Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we venture into
Speaker 1: the vault once more. We are going to be re
Speaker 1: running our series on authenticity. This is going to be
Speaker 1: Authenticity Part one. That's Part one of three and it
Speaker 1: originally aired three nineteen twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb, 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. Is really
Speaker 3: interesting to me because it is one of those concepts
Speaker 3: 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 1: It even comes down to basic decisions that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: even think of as getting into the core of authenticity.
Speaker 1: I think everybody has at least one I don't know,
Speaker 1: T shirt or other kind of arnman in their wardrobe,
Speaker 1: and you may find yourself wondering some days, is this
Speaker 1: the day I wear this? Can I pull this off?
Speaker 1: And and to some extent, you may be wondering about authenticity,
Speaker 1: like and can I wear this and be authentic or
Speaker 1: are people going to see through me and they're gonna
Speaker 1: question whether I actually support that band, or whether whether
Speaker 1: this is this is the appropriate color scheme for me?
Speaker 1: And so forth?
Speaker 3: Is this T shirt really me today?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Yeah? And as we'll get into like that answer
Speaker 1: may change day to day, Like you know, we're not
Speaker 1: necessarily the same person day to day, and what is
Speaker 1: authentic one day may not be authentic.
Speaker 3: The next right before we started recording, I was thinking
Speaker 3: about how authenticity is even often prescribed as a remedy
Speaker 3: for when people are having difficulty with social relations or
Speaker 3: social interactions, Like when somebody's like, I'm having trouble making
Speaker 3: friends or I'm having trouble with dating. What am I
Speaker 3: doing wrong? What's the first thing people usually say to them?
Speaker 3: Just be yourself? That is advice there. Essentially that means
Speaker 3: be authentic.
Speaker 1: Though it's a paradox, right, because at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's no other way to hijack your own authenticity than
Speaker 1: by overthinking your authenticity. Yeah, or at least that can
Speaker 1: be the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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 wide considered authentic
Speaker 3: in some way, like tricksters and liars and rascals who
Speaker 3: are are not thought to be reliable truth tellers, yet
Speaker 3: they're also not thought to be personally fake. You know
Speaker 3: a lot of like lovable scoundrels in movies. Han Solo
Speaker 3: is a character who like lies all the time, but
Speaker 3: he is you would probably judge him as authentic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's true to himself and that's one of
Speaker 1: the things we admire about him, Like, you know, he
Speaker 1: shoots from.
Speaker 3: The hip, and well, we might have a hard time
Speaker 3: coming up with a clear and all cases appropriate definition
Speaker 3: of authenticity, we definitely know what it is in opposition
Speaker 3: to its antonym, right. The opposite of an authentic person
Speaker 3: is a person who is fake. I think we all
Speaker 3: have this idea in our mind of a fake person
Speaker 3: and we know them when we meet them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but even this is this is the course
Speaker 1: difficult to figure out as well, because there's so many
Speaker 1: different versions of quote unquote fakeness in an individual, Like
Speaker 1: what is the context is it like a social situation.
Speaker 1: I think that tends to be a situation where a
Speaker 1: lack of authenticity is considered more of a red flag,
Speaker 1: as opposed to say, like a customer service environment, where
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of back and forth there
Speaker 1: as well, and there is some nuance as well. You
Speaker 1: can certainly come off two fake in a customer service situation,
Speaker 1: but there is like a level of like I'm putting
Speaker 1: on the public face, I'm not being one hundred percent
Speaker 1: myself because I am also representing this company or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, there's some jobs that
Speaker 3: just require you to act a certain way regardless of
Speaker 3: what you're feeling inside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also interesting to think about. Yeah, this whole
Speaker 1: idea of like an authentic person versus a fake person,
Speaker 1: like someone who lies all the time, Because if someone
Speaker 1: lies all the time, then they tell the truth in
Speaker 1: a manner of speaking. You know. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: that old Night Knights and Knaves logic puzzle that was
Speaker 1: that it is popularized by the two gates scene in
Speaker 1: Jim Henson's Labyrinth, which Sarah ultimately solves via answer 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 1: Right because since they're both absolute, so you can you
Speaker 1: can compare their answers and eventually get yourself to the
Speaker 1: absolute 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 truth.
Speaker 1: Right, because then they would be inconsistent, which is which
Speaker 1: is ultimately I guess what we're getting at when it
Speaker 1: comes to, like the fear of someone in a social
Speaker 1: scenario being fake is that they will they will break
Speaker 1: a scene track record, like they'll you know, Oh, they
Speaker 1: seemed like they were so authentic and they were my friend,
Speaker 1: but then they weren't my friend, Whereas if they were,
Speaker 1: if they hated you the whole time, but they perfectly
Speaker 1: kept up the front of being your friend for say years,
Speaker 1: or the course of your entire lifetime, then they're essentially
Speaker 1: your friend, right, Yeah, like if the if the fake
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean for starters, of course, we can never
Speaker 1: truly know somebody's actual inner reality, their actual inner thoughts,
Speaker 1: So it's all just us doing a mental model of
Speaker 1: what this person's inner thoughts and actual intentions are. And
Speaker 1: then it's yeah, it doesn't necessarily bear close scrutiny, right
Speaker 1: because along these lines, the person with no filters or
Speaker 1: composure whatsoever is the utmost authentic person you could hope
Speaker 1: to meet. And generally speaking, these are qualities you come
Speaker 1: to expect from say a cat or a dog. But
Speaker 1: a great deal of striving to be a mature human
Speaker 1: is knowing or learning how to manage the inner self
Speaker 1: and and outer expression. And as we grow up, there's
Speaker 1: a great deal to learn and develop along these lines.
Speaker 1: And then we continue to learn and develop along these lines. Ideally,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of a it's a never ending
Speaker 1: journey of trying to figure out how to do all
Speaker 1: this stuff and how to find that balance between how
Speaker 1: you are inside and how you appear outside to not
Speaker 1: necessarily everyone at once, but you know different groups at
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: So I think.
Speaker 3: There's a sort of contradiction there within our desires. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so while this definition I just mentioned, like the is
Speaker 3: what it seems to be or are who they claim
Speaker 3: to be definition, I think does cover a lot of
Speaker 3: the usage of authenticity in everyday life, especially when applied
Speaker 3: to persons and to artifacts. Discussing authenticity is complicated by
Speaker 3: the fact that this word is used to refer to
Speaker 3: a lot of different ideas that are all somewhat related
Speaker 3: but also somewhat different. So I think about a secondary
Speaker 3: usage of authenticity when describing an activity or a product
Speaker 3: that has like a known cultural history. Example that comes
Speaker 3: to my mind is making a recipe for spaghetti carbonara.
Speaker 3: According to a lot of people, there will be an
Speaker 3: authentic way to make this dish, you got to use
Speaker 3: eggs but not cream, et cetera. And there are many
Speaker 3: inauthentic ways to make spaghetti carbonara, and to some people
Speaker 3: there is something actually shameful or bad about making it
Speaker 3: in one of the allegedly inauthentic ways. And the same
Speaker 3: category of cultural authenticity or inauthenticity, I think I really
Speaker 3: often see it applied to food, but I think it
Speaker 3: also gets applied to things like clothing, dances, crafts, and
Speaker 3: other art forms. And so this understanding of authenticity has
Speaker 3: some overlap with the is what it claims to be definition,
Speaker 3: but it also seems to rope in some other things,
Speaker 3: like it relies on additional assumptions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. The culinary example is really interesting to
Speaker 1: ponder because the reality, of course, is that many examples
Speaker 1: of the authentic in culinary tradition, these were at some
Speaker 1: point the inauthentic new approach, you know, making use of
Speaker 1: say new ingredients. That there are a number of dishes
Speaker 1: you can find throughout global cuisines that you think of
Speaker 1: it as a particular form, but you're incorporating ingredients that
Speaker 1: were brought in from some other location and just became
Speaker 1: associated with that particular dish.
Speaker 3: That's right. So, I think the idea of authenticity in
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 basically
Speaker 3: no case has it ever actually always been done any
Speaker 3: particular way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so, and maybe being a little pedantic there,
Speaker 1: but the point, because the point still holds that when
Speaker 1: we're talking about an authentic culinary experience, we mean that
Speaker 1: it's firmly rooted in the tradition, and not a tradition
Speaker 1: that's existed since the beginning of time, but has maybe
Speaker 1: existed for centuries, maybe decades, maybe just a few years.
Speaker 1: And it also is probably rooted in a particular culture.
Speaker 1: But again the paradox is that authenticity is rarely truly
Speaker 1: 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 recognize there's some kind
Speaker 3: of gap there. There is like a difference between what
Speaker 3: they're doing and what a person might understand them to
Speaker 3: claim to be doing. If that makes any sense. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's too many orders removed, But do you understand what
Speaker 3: I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, though, yeah, yeah. Like I say, it's hard
Speaker 1: to really figure out where to land on this, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking about classic cocktails as an example of this.
Speaker 1: You know, in many cases these are not terribly old,
Speaker 1: but people do get very possessive of original recipes and
Speaker 1: so forth. Thick the mytie, for example, which we did
Speaker 1: a whole episode of Invention on years back. We interviewed
Speaker 1: Jeff Beach Bumbarry about the origins of the my tie
Speaker 1: is a pretty fun shat, but yeah, my tie is
Speaker 1: a classic tropical drink that merely dates back to nineteen
Speaker 1: forty four. And when we talk about an authentic my ti,
Speaker 1: we're generally talking about this nineteen forty four Trader Vic recipe.
Speaker 1: And in this particular case, you might ask, well, does
Speaker 1: inauthentic equal bad? Well, oftentimes. Yes, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: bad my ties out there that are inauthentic, but there
Speaker 1: are also noted historic variations of the mytie that are
Speaker 1: not bad drinks, And there are various contemporary spins on
Speaker 1: the cocktail that range from good to great. So, in
Speaker 1: a weird sense, something can at once be authentic and inauthentic.
Speaker 1: You can have a great spin on the mytie that
Speaker 1: is inauthentic when compared to the original rest, but can
Speaker 1: still be an authentic product of a particular mixologists or
Speaker 1: 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 a another mixologist's
Speaker 3: creativity and skill in putting something together, And that taps
Speaker 3: into this whole other nebula of meanings that people today
Speaker 3: attached to the word authenticity, which has something to do
Speaker 3: with like it is related to outward behavior, but is
Speaker 3: not necessarily about that matching your matching your inner character,
Speaker 3: matching your inner feelings. It's more about like behavior that
Speaker 3: is an achievement of your great potential or like living
Speaker 3: your best life. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: 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 1: Like it kind of a spin on that and just
Speaker 1: our lingos. Occasionally go hear someone refer to as say
Speaker 1: a particular director or creator, and they'll be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this individual, they're the real deal. Or this movie, this song,
Speaker 1: this is the real deal. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't necessarily connect to anything in particular,
Speaker 1: but it does kind of at least imply that, like
Speaker 1: this is authentic. This is a work of someone's labor
Speaker 1: 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 leader,
Speaker 3: or as whatever, Like they are becoming the real version
Speaker 3: of themselves by doing something great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like what does that mean? Like they fulfilled the prophecy.
Speaker 3: Achieve their terrible purpose. Yeah. So yet another definition of
Speaker 3: authenticity that has been very important is one that is
Speaker 3: particular to existentialist philosophy, in which I don't claim to
Speaker 3: be an expert on existentialist philosophy, So I hope I'm
Speaker 3: summarizing it well enough here. But the way I understand
Speaker 3: it is that these branch in this branch of philosophy,
Speaker 3: authenticity has this specialized meaning where an authentic existence is
Speaker 3: basically living without illusions, accepting the extent to which you
Speaker 3: are free to control your actions, and accepting that you
Speaker 3: are thus defined by your actions. And so I think
Speaker 3: a big emphasis of the existentialist understanding of authenticity is
Speaker 3: accepting that you are what you choose to do, and
Speaker 3: there's not like a separate secret you. That's the real
Speaker 3: you that is different than what you do. What you
Speaker 3: do is what you are, And in order to be authentic,
Speaker 3: you have to accept that what you do is what
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's not you are not who you are,
Speaker 1: not what you would like to do. You are not
Speaker 1: what you are thinking about doing. You are not what
Speaker 1: you regret not doing. You are what you actually do.
Speaker 1: 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 you think I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: If you choose to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then of course there are even more ideas
Speaker 3: of authenticity that we can continue to explore in the
Speaker 3: rest of this series. But even coming back to the
Speaker 3: baseline of the is what it seems to be or
Speaker 3: the you are who you claim to be definition, there
Speaker 3: are still a bunch of questions that we can be
Speaker 3: left to wonder about, like why do we place so
Speaker 3: much value on authenticity? And why is authenticity especially important
Speaker 3: in some domains of life? What are the criteria of
Speaker 3: authoricity in a person or in a personal expression. What
Speaker 3: outward signs are we actually looking for when we make
Speaker 3: judgments about it? Are we good at making those judgments accurately?
Speaker 3: I think we're going to look at a paper on
Speaker 3: that in just a minute. And also, if we go
Speaker 3: with the definition above, do we truly value authentic behavior
Speaker 3: as much as we think we do?
Speaker 1: 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'll give away the conclusions, but
Speaker 3: I think there's some interesting stuff to learn along the way.
Speaker 3: So at the time this paper was published, the authors
Speaker 3: were affiliated with Columbia University. I think since then Bailey
Speaker 3: has taken a position at Berkeley. But this paper begins
Speaker 3: by asking a simple question, how good are we at
Speaker 3: making accurate judgments about who is authentic and who is not.
Speaker 3: This paper, again is the source of the phrasing of
Speaker 3: the definition I mentioned earlier that quote. Theoretically, a person
Speaker 3: is authentic when their behavior is genuine. That is, their
Speaker 3: behavior reflects their true inner qualities and feelings. So if
Speaker 3: the way they behave outwardly reflects who they really are
Speaker 3: and how they really feel, and most of us behave
Speaker 3: as if we think we're good at making these judgments
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, I mean, of course it makes sense given why
Speaker 1: these this capacity for judging exists. I mean it comes
Speaker 1: down to basic survival scenarios in which it maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: pay to have an open mind, you know, coming back
Speaker 1: to the you know, the very worn out example of
Speaker 1: is there a tiger in the in the weeds there?
Speaker 1: Or is there not a tiger? Well, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't keep an open mind about the scenario. You
Speaker 1: have to make a judgment call and then make your
Speaker 1: survival choices accordingly. And you know that it holds true
Speaker 1: in life and death situations, but then it ends up
Speaker 1: applying to these various social contexts that are not life
Speaker 1: 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 1: Right, right, And ultimately, like inaction on any given scenario
Speaker 1: is in action, Like nothing is getting accomplished exactly.
Speaker 3: So in the background section of their paper, the authors
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
Speaker 3: leaders If you're going to look to someone for leadership
Speaker 3: for some reason, people want somebody who is authentic, somebody
Speaker 3: who 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 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting because, you know, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that a lot of the time when we're making
Speaker 1: these knee jerk judgment calls, they're very simplistic. Right when
Speaker 1: we think we are understanding a person's inner self, we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they seem nice on the outside, but inside a slippery snake,
Speaker 1: you know, And in all likelihood it's they're not just
Speaker 1: complete evil on the inside. There. There's a fair amount
Speaker 1: of complexity there. There are reasons why they, you know,
Speaker 1: might be behaving this way or the other and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, it's most people's inner self that we that
Speaker 1: we cannot see again, to be clear, is going to
Speaker 1: be rather complex with a lot of different moving parts there.
Speaker 3: Absolutely right, And you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: the inauthenticity that we encounter day to day is situational
Speaker 3: and based on temporary roles rather than based on people's
Speaker 3: like permanent personality traits. For example, probably one of the
Speaker 3: most common ways you encounter clear inauthenticity is when a
Speaker 3: salesperson is being really nice to you. You know, does
Speaker 3: this salesperson really love me? Or do they really want
Speaker 3: me to buy something from them? I mean, everybody knows
Speaker 3: what's going on there, but it's based on like a
Speaker 3: situation and a role more so than like that person's
Speaker 3: inherent personality that they're just always a fake snake.
Speaker 1: Right, Like it's yeah, just as it's it's problem. It's
Speaker 1: probably not the case that they're a fake snake that's
Speaker 1: just one hundred percent pretending to like you and be
Speaker 1: cool about everything. It's like the opposite is also unlikely
Speaker 1: that this is one hundred percent the real person here,
Speaker 1: that they are really this into the product. It's probably
Speaker 1: a balance, like maybe they are really into the product,
Speaker 1: but maybe they also have had a very long day
Speaker 1: and they are having to sort of act a little
Speaker 1: bit to get through this encounter, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a reflection on you, the customer exactly.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The authors of this paper suggest that in lots of cases,
Speaker 3: making judgments about the authenticity of others is what they
Speaker 3: call quote a prohibitively difficult social judgment to make, so
Speaker 3: their hypothesis is that we are not actually as great
Speaker 3: as we think we are at assessing Jimmy's authenticity after
Speaker 3: you know, talking to him for five minutes, or maybe
Speaker 3: even 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, I think, what I think is
Speaker 3: a very clever proxy to look at. So what they
Speaker 3: do is they compare other assessments to self assessments. So
Speaker 3: how does that work? So the test subjects in this
Speaker 3: study this part of the paper were incoming MBA students
Speaker 3: who were randomly assigned to classroom work groups of four
Speaker 3: to six students each, and these participants would work together
Speaker 3: continuously throughout the semester of this school year and would
Speaker 3: complete a number of surveys over the course of six
Speaker 3: weeks at different time intervals, including surveys about themselves, answering
Speaker 3: questions about their own authenticity and personality, and a multiple
Speaker 3: time points rating the authenticity and personality of other members
Speaker 3: of their group, people they had been working with, but
Speaker 3: also people who they didn't know before. So they're randomly
Speaker 3: assigned in these groups and they would get to know
Speaker 3: them over the course of the study, and so I
Speaker 3: think this method makes a lot of sense. It would
Speaker 3: be hard, maybe even impossible, to test and quantify a
Speaker 3: person's true self, but you can compare what other people
Speaker 3: say about you based on your actions to what you
Speaker 3: say about yourself in private, and that comparison can tell
Speaker 3: us a good bit. Now, the authors do explore some
Speaker 3: complications here that extend from using self rated authenticity as
Speaker 3: a standard. For example, they point out that previous studies
Speaker 3: have found that people this was interesting. They perceive their
Speaker 3: own positive actions as authentic to themselves relative to their
Speaker 3: own negative actions, which are less authentic to themselves. You know,
Speaker 3: that's how we are. And self ratings of authenticity also
Speaker 3: appear to be influenced by mood, So maybe if you
Speaker 3: are feeling in a good mood, you will also rate
Speaker 3: yourself as a more authentic person. So there are complications here,
Speaker 3: But understanding these limitations, I still think self ratings seem
Speaker 3: like a good point of comparison to look at when
Speaker 3: to compare with the ratings by others. So survey questions
Speaker 3: asking people about their own authenticity would include agreeing or
Speaker 3: disagreeing to a very on like a number scale, with
Speaker 3: items like I am true to myself in most situations
Speaker 3: or I am more sincere in my interactions than strategic.
Speaker 3: This was to examine authenticity as a stable trait, meaning
Speaker 3: like a sort of semi permanent trait of a personality.
Speaker 3: But then they also measured what is called state authenticity,
Speaker 3: which can change over time and is more of a
Speaker 3: feeling in the moment with items like I feel fake
Speaker 3: or I feel like I am pretending to be something
Speaker 3: I am not. They also asked people to compare their
Speaker 3: action to their inner selves with statements like there have
Speaker 3: been times where when I felt like I couldn't be
Speaker 3: myself with my classmates. And then participants were also asked
Speaker 3: to judge whether others knew who they really were or not.
Speaker 3: And then they also took a personality test based on
Speaker 3: the Big five model. So what were the findings here, Well,
Speaker 3: the researchers found that self rated trait authenticity was not
Speaker 3: predictive of other rated trait authenticity, so in judging authenticity,
Speaker 3: what people said about themselves had no relationship on average
Speaker 3: to what other people said about them same thing for
Speaker 3: state authenticity. State remember was I feel fake versus the
Speaker 3: permanent trade of I am fake again. In this case,
Speaker 3: no relationship at all emerged between self ratings and other ratings.
Speaker 3: Same for the questions about acting authentically. No pattern of
Speaker 3: correlation between self ratings and other ratings. Overall, there was
Speaker 3: no significant relationship between self and other rated authenticity, which
Speaker 3: is pretty strange given how confident we are that we
Speaker 3: that we know whether others are being authentic or not.
Speaker 1: So all that mental energy you may put into deciding
Speaker 1: whether you're gonna wear that T shirt today, it may
Speaker 1: be just completely useless, because people are going to decide
Speaker 1: you were being authentic or inauthentic via that choice, in
Speaker 1: a way that has nothing to do with how you're
Speaker 1: 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 weren't like individuals in these
Speaker 3: experiments who were repeatedly getting rated as fake or as
Speaker 3: real by everybody around them. Instead the real, like the
Speaker 3: patterns seem to emerge in the people doing the ratings
Speaker 3: of others or in individual one on one relationships between people.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, so you can be very skewed in
Speaker 1: how you're going to interpret an individual moving forward, Like
Speaker 1: what's the name of our is it Jeff? Is Jeff?
Speaker 1: Are hypothetical? Oh?
Speaker 3: I think it was Jimmy today Jimmy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So like if your first exposure to Jimmy in
Speaker 1: the workplace is him like actually blatantly stealing somebody's lunch
Speaker 1: and eating it in the break room and then you
Speaker 1: have actual personal interactions with him. You might be inclined
Speaker 1: to think, oh, this this Jimmy's a Snake's he's stealing
Speaker 1: people's lunches and being sneaky, he must he must be
Speaker 1: inauthentic with me as well. But of course, if we
Speaker 1: slow that down and we think about it, it's entire
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible for someone to have no qualms about
Speaker 1: stealing people's lunches and also like be honest and well
Speaker 1: meeting in their personal interaction with you. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is not an impossibility in human behavior and personal judgment.
Speaker 3: Right. So whereas you might think that if if one
Speaker 3: person perceives Jimmy as fake, then everybody else will perceive
Speaker 3: Jimmy as fake as well, but that's not the case,
Speaker 3: right right, Yeah. Instead, it's more likely that that I
Speaker 3: am perceiving lots of people around me as fake, or
Speaker 3: that there's something special about my relationship with Jimmy that
Speaker 3: makes me think he's fake.
Speaker 1: Or I guess to put a positive spin on it.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like you have you know, and I
Speaker 1: think we probably have all had these situations where we
Speaker 1: have a certain preconceived notion about somebody and then we
Speaker 1: have a really positive interaction with them, and that turns
Speaker 1: things around, and we may be able to reflect on
Speaker 1: that later and be like, well, I used to and
Speaker 1: it may boil down to I used to think this
Speaker 1: person was inauthentic, and then I got to know them
Speaker 1: a little bit, or then I worked with them a
Speaker 1: little better or so forth, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: in those cases we can actually kind of see how
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: A couple more things before that, some interesting biases emerged
Speaker 3: in the data. I'm not going to go into everything,
Speaker 3: but 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 1: In a way, though this could be it could be
Speaker 1: kind of a backhanded conflict because it might not be
Speaker 1: a situation of thinking that everyone around you has a
Speaker 1: complex in her life, but kind of dismissing people as
Speaker 1: being like just the sum of their actions, like not
Speaker 1: even thinking about the fact that there is, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of inner thought going on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes with a particular individual. It's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just passed that person in the hallway. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're one hundred percent what I see that
Speaker 1: they are fine. Yeah, no questions of authenticity at all.
Speaker 1: But it could be kind of a situation where, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just because you don't think about them, you take
Speaker 1: them completely for granted, and you think that this one
Speaker 1: thing you see them do is all they are.
Speaker 3: I think that's quite possible. Another thing that was interesting
Speaker 3: here we were talking about the idea of authenticity being
Speaker 3: in the eye of the beholder, and that it like
Speaker 3: ratings of the authenticity of others seem to say more
Speaker 3: about the rater than the rate he Apparently people rated themselves.
Speaker 3: People who rated themselves as more authentic also rated others
Speaker 3: as more authentic. So there was just sort of a
Speaker 3: direct correlation there, like I think I'm more authentic, thus
Speaker 3: I think other people are more authentic.
Speaker 1: Hmm 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 seemed to contribute there. A third study attempted
Speaker 3: to replicate study two with a larger sample size, but
Speaker 3: with a few changes, this time with a mix of
Speaker 3: virtual and in person interactions instead of just purely in
Speaker 3: person meetings, and this study broadly found the same thing
Speaker 3: as study number two. Also, study three found the same
Speaker 3: biases as study two. However, in this study they did
Speaker 3: find a couple of personality and demographic factors that correlated
Speaker 3: with other ratings of authenticity. Here, people were more likely
Speaker 3: to be rated as authentic if they were high in
Speaker 3: the Big five personality trait known as agreeableness, and the
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: authentic and sow themselves interesting.
Speaker 1: That's a fascinating one though, to try and square away
Speaker 1: like what is because it's it would seem to say
Speaker 1: something different about each individual in this relationship.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, I mean there could be a number
Speaker 3: of ways to explain that. I kind of wonder, and
Speaker 3: I want to be clear, I don't have special insight here.
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of wondering. I wonder if that could
Speaker 3: be just a function of liking that, Like if we
Speaker 3: think authenticity is a desirable trait, that like, good people
Speaker 3: who are worthy of being liked 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 1: Yeah, yeah, and I guess you could. It could be
Speaker 1: a certain amount of confirmation bias there too. Right, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you've reached a point where you like this person, and
Speaker 1: therefore you encounter these various examples that you were just
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna hold up as oh, look, they're being
Speaker 1: authentic there, and maybe you're gonna be more forgiving of
Speaker 1: the moments that could be interpreted as as inauthentic if
Speaker 1: you had a different mood or a different demeanor concerning
Speaker 1: this person, you know, because, on the other hand, someone
Speaker 1: that you have already sort of prejudged as inauthentic and
Speaker 1: maybe you don't like them, something about them rubs you
Speaker 1: the wrong way. You might be on sort of hyper alert, like,
Speaker 1: all right, what's Jimmy doing today? That's just fake as heck?
Speaker 1: Well what's he wearing? Ah? I can't believe you thought
Speaker 1: he could pull that off.
Speaker 3: That seems highly plausible to me. Yeah, but let's see.
Speaker 3: Should we call part one one of our study of
Speaker 3: authenticity there and come back and look at it some
Speaker 3: more next time, maybe with explorations of authenticity and art
Speaker 3: and music and film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it'll it'll continue to be sort of a
Speaker 1: quagmire though, trying to figure out what is authentic, what
Speaker 1: isn't authentic, what is fake, and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get into some discussions of music and art and
Speaker 1: film and so forth. So we'll pick up with all
Speaker 1: that on Thursday. Just a reminder to everybody. That's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a short form
Speaker 1: episode on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays, and on Fridays.
Speaker 1: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: 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, it's a big help. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
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