Authenticity
Barriers to Authenticity
How authentic social identity develops, and challenges to its expression
Posted January 20, 2025 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Authentic social identity development begins at birth.
- Ingroup norms are large factors in determining people's authentic social identity.
- Depending on the environment, some groups can be more authentic than other groups.
- Explicit recognition of these differences is important for authentic social identity expression for all.
Authentic Social Identity Development
It is a basic human need to be your true, authentic self. Individuals who say they are authentic have better psychological and social well-being compared to those who do not feel they can behave as their true selves. This is said to happen when your actions match your behaviors and when you truly feel authentic.
According to theorists, the search for a true self is a balance between our own needs, wants, and behaviors, as well as the social context and environment that shaped these behaviors. From birth, variations in social categories such as skin tone and gender determine our ingroups and outgroups. In a world with increasingly complex social categories, this process helps us determine which traits to incorporate into our core personalities—informing central components of our decision-making processes.
We develop and learn to express our authentic selves through constant validation and invalidation from peers, family, and powerful social actors (e.g., government and teachers). When engaging in behaviors that align with our socially prescribed ingroup, these agents of social identity development either invalidate behaviors that do not conform to ingroup norms or validate behaviors that do. A process so strong that by age 6, humans have developed ingroup favoritism and outgroup dislike.
Social Identity Threats to Authenticity
Once we have our ingroup, we automatically want to be seen as morally “good” because we’re only human! Familiarity with members of our ingroup causes us to easily perceive them as warm and welcoming, while unfamiliar outgroup members may unconsciously engender feelings of hostility.
An unfortunate consequence of this common cognitive process, however, is the tendency to reject ingroup members who do not conform to stereotypical social beliefs about what it means to be a group member. Such cultural invalidations are threats to authentic social identity and tend to occur when individuals behave in ways that may be stereotypically linked to an outgroup. For instance, one may experience cultural invalidation when listening to music or dressing in ways that are commonly associated with an outgroup.
In such cases, one may face conflict when determining which aspects of authenticity, the self or the ingroup, are more representative of their social identity.
In other cases, the social context itself may be a strong barrier to authentic self-expression.
Be Authentic... Not Like That
In addition to ingroup feedback determining our authentic social identity expression, the environment is also a strong factor in our decision to engage in certain behaviors.
Because of histories of identity and class-based structural inequality, social and cultural norms in certain spaces may inherently place certain social identities at the top. For instance, workplace social connections are often based on shared cultural values, such as popular TV shows, religious holidays, or even styles of speech and dress. Conformity to these norms is expected to maintain one’s social status.
When these behavioral and social expectations happen to be aligned with one’s own culture, as tends to be the case with racial and/or gender majority groups, authentic social expression is fluid and takes less cognitive load. However, in the case of minority groups, this process may accompany an intense behavioral and cognitive management process due to the effort to overcome authentic cultural norms that do not conform to such “normative” expectations.
Indeed, research with racial and gender minority populations has found that individuals may actively change their behavior, style of speech, and interests in efforts to fit in easily with majority group members.
Authenticity for Everyone
Though there may be short-term gains in such impression management strategies, individuals are more vulnerable to psychological difficulties such as depression and anxiety, as well as workplace distress. So what is there to be done?
Amid growing calls challenging the relevance of diversity, equity, and inclusion interventions, it is important to highlight the end goal of such programs. To improve the quality of the workplace.
One step is recognizing and unlearning the ways our everyday actions may be steeped in social and systemic biases. Your authentic self may be different from another’s, but the value judgments you may (un)consciously prescribe to these differences should be questioned. For instance, almost everyone feels the implications of social inequality, and explicit awareness of these contributions to something as critical as authentic identity expression is important for promoting a quality workplace.
Highlighting and appreciating differences, instead of using colorblind and identity-neutral approaches, is just one step that individuals can take to improve authentic identity expression for everyone.
