Abstract
Humanistic psychology has long been interested in authenticity. Carl Rogers proposed that authenticity leads to more fully functioning behavior. However, it is only in recent years that there has been empirical research into the correlates of authenticity. The aim was to test for association between authenticity and two individual difference factors of much contemporary interest—mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Participants were 197 adults recruited either through convenience sampling or an online survey. All completed the Authenticity Scale, the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale, the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills, and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding. Higher scores on authenticity were associated with higher scores on self-deceptive enhancement, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. Regression analyses showed that authenticity, specifically the self-alienation subscale, was able to predict mindfulness, and the authentic living subscale was able to predict emotional intelligence, taking into account social desirability and self-deceptive effects. Further research is now needed into the association between authenticity and self-deception and the causal relationships of these variables with emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and other characteristics of the fully functioning person.
Highlights
Authenticity is a topic of long standing theoretical interest to humanistic psychologists (Schmid, 2005; Wyatt, 2001) but until the more recent emergence of the positive psychology movement there had been a lack of empirical research (Joseph, 2016)
It was noted that scores on Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS) were moderately associated with scores on the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS), and that each was moderately associated with higher scores on the Authenticity Scale (AS), as predicted
We found that authenticity was associated with emotional intelligence and mindfulness
Summary
Authenticity is a topic of long standing theoretical interest to humanistic psychologists (Schmid, 2005; Wyatt, 2001) but until the more recent emergence of the positive psychology movement there had been a lack of empirical research (Joseph, 2016). Congruence as an individual difference variable outside therapy settings, received little attention in the personality, developmental and social psychology literature. This may have been because of the lack of appropriate measurement tools. In the mid 2000’s, Kernis and Goldman (2006) devised the Authenticity Inventory, which measures four components: awareness, unbiased processing, behaviour, and relational orientation; and Wood et al, (2008) devised the Authenticity Scale Both measures were influenced by Rogers’ work, but the Authenticity Scale was developed to be a measure of what Rogers’ (1959) referred to as congruence. Congruence was the term used by Rogers (1959) in his major theoretical work to refer to consistency between a person’s inner experience and their outward expression (see Lietaer, AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 1993). As people become more congruent, they move toward becoming what Rogers (1963) described as more fully functioning, which involves being more open to experience, trusting of themselves, and living in an existential fashion
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