. But even if we apply ourselves fully to this critical question, it’s unlikely that introspection can reveal all there is to know about us. There are well-documented limits to how well we can know ourselves by turning the mind towards itself.

A second challenge is that this intuitive definition considers authenticity as a trait, like personality, which is stable across most contexts. If accurate, we may claim Jane is authentic, but John is not. But who are these robotically consistent people? This level of consistency seems hard to imagine and even harder to find examples of. Instead, it appears evident that authenticity varies from moment to moment and from one context to the next. If we behave differently depending on the audience, as we often do, we must admit some interactions are more authentic than others.

These challenges cast doubt on our ability to find our true selves through introspection alone. But what if, instead of thinking of authenticity as a stable trait discovered through thinking, we consider it a feeling dependent on the context? A 2021 preprint paper (“Authenticity on the Fringe: A Bottom-up Approach to the Study of the True Self”) offered this new perspective on what it means to be authentic.

Feelings of authenticity

In a series of experiments, the authors tested an account of authenticity that incorporates a feeling of fluency, defined as “the subjective feeling of ease that corresponds to one's immediate experience, mental processing, or physical action”. In one of the experiments, people were asked to recall their most recent experience before starting the experiment. Unsurprisingly, work (31%) and leisure (38%) were most frequently mentioned. After describing these recent activities, they were asked how fluent these experiences felt while they engaged in them (by agreeing with the statement “I felt at ease while doing that activity” on a rating scale). Next, they were asked how authentic they felt “right now” using a previously developed measure of authenticity. Subsequent experiments asked people to recall specific experiences that felt authentic and fluent and, in each case, related these concepts to each other. Across all experiments, a strong link between fluency and authenticity was observed.

So a feeling of fluency may be an internal signal that we are being authentic. If we are engaged in a conversation, a work or physical activity that makes us feel at ease, it is a cue that the action is authentic to us. The benefit of this view is that we don’t need to come into an activity with a sense of our true self to judge whether it is authentic, but we can take a cue from our feelings when experiencing it. The feeling that something is easy, natural and fluent can be a barometer for authentic acts. This view of authenticity reminds me of a quote by Louis Armstrong; when asked what jazz is, he replied:

The dynamic nature of this account is also enlightening. We can be more or less authentic from moment to moment instead of seeing ourselves as authentic in general. If we feel more at ease in the company of some friends over others, perhaps we aren’t being authentic in one context.

Authenticity and status quo defiance

Acknowledging that not everyone has a pre-formed “true self” and that we may vary in our authenticity between contexts has implications for the broader theme of status quo defiance.

Confronting the status quo traps such as conformity relies on some idea of who we really are. Should we believe what the group believes? Should we pursue a respectable but personally unfulfilling career? There are two voices in the debate. The first is the social status quo nudging us to conform; the other is the internal voice that speaks for what our true self wants. If the true self is silent because we don’t have a pre-existing concept of who we are, then a feeling of unease is a cue that something about our decision isn’t authentic.

Further, it reveals that status quo compliance is a feature of actions, not people. We are all more or less likely to conform depending on the context. We may defy the status quo in our fashion sense but conform in our political beliefs. Defying the status quo is a series of decisions, not a single transformation.

The limits of trusting your gut

Still, I wouldn’t take this view too far. This research describes how people experience authenticity and isn’t a prescription for what we should aspire to.

The researchers of this paper acknowledge that this account leaves room for people to be “authentically bad”. Harmful and destructive behaviours may feel “right” or “natural” to someone, but that doesn’t mean they should be condoned because it feels authentic. Taking our cues from feelings alone leaves room for a questionable form of authenticity where if it feels good, it’s right for me.

What’s missing is a further step: thinking about why something feels easy and natural and whether this aligns with our true self and our ideal self. But isn’t thinking hard? Yes, but it’s not an excuse to avoid it. We may not have a ready-made answer to the big question of who we are, but we can clarify the smaller building blocks: our goals, values and ambitions. And they get us from what feels good now to what’s right for us in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Henk