Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Mayant, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we're going to be kicking off a series
Speaker 3: on a concept that I have been thinking about a
Speaker 3: lot lately. That is the idea of authenticity. I've been
Speaker 3: thinking about doing an episode on this sort of off
Speaker 3: and on for I think several years now. Authenticity is
Speaker 3: really interesting to me because it is one of those
Speaker 3: concepts that is extremely important. It's highly relevant to our lives.
Speaker 3: We probably think about it every single day, and at
Speaker 3: the same time, it is sort of vaguely defined. We
Speaker 3: don't often stop to think about what it really means,
Speaker 3: or to analyze how we evaluated, or what our criteria
Speaker 3: of authenticity are and so forth. And I think that's
Speaker 3: kind of a shame, because our judgments about personal authenticity
Speaker 3: play into all kinds of things, into how we relate
Speaker 3: to friends, acquaintances, and co workers, whether we trust political candidates,
Speaker 3: how we make business decisions, how we understand and evaluate
Speaker 3: music and poetry and other works of art and entertainment.
Speaker 3: It's threaded all through our lives.
Speaker 2: It even comes down to basic decisions that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: even think of as getting into the core of authenticity.
Speaker 2: I think everybody has at least one I don't know,
Speaker 2: T shirt or other kind of garment and their wardrobe,
Speaker 2: and you may find yourself wondering some days, is this
Speaker 2: the day I wear this? Can I pull this off?
Speaker 2: And and to some extent, you may be wondering about authenticity,
Speaker 2: like can I wear this and be authentic? Or are
Speaker 2: people going to see through me and they're going to
Speaker 2: question whether I actually support that band, or whether whether
Speaker 2: this is the appropriate color scheme for me? And so forth?
Speaker 3: Is this T shirt really me today?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Yeah? And as we'll get into like that answer
Speaker 2: may change day to day, Like you know, we're we're
Speaker 2: not necessarily the same person day to day, and what
Speaker 2: is authentic one day may not be authentic the next.
Speaker 3: Right before we started recording, I was thinking about how
Speaker 3: authenticity is even often prescribed as a remedy for when
Speaker 3: people are having difficulty with social relations or social interactions,
Speaker 3: like when somebody's like, I'm having trouble making friends or
Speaker 3: I'm having trouble with dating. What am I doing wrong?
Speaker 3: What's the first thing people usually say to them, just
Speaker 3: be yourself. That is advice there. Essentially that means be authentic.
Speaker 2: Though it's a paradox, right, because at the same time,
Speaker 2: there's no other way to hijack your own authenticity than
Speaker 2: by overthinking your authenticity. Yeah, or at least that can
Speaker 2: be the case. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, so you know, we invoke this concept all the time,
Speaker 3: We make judgments about it all the time. These judgments
Speaker 3: are highly relevant to our lives, but often we'd be
Speaker 3: I think if you press most people on what does
Speaker 3: it really mean, they'd probably have to think about it
Speaker 3: for a bit before they could come up with an answer.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested in exploring this question. What is authenticity
Speaker 3: and a person in a statement in a work of art.
Speaker 3: It seems to have some overlap with honesty, but is
Speaker 3: not the same thing as honesty. In fact, I think
Speaker 3: quite famously, there are people in the real world, and
Speaker 3: like fictional characters you can think of, who are known
Speaker 3: not to be honest, but are still widely considered authentic
Speaker 3: in some way, like tricksters and liars and rascals who
Speaker 3: are not thought to be reliable truth tellers, yet they're
Speaker 3: also not thought to be personally fake. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of like lovable scoundrels in movies. Han Solo is
Speaker 3: a character who like lies all the time, but he
Speaker 3: is you would probably judge him as authentic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's true to himself and that's one of
Speaker 2: the things we admire about him, Like, you know, he
Speaker 2: shoots from the hip.
Speaker 3: And what we might have a hard time coming up
Speaker 3: with a clear and all cases appropriate definition of authenticity,
Speaker 3: we definitely know what it is in opposition to its antonym, right,
Speaker 3: the opposite of an authentic person is a person who
Speaker 3: is fake. I think we all have this idea in
Speaker 3: our mind of a fake person and we know them
Speaker 3: when we meet them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but even this is this is the course
Speaker 2: difficult to figure out as well, because there's so many
Speaker 2: different versions of quote unquote fakeness in an individual, Like like,
Speaker 2: what is the context is? Is it like a social situation?
Speaker 2: I think that tends to be a situation where a
Speaker 2: lack of authenticity is considered more of a red flag,
Speaker 2: as opposed to say, like a customer service environment, where
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's a lot of back and forth
Speaker 2: there as well, and there is some nuance as well.
Speaker 2: You can certainly come off too fake in a cut
Speaker 2: customer service situation. But there is like a level of
Speaker 2: like I am putting on the public face, I'm not
Speaker 2: being one hundred percent myself because I am also representing
Speaker 2: this company or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, there are some jobs
Speaker 3: that just require you to act a certain way regardless
Speaker 3: of what you're feeling inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also interesting to think about. Yeah, this whole
Speaker 2: idea of like an authentic person versus a fake person,
Speaker 2: like someone who lies all the time, Because if someone
Speaker 2: lies all the time, then they tell the truth in
Speaker 2: a manner of speaking. You know. It's it's kind of
Speaker 2: like that old Knight Knights and Knaves logic puzzle that
Speaker 2: was that was popularized by the two gates scene in
Speaker 2: Jim Henson's Labyrinth, which Sarah ultimately solves via answerer laundering.
Speaker 3: Right, So one of the gatekeepers always tells the truth
Speaker 3: and the other always lies, and with that you can
Speaker 3: like solve the logic puzzle.
Speaker 2: Right because since they're both absolutees, you can you can
Speaker 2: compare their answers and eventually get yourself to the absolute
Speaker 2: truth of the scenario.
Speaker 3: So the dog at that gate that lies all the time,
Speaker 3: you would probably not think of as a fake person
Speaker 3: as someone who's inauthentic. The way one of the dogs
Speaker 3: at the gates I think would actually be fake would
Speaker 3: be if they like cultivated an outward facing persona as
Speaker 3: a truth teller, but then secretly told lies sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: like if one of the dogs at the gates actually
Speaker 3: broke their own rules about lying and telling the.
Speaker 2: Truth, right, because then they would be inconsistent, which is
Speaker 2: which is ultimately I guess what we're we're getting at
Speaker 2: when it comes to, like the fear of someone in
Speaker 2: a social scenario being fake is that they will they
Speaker 2: will break a seeming track record, like they'll you know, oh,
Speaker 2: they seemed like they were so authentic and they were
Speaker 2: my friend, but then they weren't my friend. Whereas if
Speaker 2: they were if they hated you the whole time, but
Speaker 2: they perfectly kept up the front of being your friend
Speaker 2: for say years or the course of your entire lifetime,
Speaker 2: then they're essentially your friend, right, Yeah, Like if the
Speaker 2: if the fake is perfect, it becomes the truth.
Speaker 3: That's a really good point, and I think I think
Speaker 3: in reality that would correspond with some philosophical ideas of
Speaker 3: authenticity we'll get into in just a second. So for
Speaker 3: a direct definition of authenticity in persons, and of course
Speaker 3: you know that term gets applied to other types of
Speaker 3: things as well, and we'll discuss that in a minute.
Speaker 3: But in persons, I was looking I was looking at
Speaker 3: a paper by Erica R. Bailey and Aaron Levy that
Speaker 3: I'm either going to discuss later in this episode or
Speaker 3: probably possibly in part two of this series. But in
Speaker 3: that paper, the authors define an authentic person as quote
Speaker 3: someone whose behavior is genuine and reflects their true inner
Speaker 3: qualities and feelings. And I think this definition does get
Speaker 3: at a large part of what people mean with this word. Usually,
Speaker 3: authenticity has something to do with your outward behavior accurately
Speaker 3: reflecting your true inner feelings and your true inner character.
Speaker 3: So in short, authenticity is when the outside matches the inside,
Speaker 3: or when something is in fact what it seems to be,
Speaker 3: or when someone is in fact who they claim to be.
Speaker 3: But while that's I think pretty straightforward to understand, it
Speaker 3: still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for starters, of course, we can never
Speaker 2: truly know somebody's actual inner reality, their actual inner thoughts,
Speaker 2: so it's all just us doing a mental model of
Speaker 2: what this person's inner thoughts and actual intentions are. And
Speaker 2: then it's yeah, it doesn't necessarily bear close scrutiny, right
Speaker 2: because along these lines, a person with no filters or
Speaker 2: composure whatsoever is the utmost authentic person you could hope
Speaker 2: to meet. And generally speaking, these are qualities you come
Speaker 2: to expect from say a cat or a dog. But
Speaker 2: a great deal of striving to be a mature human
Speaker 2: is knowing or learning how to manage the inner self
Speaker 2: and and outer expression. And as we grow up, there's
Speaker 2: a great deal to learn and develop along these lines.
Speaker 2: And then we continue to learn and develop along these lines. Ideally,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of a it's a never ending
Speaker 2: journey of trying to figure out how to do all
Speaker 2: this stuff and how to find that balance between how
Speaker 2: you are inside and how you appear outside to not
Speaker 2: necessarily everyone at once, but you know, different groups at
Speaker 2: different times, how do you present yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean,
Speaker 3: we think we value authenticity as a desirable trait in
Speaker 3: people to be friends with, people to put our trust
Speaker 3: in as leaders and so forth, But in reality, a
Speaker 3: person who authentically outwardly enacts every feeling they have and
Speaker 3: every thought they have. We would usually view that person
Speaker 3: as lacking in some kind of self control. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think there's a sort of contradiction there within our desires.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so while this definition I just mentioned, like
Speaker 3: the is what it seems to be or are who
Speaker 3: they claim to be definition, I think does cover a
Speaker 3: lot of the usage of authenticity in everyday life, especially
Speaker 3: when applied to persons and to artifacts. Discussing authenticity is
Speaker 3: complicated by the fact that this word is used to
Speaker 3: refer to a lot of different ideas that are all
Speaker 3: somewhat related but also somewhat different. So I think about
Speaker 3: a secondary usage of authenticity when describing an activity or
Speaker 3: a product that has like a known cultural history. Example
Speaker 3: that comes to my mind is making a recipe for
Speaker 3: spaghetti carbonara. According to a lot of people, there will
Speaker 3: be an authentic way to make this dish. You got
Speaker 3: to use eggs but not cream, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: And there are many inauthentic ways to make spaghetti carbonara,
Speaker 3: And to some people there is something actually shameful or
Speaker 3: bad about making it. In one of the allegedly inauthentic ways,
Speaker 3: and the same category of cultural authenticity or inauthenticity. I
Speaker 3: think I really often see it applied to food, but
Speaker 3: I think it also gets applied to things like clothing, dances, crafts,
Speaker 3: and other art forms. And so this understanding of authenticity
Speaker 3: has some overlap with the is what it claims to
Speaker 3: be definition, but it also seems to rope in some
Speaker 3: other things, like it relies on additional assumptions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. The culinary example is really interesting to
Speaker 2: ponder because the reality, of course, is that many examples
Speaker 2: of the authentic in culinary tradition, these were at some
Speaker 2: point the inauthentic new approach, you know, making use of
Speaker 2: say new ingredients that there are a number of dishes
Speaker 2: you can find throughout global cuisines that you think of
Speaker 2: it as a particular form, but you're incorporating ingredients that
Speaker 2: were brought in from some other location and just became
Speaker 2: associated with that particular dish.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I think the idea of authenticity and
Speaker 3: these sort of like cultural performances or you know, making
Speaker 3: a recipe or something, what it suggests is you're doing
Speaker 3: it the way it's always been done, but in and
Speaker 3: basically no case has it ever actually always been done
Speaker 3: any particular way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, and maybe being a little pedantic there,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the point, because the point still holts that
Speaker 2: when we're talking about an authentic culinary experience, we mean
Speaker 2: that it's firmly rooted in the tradition, and not a
Speaker 2: tradition that's existed since the beginning of time, but has
Speaker 2: maybe existed for centuries, maybe decades, maybe just a few years.
Speaker 2: And it also is probably rooted in a particular culture.
Speaker 2: But again, the paradox is that authenticity is rarely truly
Speaker 2: set in stone. It just may have the feeling of such.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. And while we are sort
Speaker 3: of questioning the idea of these various ideas of authenticity
Speaker 3: and how much truth there is to them, really, at
Speaker 3: the same time, like I feel it, like, you know,
Speaker 3: if I see somebody like making spaghetti carbonaro with you know,
Speaker 3: just like heavy cream and American cheese and mixing it
Speaker 3: together with bacon, It's not like I think they're doing
Speaker 3: something morally wrong, but I do reckon n there's some
Speaker 3: kind of gap there. There is like a difference between
Speaker 3: what they're doing and what a person might understand them
Speaker 3: to claim to be doing. If that makes any sense,
Speaker 3: Maybe that's too many orders removed. But do you understand
Speaker 3: what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, though, yeah yeah. Like I say, it's hard
Speaker 2: to really figure out where to land on this, because
Speaker 2: I was thinking about classic cocktails as an example of this.
Speaker 2: You know, in many cases these are not terribly old,
Speaker 2: but that people do get very possessive of, like original
Speaker 2: recipes and so forth. Think the mytie, for example, which
Speaker 2: we did a whole episode of Invention on years back.
Speaker 2: We interviewed Jeff Beach Bumbarry about the origins of the
Speaker 2: Mytai is a pretty fun shat, but yeah, my tie
Speaker 2: is a classic tropical drink that merely dates back to
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four. And when we talk about an authentic
Speaker 2: my ti, we're generally talking about this nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: trader Vic recipe. And in this particular case, you might ask, well,
Speaker 2: does inauthentic equal bad? Well, oftentimes, yes, there are plenty
Speaker 2: of bad my ties out there that are inauthentic, But
Speaker 2: there are also noted historic variations of the my tie
Speaker 2: that are not bad drinks, And there are various contemporary
Speaker 2: spins on the cocktail that range from good to great. So,
Speaker 2: in a weird sense, something can at once be authentic
Speaker 2: and inauthentic. You can have a great spin on the
Speaker 2: my tie that is inauthentic when compared to the original recipe,
Speaker 2: but can still be an authentic product of a particular
Speaker 2: mixologists or bartender's skill in creativity.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great point, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: what you're getting at there with like, there's another type
Speaker 3: of authenticity that can be achieved even if the recipe
Speaker 3: is not the same as what it originally was. But
Speaker 3: you're saying an authenticity emerges out of another mixologist's creativity
Speaker 3: and skill in putting something together, and that taps into
Speaker 3: this whole other nebula of meanings that people today attached
Speaker 3: to the word authenticity, which has something to do with
Speaker 3: like it is related to outward behavior, but is not
Speaker 3: necessarily about that matching your matching your inner character, matching
Speaker 3: your inner feelings. It's more about like behavior that is
Speaker 3: an achievement of your greatest potential or like living your
Speaker 3: best life. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a way people talk about being an
Speaker 3: authentic existence being one in which you do your best
Speaker 3: you're like, become the best version of yourself that you
Speaker 3: can be and do the best you can do.
Speaker 2: Like it kind of a spin on that and just
Speaker 2: our lingos. Occasionally go hear someone refer to as, say
Speaker 2: a particular director or creator, and they'll be like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this individual they're the real or this movie, this song,
Speaker 2: this is the real deal. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't necessarily connect to anything in particular,
Speaker 2: but it does kind of at least imply that, like,
Speaker 2: this is authentic. This is a work of someone's labor
Speaker 2: and love and passion, Like someone put in the work here.
Speaker 3: Another phrase that expresses this idea is the idea of
Speaker 3: someone coming into themselves as an artist or as a
Speaker 3: leader or as whatever, Like they are becoming the real
Speaker 3: version of themselves by doing something great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like what does that mean? Like they fulfilled the prophecy,
Speaker 2: achieve their terrible purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yet another definition of authenticity that has been
Speaker 3: very important is one that is particular to existentialist philosophy,
Speaker 3: in which I don't claim to be an expert on
Speaker 3: existentialist philosophy, so I hope I'm summarizing it well enough here,
Speaker 3: But the way I understand it is that these branch
Speaker 3: In this branch of philosophy, authentic has this specialized meaning
Speaker 3: where an authentic existence is basically living without illusions, accepting
Speaker 3: the extent to which you are free to control your actions,
Speaker 3: and accepting that you are thus defined by your actions.
Speaker 3: And so I think a big emphasis of the existentialist
Speaker 3: understanding of authenticity is accepting that you are what you
Speaker 3: choose to do, and there's not like a separate secret you.
Speaker 3: That's the real you that is different than what you do.
Speaker 3: What you do is what you are, and in order
Speaker 3: to be authentic, you have to accept that what you
Speaker 3: do is what you are.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it's not you are not who you are,
Speaker 2: not what you would like to do. You are not
Speaker 2: what you are thinking about doing. You are not what
Speaker 2: you regret not doing. You are what you actually do.
Speaker 2: What you actually choose to do is who you are.
Speaker 3: That's the way I understand it, Okay, Fans of existentialism
Speaker 3: complain at us an email if if you think I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: if you Tuesday, yeah, and then of course there are
Speaker 3: even more ideas of authenticity that we can continue to
Speaker 3: explore in the rest of this series. But even coming
Speaker 3: back to the baseline of the is what it seems
Speaker 3: to be or the you are who you claim to
Speaker 3: be definition, there are still a bunch of questions that
Speaker 3: we can be left to wonder about, like why do
Speaker 3: we place so much value on authenticity? And why is
Speaker 3: authenticity especially important in some domains of life? What are
Speaker 3: the criteria of authenticity in a person or in a
Speaker 3: personal expression, What outward signs are we actually looking for
Speaker 3: when we make judgments about it? Are we good at
Speaker 3: making those judgments accurately? I think we're going to look
Speaker 3: at a paper on that in just a minute. And also,
Speaker 3: if we go with the definition above, do we truly
Speaker 3: value authentic behavior as much as we think we do?
Speaker 2: All right, let's dive into it.
Speaker 3: Well, so we're probably going to address authenticity from the
Speaker 3: angle of psychology research in a number of different ways
Speaker 3: in the series, but I wanted to start off by
Speaker 3: discussing a paper that was one of the first things
Speaker 3: that really interested me when I started researching this topic.
Speaker 3: This is the paper I mentioned earlier by Erica R.
Speaker 3: Bailey and Aaron Levy, published in the journal Psychological Science
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two, and the title of the paper
Speaker 3: is are you for real? Perceptions of authenticity are systematically
Speaker 3: biased and not accurate that I'll give away the conclusions,
Speaker 3: but I think there's some interesting stuff to learn along
Speaker 3: the way. So at the time this paper was published,
Speaker 3: the authors were affiliated with Columbia University. I think since
Speaker 3: then Bailey has taken a position at Berkeley. But this
Speaker 3: paper begins by asking a simple question, how good are
Speaker 3: we at making accurate judgments about who is authentic and
Speaker 3: who is not? This paper, again is the source of
Speaker 3: the phrasing of the definition I mentioned earlier that quote. Theoretically,
Speaker 3: a person is authentic when their behavior is genuine. That is,
Speaker 3: their behavior reflects their true inner qualities and feelings. So
Speaker 3: if the way they behave outwardly reflects who they really
Speaker 3: are and how they really feel, and most of us
Speaker 3: behave as if we think we're good at making these
Speaker 3: judgments about others. You know, we do this all the time.
Speaker 3: You talk to somebody for five minutes, and after you
Speaker 3: walk away from them, you are pretty much ready to
Speaker 3: say Jimmy was so earnest and sincere I really like him,
Speaker 3: or Jimmy was so fake I couldn't stand that guy.
Speaker 3: It's almost embarrassing to look back on how quickly we
Speaker 3: think we can make these judgments about people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, of course it makes sense given why
Speaker 2: these this capacity for judging exists. I mean it comes
Speaker 2: down to basic survival scenarios in which it maybe doesn't
Speaker 2: pay to have an open mind. You know, comes back
Speaker 2: to the you know, the very worn out example of
Speaker 2: is there a tiger in the weeds there or is
Speaker 2: there not a tiger? Well, you know, sometimes you can't
Speaker 2: keep an open mind about the scenario. You have to
Speaker 2: make a judgment call and then make your survival choices accordingly.
Speaker 2: And you know that it holds true in life and
Speaker 2: death situations, but then it ends up applying to these
Speaker 2: various social contexts that are not life and death.
Speaker 3: That's right. So you could look at it on one hand,
Speaker 3: as there's a survival incentive for us to be suspicious
Speaker 3: and to not give out trust too easily. You could
Speaker 3: also look at it from the other hand and say,
Speaker 3: maybe there are some scenarios where there is incentive to
Speaker 3: trust more easily, maybe than we should because like, I
Speaker 3: don't know trusting, Like you don't want to be hung
Speaker 3: up being suspicious of people preventing you from cooperating to survive.
Speaker 2: Right right, and ultimately like in action on any given
Speaker 2: scenario is in action, like nothing is getting accomplished exactly.
Speaker 3: So in the background section of their paper, the author
Speaker 3: talk about they review previous research confirming that we really
Speaker 3: do make these judgments about authenticity, and we base a
Speaker 3: lot on them, Like people who are perceived as authentic
Speaker 3: have been found to be more well liked, more easily trusted,
Speaker 3: and authenticity is apparently considered especially important when people select leaders.
Speaker 3: If you're going to look to someone for leadership for
Speaker 3: some reason, people want somebody who is authentic, somebody who
Speaker 3: that where they think the outside matches the inside. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: you brought this up earlier, but when you think about it,
Speaker 3: it really would be kind of difficult to make a
Speaker 3: judgment about another person's authenticity, especially after just a limited
Speaker 3: time amount of time knowing someone, Because to really judge
Speaker 3: somebody's authenticity by this main definition we're talking about, you
Speaker 3: would have to both know someone's true inner self questionable
Speaker 3: whether that's even a definable concept, and then also observe
Speaker 3: their behavior carefully enough to accurately evaluate how well it
Speaker 3: matches their inner self, and both of those are non trivial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's interesting because you know, especially when you
Speaker 2: consider that a lot of the time when we're making
Speaker 2: these knee jerk judgment calls, they're very simplistic, right when
Speaker 2: we think we are understanding a person's inner self, we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: they seem nice on the outside, but inside a slippery snake,
Speaker 2: you know, And in all likelihood it's they're not just
Speaker 2: complete evil on the inside. There. There's a fair amount
Speaker 2: of complexity there. There are reasons why they, you know,
Speaker 2: might be behaving this way or the other and so forth.
Speaker 2: You know, it's most people's uh, inner self that we
Speaker 2: cannot see again, to be clear, is going to be
Speaker 2: rather complex with a lot of different moving parts.
Speaker 3: There, absolutely right. And you know, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of the inauthenticity that we encounter day to day is
Speaker 3: situation and based on temporary roles rather than based on
Speaker 3: people's like permanent personality traits. For example, probably one of
Speaker 3: the most common ways you encounter clear inauthenticity is when
Speaker 3: a salesperson is being really nice to you. You know,
Speaker 3: does this salesperson really love me or do they really
Speaker 3: want me to buy something from them? I mean, everybody
Speaker 3: knows what's going on there, but it's based on like
Speaker 3: a situation and a role more so than like that
Speaker 3: person's inherent personality that they're just always a fake snake.
Speaker 2: Right, Like it's yeah, just as it's it's probably it's
Speaker 2: probably not the case that they're a fake snake that's
Speaker 2: just one hundredercent pretending to like you and be cool
Speaker 2: about everything. It's like the opposite is also unlikely that
Speaker 2: this is one hundred percent the real person here that
Speaker 2: they are they are really this into the product. It's
Speaker 2: it's probably a balance, like maybe they are really into
Speaker 2: the product, but maybe they also have had a very
Speaker 2: long day and they are having to sort of act
Speaker 2: a little bit uh to to get through this encounter,
Speaker 2: and it's not necessarily a reflection on you, the customer exactly.
Speaker 3: So the authors of this paper suggest that in lots
Speaker 3: of cases, making judgments about the authenticity of others is
Speaker 3: what they call quote a prohibitively difficult social judgment to make.
Speaker 3: So their hypothesis is that we are not actually as
Speaker 3: great as we think we are at assessing Jimmy's authenticity
Speaker 3: after talking to him for five minutes, or maybe even
Speaker 3: after working with him on a project for six weeks.
Speaker 3: As we will see in some of these upcoming experiments,
Speaker 3: our authenticity judgments of others they hypothesize will exhibit a
Speaker 3: range of distorting biases, most of which will be related
Speaker 3: to the personality of the rater rather than the person
Speaker 3: being rated on a scale of authenticity. In other words,
Speaker 3: authenticity is largely in the eye of the beholder. So
Speaker 3: this paper includes three different experimental studies. The first study
Speaker 3: is just a survey on the Internet of lay people
Speaker 3: to try to establish two things that were assumed but
Speaker 3: they wanted to confirm them experimentally. Number one is people
Speaker 3: do believe they can tell who is authentic and who
Speaker 3: is not. And number two is people think that authenticity
Speaker 3: is a very important trait in others it matters a lot,
Speaker 3: and their surveys did indeed conclude that that is what
Speaker 3: people think. The second study, this was a series of
Speaker 3: surveys to test how good we are at judging authenticity
Speaker 3: the authenticity of others. Now you can imagine the methodological
Speaker 3: problems presented here. How do you objectively characterize a person's
Speaker 3: true inner self and feelings, and how do you measure
Speaker 3: the extent to which their external actions reflect that inner self.
Speaker 3: You can't really do that, that's not possible. But the
Speaker 3: authors come up with what I think is a very
Speaker 3: clever proxy to look at. So what they do is
Speaker 3: they compare other assessments to self assessments. So how does
Speaker 3: that work? So the test subjects in this study this
Speaker 3: part of the paper were incoming NBA students who were
Speaker 3: randomly assigned to classroom work groups of four to six
Speaker 3: students each, and these participants would work together continuously throughout
Speaker 3: the semester of this school year and would complete a
Speaker 3: number of surveys over the course of six weeks at
Speaker 3: different time intervals, including surveys about themselves, answering questions about
Speaker 3: their own authenticity and personality, and a multiple time points
Speaker 3: rating the authenticity and personality of other members of their group,
Speaker 3: people they had been working with, but also people who
Speaker 3: they didn't know before. So they're randomly assigned in these
Speaker 3: groups and they would get to know them over the
Speaker 3: course of the study. And so I think this method
Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense. It would be hard, maybe
Speaker 3: even impossible to test and quantify a person's true self,
Speaker 3: but you can compare what other people say about you
Speaker 3: based on your actions to what you say about yourself
Speaker 3: in private, and that comparison can tell us a good bit. Now,
Speaker 3: the authors do explore some complications here that extend from
Speaker 3: using self rated authenticity as a standard. For example, they
Speaker 3: point out that previous studies have found that people this
Speaker 3: was interesting. They perceive their own positive actions as authentic
Speaker 3: to themselves relative to their own negative actions, which are
Speaker 3: less authentic to themselves. You know, that's how we are.
Speaker 3: And self ratings of authenticity also appear to be influenced
Speaker 3: by mood, So maybe if you are feeling in a
Speaker 3: good mood, you will also rate yourself as a more
Speaker 3: authentic person. So there are complications here, But understanding these limitations,
Speaker 3: I still think self ratings seem like a good point
Speaker 3: of comparison to look at when to compare with the
Speaker 3: ratings by others. So survey questions asking people about their
Speaker 3: own authenticity would include agreeing or disagreeing to a very
Speaker 3: on like a number scale, with items like I am
Speaker 3: true to myself in most situations or I am more
Speaker 3: sincere in my interactions than strategic. This was to examine
Speaker 3: authenticity as a stable trait, meaning like a sort of
Speaker 3: semi permanent trait of a personality. But then they also
Speaker 3: measured what is called state authenticity, which can change over
Speaker 3: time and is more of a feeling in the moment,
Speaker 3: with items like I feel fake or I feel like
Speaker 3: I am pretending to be something I am not. They
Speaker 3: also asked people to compare their actions to their inner
Speaker 3: selves with statements like there have been times where when
Speaker 3: I felt like I couldn't be myself with my classmates.
Speaker 3: And then participants were also asked to judge whether others
Speaker 3: knew who they really were or not. And then they
Speaker 3: also took a personality test based on the Big five model.
Speaker 3: So what were the findings here, Well, the researchers found
Speaker 3: that self rated trait authenticity was an not predictive of
Speaker 3: other rated trait authenticity, So in judging authenticity, what people
Speaker 3: said about themselves had no relationship on average to what
Speaker 3: other people said about them same thing for state authenticity.
Speaker 3: State Remember was I feel fake versus the permanent trade
Speaker 3: of I am fake? Again, in this case, no relationship
Speaker 3: at all emerged between self ratings and other ratings. Same
Speaker 3: for the questions about acting authentically. No pattern of correlation
Speaker 3: between self ratings and other ratings. Overall, there was no
Speaker 3: significant relationship between self and other rated authenticity, which is
Speaker 3: pretty strange given how confident we are that we that
Speaker 3: we know whether others are being authentic or not.
Speaker 2: So all that mental energy you may put into deciding
Speaker 2: whether you're gonna wear that T shirt today, it may
Speaker 2: be just completely useless, because people are going to decide
Speaker 2: you were being authentic or inauthentic via that choice in
Speaker 2: a way that has nothing to do with how you're
Speaker 2: feeling about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this doesn't rule out that there will be
Speaker 3: individual cases where you accurately perceive that somebody is being
Speaker 3: fake with you. I mean, obviously we do probably make
Speaker 3: correct judgments about that sometime. But what this study found is,
Speaker 3: at least within this setting where it's like students working
Speaker 3: together on classroom projects, over the course of six weeks,
Speaker 3: no pattern emerged at all. On average people could not tell.
Speaker 3: One observation that struck me as interesting was that the
Speaker 3: author is right quote the majority of the variance in
Speaker 3: authenticity ratings had to do with differences between the ones
Speaker 3: making the ratings and across unique relationships, rather than differences
Speaker 3: in the target. So to explain that at least within
Speaker 3: this experiment when you perceive someone else as fake that
Speaker 3: apparently does not have a lot to say about that
Speaker 3: person individually and tends to say more about you as
Speaker 3: the perceiver or the unique relationship between you and that
Speaker 3: person you're perceiving. So there were there weren't like individuals
Speaker 3: in these experiments who were repeatedly getting rated as as
Speaker 3: fake or as real by everybody around them. Instead the real,
Speaker 3: Like the patterns seem to emerge in the people doing
Speaker 3: the ratings of others or in individual one on one
Speaker 3: relationships between people.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, so you can be very skewed and
Speaker 2: how you're going to interpret an individual moving forward, Like
Speaker 2: what's the name of our is it Jeff? Is Jeff?
Speaker 2: Are hypothetical?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I think it was Jimmy today Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, like if your first exposure to Jimmy in
Speaker 2: the workplace is him like actually blatantly stealing somebody's lunch
Speaker 2: and eating it in the great room, and then you
Speaker 2: have actual personal interactions with him, you might be inclined
Speaker 2: to think, oh, this this Jimmy's a snake. He's he's
Speaker 2: he's stealing people's lunches and being sneaky. He must he
Speaker 2: must be inauthentic with me as well. But of course,
Speaker 2: if we slow that down and we think about it,
Speaker 2: it's entire it's entirely possible for someone to have no
Speaker 2: qualms about stealing people's lunches and also like be honest
Speaker 2: and well meeting in their personal interaction with you. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is not an impossibility in human behavior and personal judgment. Right.
Speaker 3: So, whereas you might think that if if one person
Speaker 3: perceives Jimmy as fake, then everybody else will perceive Jimmy
Speaker 3: as fake as well, but that's not the case, right right, Yeah, Instead,
Speaker 3: it's more likely that I am perceiving lots of people
Speaker 3: around me as fake, or that there's something special about
Speaker 3: my relationship with Jimmy that makes me think he's fake.
Speaker 2: Or I guess to put a positive spin on it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like you have, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think we probably have all had these situations where we
Speaker 2: have a certain preconceived notion about somebody and then we
Speaker 2: have a really positive interaction with them, and that turns
Speaker 2: things around, and we may be able to reflect on
Speaker 2: that later and be like, well, I used to and
Speaker 2: it may boil down to I used to think this
Speaker 2: person was in authentic, and then I got to know
Speaker 2: them a little bit, or then I worked with them
Speaker 2: a little better or so forth, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: in those cases we can actually kind of see how
Speaker 2: this can shift.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's very interesting. I want to come back and
Speaker 3: discuss the variable of familiarity at the end. Here a
Speaker 3: couple more things Before that, some interesting biases emerged in
Speaker 3: the data. I'm not going to go into everything, but
Speaker 3: just a couple of things that stood out to me.
Speaker 3: One thing is people were likely to rate other participants
Speaker 3: as more authentic than they rated themselves. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. It compares to a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: on a lot of measures, people kind of have a
Speaker 3: high opinion of themselves. People on average rate themselves as
Speaker 3: more honest, more altruistic, whatever than other people. But on authenticity,
Speaker 3: at least in this experiment, that's not the case. People
Speaker 3: on average rated other people as more authentic than themselves,
Speaker 3: so they thought that they were a little bit faker
Speaker 3: than everybody else.
Speaker 2: In a way that this could be it could be
Speaker 2: kind of a backhanded conflict because it might not be
Speaker 2: a situation of thinking that everyone around you has a
Speaker 2: complex in our life, but kind of dismissing people as
Speaker 2: being like just the sum of their actions, like not
Speaker 2: even thinking about the fact that there is you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of inner thought going on
Speaker 2: behind the scenes with a particular individual. It's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I just passed that person in the hallway. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess they're one hundred percent what I see that
Speaker 2: they are fine, Yeah, no questions of authenticity at all.
Speaker 2: But it could be kind of a situation where yeah,
Speaker 2: you're just because you don't think about them, you take
Speaker 2: them completely for granted, and you think that this one
Speaker 2: thing you see them do is all they are.
Speaker 3: I think that's quite possible. Another thing that was interesting here,
Speaker 3: we were talking about the idea of authenticity being in
Speaker 3: the eye of the beholder, and that it like ratings
Speaker 3: of the authenticity of others seem to say more about
Speaker 3: the rater than the rate. Apparently people rated themselves. People
Speaker 3: who rated themselves as more authentic also rated others as
Speaker 3: more authentic, So there was just sort of a direct
Speaker 3: correlation there, like I think I'm more authentic, thus I
Speaker 3: think other people are more authentic.
Speaker 2: M okay.
Speaker 3: And in this particular study, it found there were no
Speaker 3: individual demographic facts or personality traits that resulted in subjects
Speaker 3: being significantly rated as more or less authentic. Nothing really
Speaker 3: about people that seemed to contribute there. A third study
Speaker 3: attempted to replicate study two with a larger sample size,
Speaker 3: but with a few changes, this time with a mix
Speaker 3: of virtual and in person interactions instead of just purely
Speaker 3: in person meetings, and this study broadly found the same
Speaker 3: thing as study number two. Also, study three found the
Speaker 3: same biases as study two. However, in this study they
Speaker 3: did find a couple of personality and demographic factors that
Speaker 3: correlated with other ratings of authenticity. Here, people were more
Speaker 3: likely to be rated as authentic if they were high
Speaker 3: in the Big five personality trait known as agreeableness, and
Speaker 3: the big five personality traits are typically openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
Speaker 3: and neuroticism. Agreeableness is a general rating of pro social
Speaker 3: tendencies including trust, kindness, generosity, things like that. So people
Speaker 3: who were higher in trade agreeableness were thought to be
Speaker 3: more authentic, and also, interestingly, people who were a little
Speaker 3: bit older were rated as more authentic. But overall, the
Speaker 3: authors concluded quote we found no evidence that people can
Speaker 3: accurately identify who is authentic. So that's the top line there.
Speaker 3: We're going around making judgments about authenticity of other people
Speaker 3: all the time. Maybe sometimes these judgments are correct, but
Speaker 3: within the confines of this study with students working together
Speaker 3: in classrooms, there was no correlation. On average. On average,
Speaker 3: people were no better than chance at judging the authenticity
Speaker 3: of others. Oh wow, now I want to come back
Speaker 3: to the thing you were mentioning a minute ago about
Speaker 3: people getting to know each other, rob because this was
Speaker 3: one of the most interesting things that jumped out at
Speaker 3: me from the discussion section of this paper. So the
Speaker 3: author's write quote. A surprising finding in our data was
Speaker 3: that familiarity did not increase the accuracy of perceived authenticity. Rather,
Speaker 3: the greater the familiarity between a raider and their target,
Speaker 3: the less accurate their authenticity ratings became. Specifically, as familiarity increased,
Speaker 3: other rated authenticity grew increasingly more positive relative to the
Speaker 3: target's self rated authenticity. So does that make sense, Like,
Speaker 3: as you get to know somebody better, they're over there
Speaker 3: still sitting there saying like, yeah, sometimes I feel fake.
Speaker 3: I can't I feel like I can't be myself around people.
Speaker 3: The face I show the world is not who I
Speaker 3: really am and you are over time as you get
Speaker 3: to know them better, saying more and more like so authentic, so.
Speaker 2: Themselves interesting thing. That's a fascinating one though, to try
Speaker 2: and square away, like what is because it's it's it
Speaker 2: would seem to say something different about each individual in
Speaker 2: this relationship, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there could be a number of ways
Speaker 3: to explain that. I kind of wonder, and I want
Speaker 3: to be clear, I don't have special insight here. I'm
Speaker 3: just kind of wondering. I wonder if that could be
Speaker 3: just a function of liking that, Like if we think
Speaker 3: authenticity is a desirable trait, that like good people who
Speaker 3: are worthy of being liked or are authentic. As you
Speaker 3: grow to like somebody more because you know them better,
Speaker 3: you just naturally like it drags up all of their
Speaker 3: positively associated traits in your estimation. And that would include authenticity,
Speaker 3: which is actually something you have no insight into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I guess you could. It could be
Speaker 2: a certain amount of confirmation bias there too, Right, It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you've reached a point where you like this person, and
Speaker 2: therefore you encounter these various examples that you were just
Speaker 2: gonna you're gonna hold up as oh, look, they're being
Speaker 2: authentic there, And maybe you're gonna be more forgiving of
Speaker 2: the moments that could be interpreted as as inauthentic if
Speaker 2: you had a different mood or a different demeanor concerning
Speaker 2: this person, you know, because on the other hand, someone
Speaker 2: that you have already sort of prejudged as inauthentic and
Speaker 2: maybe you don't like them, something about them rubs you
Speaker 2: the wrong way. You might be on sort of hyper alert, like,
Speaker 2: all right, what's Jimmy doing today? That's just fake his heck, well,
Speaker 2: what's he wearing? Ah, I can't believe you thought he
Speaker 2: could pull that off.
Speaker 3: That seems highly plausible to me. Yeah, but let's see.
Speaker 3: Should we call part one of our study of authenticity
Speaker 3: there and come back and look at it some more
Speaker 3: next time, maybe with explorations of authenticity and art and
Speaker 3: music and film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it'll well, it'll continue to be sort of
Speaker 2: a quagmire though, trying to figure out what is authentic,
Speaker 2: what isn't authentic, what is fake, and so forth. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll get into some discussions of music and art and
Speaker 2: film and so forth, so we'll pick up with all
Speaker 2: that on Thursday. Just a reminder to everybody that's Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a short form
Speaker 2: episode on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays, and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our guest producer today, Max Williams. Thanks
Speaker 3: for stepping in. Max's a big help. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot COMTCT.
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