Accepting vs. distorting reality: Examining the role of dispositional authenticity

Abstract

Historical accounts presume that authentic people are true to the self and avoid self-presentation. However, recent evidence suggests that feelings of authenticity do not necessarily follow from acting in line with self-views, and people with high (self-reported) dispositional authenticity may distort self-relevant information to make a desired impression. The current preregistered study sought to extend previous findings suggestive of this distortion of self-relevant information. Participants (N = 529) self-reported their dispositional authenticity and then completed a (sham) perceptual task that could presumably diagnose the presence of a brain type that enables authentic behavior. Participants, in general, misreported their perceptual experiences on the task to seem as if they had a greater likelihood of possessing the brain type. This biased reporting was not significantly related to people's dispositional authenticity, but it was only present (to a statistically significant degree) for participants with relatively high dispositional authenticity. These data suggest that individuals with high dispositional authenticity are prone to distort their experiences in the context of learning about the self's authenticity; such findings question the general validity of the longstanding assumption that authenticity entails full acceptance of the self's experiences.