I feel good, therefore I am real: Testing the causal influence of mood on state authenticity

Abstract

Although the literature has focused on individual differences in authenticity, recent findings suggest that authenticity is sensitive to context; that is, it is also a state. We extended this perspective by examining whether incidental affect influences authenticity. In three experiments, participants felt more authentic when in a relatively positive than negative mood. The causal role of affect in authenticity was consistent across a diverse set of mood inductions, including explicit (Experiments 1 and 3) and implicit (Experiment 2) methods. The link between incidental affect and state authenticity was not moderated by ability to down-regulate negative affect (Experiments 1 and 3) nor was it explained by negative mood increasing private self-consciousness or decreasing access to the self system (Experiment 3). The results indicate that mood is used as information to assess one's sense of authenticity.

Keywords:

• Authenticity
• Self
• Mood
• Personality systems interaction theory
• Affect infusion model
• Mood as information

We thank S. Ames, F. MacNeill, and the second-year undergraduate psychology students at the University of Edinburgh for their assistance with material construction and/or data collection.

We thank S. Ames, F. MacNeill, and the second-year undergraduate psychology students at the University of Edinburgh for their assistance with material construction and/or data collection.

Notes

¹ As we are primarily concerned with the valence dimension (negative vs. positive), we use the terms affect and mood interchangeably.

² The statistical notation η_p ² refers to partial eta-squared and d refers to Cohen's d, both of which are indicators of effect size.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Economic and Social Research Council grant #RES-062-23-2595 to AL and CS.