Authenticity is More Than Self-Enhancement: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Evidence

Negative self-descriptive information can be threatening to the self. This may depend, however, on the self-representation for which the information is relevant. We focused on two self-presentations, the authentic self and the presented self. In particular, we examined how the authentic and presented selves are influenced by emotional self-descriptiveness. Participants (N = 147) completed a self-referent emotional Stroop task while EEG was recorded. They viewed in colored text positive or negative traits exemplifying the authentic self (“I am genuinely honest”), the presented self (“I am outwardly honest”), or control (“It is clearly honest”). Color naming latency was slower to negative (vs. positive) traits for the presented self and control. Color naming latency was faster to negative (vs. positive) traits for the authentic self. Event-related potentials indicated that at both early (P1) and later (P3) stages of attentional processing, the authentic self exhibited comparable amplitudes to negative and positive traits. However, P1 was larger for negative, and P3 was larger for positive, traits for the presented self. Taken together, the findings highlight that the presented self is more pursuant of positivity, whereas the authentic self is more tolerant of negativity.