The concept of authenticity plays an important role in how people reason about objects, other people, and themselves. However, despite a great deal of academic interest in this concept, to date, the precise meaning of the term, authenticity, has remained somewhat elusive. This paper reviews the various definitions of authenticity that have been proposed in the literature and identifies areas of convergence. We then outline a novel framework that organizes the existing definitions of authenticity along two key dimensions: describing the (...) type of entity that is evaluated and describing the source of information that is consulted. We argue that this convergence across a number of papers, and more importantly, across a number of domains, reflects significant progress in articulating the meaning of authenticity. We conclude by suggesting new avenues for research in this area, with particular attention toward psychological process. (shrink)

Authentic objects are those that have a historical link to a person, event, time, or place of some significance. The current study examines everyday beliefs about authentic objects, with three primary goals: to determine the scope of adults' evaluation of authentic objects, to examine such evaluation in two distinct cultural settings, and to determine whether a person's attachment history predicts evaluation of authentic objects. We found that college students in the UK and the USA consistently evaluate a broad range of (...) authentic items as more valuable than matched control objects, more desirable to keep, and more desirable to touch, though only non-personal authentic items were judged to be more appropriate for display in a museum. These patterns were remarkably similar across the two cultural contexts. Additionally, those who had an attachment object as a child evaluated objects more favorably, and in particular judged authentic objects to be more valuable. Altogether, these results demonstrate broad endorsement of "positive contagion" among college-educated adults. (shrink)