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