What is Authenticity (and Why Should You Care)?

Once you notice the term “authenticity” is suddenly appears seemingly everywhere.

Literally. Start playing authenticity bingo when you’re searching the interwebs or on a road trip – you’ll start noticing if you haven’t yet. Then, you’ll potentially be lost in the rabbit hole of authenticity, too!

When I get really excited and lost in a research topic, I call it my “Mad Hatter mode.” I have papers, notes, and books scattered about…way too many tabs open…I scramble to get ideas down. They may or may not go anywhere, but you’re about to venture into where my Mad Hatter modes have been taking me since at least 2007 when I started graduate school.

Besides Mad Hatter musings, why should you care? It could matter to you for a lot of different reasons.

One is that it has been commodified (price tag added to it) as an even broader range of products hit the market. How do we differentiate across the sea of choices? One way is the product’s or the service’s claimed authenticity.

For instance, it could be the very first one – we value originality, so its meaningful to visit the “Oldest Winery” in the US. Relatedly, we (relatively) flock to the Louisville Slugger factory.

This place has lots of original connotations (firsts, baseball history, the real bats about to be/that have been swung by the greats). This relates to Walter Benjamin’s philosophy on aura – being touched by the artist’s hand matters to us.

It also relates to nostalgia. Disney has, arguably, pulled off one of the greatest feats of authenticity by building on nostalgia while being able to change by basing their core values on innovation.

Authenticity also matters because we base our valuation of others on who they claim to be. As individualism increases in importance, we want the people we work with or buy from to be “truly” themselves. We want the products to reflect how we see ourselves to be; are you an Android or iPhone “person”?

See that? You visualized traits right away and classified yourself with one or against it. That says something about “who we are” – our authentic selves.

As such, if you’re an entrepreneur, then you need to care about authenticity to sell your stuff.

We also don’t want to get duped. We want the real goods because they have been demarcated as quality, so unless we know about it, we don’t want a fake or replica (growing up we called faked Oakleys “Foakleys”).

Additionally, we are told to lead, manage, and set up collaboration differently now. Authentic leadership says we need to show more of ourselves in order to build trust and encourage greater buy-in. As we show who we are and why we care, it helps others to do the same. This rapport can encourage greater curiosity, openness, trust, and – in turn – more innovation and less burn out.

So far, the “why we should care” also helps explain what authenticity “is.”

Even so, it’s a slippery concept. Sociologists agree, for the most part, that it is socially constructed – we decide on what authenticity is and why.

My upcoming posts will start delving into these different areas, including critiques of authenticity (especially in relation to the true self and self-help), along with how authenticity has been integrated into creative lifestyles (and also, areas where it hasn’t). I’m also interested in the history of authenticity and how it’s developed over time.

What do you think of authenticity? How would you define it and why do you think it’s important (or not)?