When does changing emotions harm authenticity? Distinct reappraisal strategies differentially impact subjective and observer-rated authenticity

Abstract

ABSTRACT We compared the effect of two commonly-studied reappraisal techniques on authenticity during a lab-based social interaction: emotion-focused reappraisal, which explicitly instructs people to change their emotions, and perspective-based reappraisal, which focuses on changing people’s viewpoint of an event. Study 1 showed that people who used perspective-based reappraisal were more authentic than people who used emotion-focused reappraisal. In Study 2 we replicated this effect, demonstrating that perspective-based (vs. emotion-focused) reappraisal leads to more authenticity and that this effect is statistically mediated by greater emotion regulation awareness in the emotion-focused reappraisal condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that emotion regulation techniques that do not make people aware they are changing their natural emotional response may leave authenticity intact.