Being authentic is typically idealized in our culture, and it is generally associated with notions of goodness, purity, self-actualization, and other virtues. However, this conceptualization leaves room for unease, because there are plenty of people who are on the dark spectrum—sociopathic or psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, or sadistic. They aren't being inauthentic.

Au contraire, we may wish they were less authentic, and to at least pretend to be more interested in others' well-being and the common good. Behaving more agreeably, in fact, over time may reduce dark traits. Walking around knowing there are plenty of wolves dressed as sheep isn't comfortable. On the other hand, for someone who is exploitative and manipulative, being inauthentic may be diabolically, exactly, authentic.

I started thinking about the concept of "dark authenticity", echoing work on "dark empathy". Lo and-behold, I found research on just this topic from Professor Laura Visu-Petra and Ph.D. student Alexandra-Andreea Bulbuc. Professor Visu-Petra studies how individual differences in dark personality traits relate to both authenticity, and the development of prosocial behaviors.

She discussed some of her findings with me.

GHB: What is authenticity? How is it defined, and what are the main elements?

LV: The very short answer would be that we have not yet agreed on a straightforward definition of authenticity, given its inherently elusive nature. If you stare for a few minutes at your reflection in a large mirror placed in a dimly lit room, you will probably experience what the Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo termed the “strange-face illusion”, with bizarre perceptual distortions and a sensation of otherness emanating from your own mirrored image. In a similar vein, if we take a thorough look at our self using our own cognitive abilities, it will most likely elude our grasp and morph into a dissociated mix of our perceptions, ideas, and desires connected to ourselves. Socrates urged us to nevertheless persevere in this—inherently distorted—self-awareness quest, because “an unexamined life is not worth living”.

Besides the purely epistemic motivation (Nosce te ipsum—Know thyself, a prime directive from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi) we have enough evidence by now that an enhanced feeling of connectedness to our self—broadly known as authenticity— supports healthy functioning, from better meditation practices (enhanced nonjudgmental attention) to improved psychological well-being. However, even for the most devout seekers of an authentic life, our moment-to-moment experience of the self is not easily translatable into words and is extremely volatile. “I have already lost touch with a........

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