Variability in State Authenticity Predicts Daily Affect and Emotion Regulation

Authenticity can be defined as congruence between one’s outer behavior and one’s feelings or sense of self. People can experience moments of lower congruence in their day-to-day lives. Authenticity variability refers to fluctuations over time in momentary congruence. We propose that authenticity variability is linked to lower emotional well-being (i.e., more negative affect and less positive affect) and greater need for emotion regulation. College students (N = 174) participated in an experience sampling study (43/day for 7 days) assessing state-level authenticity, affect, and emotion regulation during social interactions. State authenticity demonstrated greater within-person than between-person variability, underscoring the importance of considering how experiences of authenticity vary across contexts rather than focusing on individual differences in authenticity. At the within-person level, heightened state authenticity was associated with lower negative affect, higher positive affect, and lower emotion regulation efforts. In contrast, authenticity variability predicted greater negative affect, lower positive affect, and greater effort to regulate emotions, as expected. The variability effects became nonsignificant, however, when controlling for mean state authenticity. Overall, these findings suggest authenticity is highly variable over time and linked to key affective processes in daily life.