Authenticity is correlated with mindfulness and emotional intelligence

Humanistic psychology has long been interested in authenticity. Carl Rogers proposed that authenticity leads to more fully functioning behaviour. However, it is only in recent years that there has been empirical research into the correlates of authenticity. The aim was to test for association between authenticity and two individual difference factors of much contemporary interest mindfulness and emotional intelligence. 197 participants were recruited either through convenience sampling or an online survey. All completed the Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008), the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (Schutte et al., 1998), the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (Baer, Smith & Allen, 2004) and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1984). Higher scores on authenticity were associated with higher scores on self-deceptive enhancement, mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Regression analyses showed that authenticity, specifically the self-alienation subscale, was able to predict mindfulness, and the authentic living subscale was able to predict emotional intelligence, taking into account social desirability and self-deceptive effects. Further research is now needed into the association between authenticity and self-deception and the causal relationships of these variables with emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and other characteristics of the fully functioning person.

4 1993). As Barrett-Lennard (1998), one of the foremost proponents of Rogers' theoretical system wrote: '…it implies consistency between the three levels of (a) a person's primary experience, (b) their symbolized awareness, and (c) their outward behaviour and communication. The concept is theoretically centred on consistency between the first two of these levels, this being considered the main determining condition for congruence between awareness and communication ' (p. 82).
Based on Barrett-Lennard's definition, items were developed by the authors of the Authenticity Scale in an attempt to reflect this distinction between consistency between the first of the two levels and between the second of the two levels. Factor analysis showed that the Authenticity Scale consisted of three factors which were labelled as (low) self-alienation, (not) accepting external influence, and authentic living. Self-alienation refers to a lack of selfunderstanding and a low score on this implies a degree of inner congruence. Accepting external influence refers to how much people struggle to find their own self-direction, with low scores implying a degree of self-determination, and authentic living refers to the outer expression of congruence. As such, the Authenticity Scale breaks down the broad concept of congruence into its constituent parts. More recently, Joseph (2016) in describing the Authenticity Scale has referred to these three factors as 'knowing oneself', 'owning oneself', and 'being oneself', to describe their continuity from inner experience to outer expression.
With the advent of these measures there has been new interest in the empirical study of authenticity as an individual difference variable (Joseph, 2016;Ryan & Ryan, 2019). Although AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 5 the Authenticity Scale is widely used, its underpinnings in Rogers' theory of congruence have been of less interest to researchers. For Rogers (1959), however, congruence was the central variable for the good life. As people become more congruent, they move toward becoming what Rogers (1963) described as more fully functioning, which involves being more open to experience, trusting of themselves, and living in an existential fashion.
The concept of fully functioning is central to understanding how Rogers' approach is consistent with the aims of contemporary positive psychology (Joseph, 2015). It is a term however not widely used by today's empirical researchers, who are more likely to use the term well-being. Nonetheless, some evidence consistent with Rogers' prediction that authenticity leads to well-being comes from Boyraz, Waits and Felix (2014), who collected information from college students on their authenticity, life satisfaction and levels of distress at two points in time separated by almost two months. They found that those who showed greater authenticity as measured at the first time point were more satisfied with life and less distressed at the second time point. In thinking about the concept of fully functioning in relation to other psychological constructs of contemporary interest we were particularly interested in mindfulness and emotional intelligence.
Mindfulness is defined as a process a process of increasing specific quality of awareness to experiences without judgement (Baer et al., 2006;Bishop, 2004;Hill & Updegraff, 2012).
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to process emotional information accurately and efficiently and to regulate emotion in oneself (Mayer & Salovey, 1995). While mindfulness and emotional intelligence are terms that have become widely used within the psychological literature since Rogers was writing, they seem to describe the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural states that Rogers was writing about decades earlier to describe the emergent AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 6 properties of congruence. As Rogers wrote: 'Being real involves the difficult task of being acquainted with the flow of experiencing going on within oneself, a flow marked especially by complexity and continuous change' (Rogers, 1962, pp. 91-92). Joseph, Murphy, and Patterson (2016) have shown how Rogers' conception of congruence and his description of the process of becoming fully functioning, and a more mature life, is a movement towards living in what sounds like a more mindful fashion. Rogers (1961) wrote: 'A second characteristic of the process which for me is the good life, is that it involves an increasing tendency to live fully in each moment. Such living in the moment means an absence of rigidity, of tight organization of the imposition of structure on experience. It means instead a maximum of adaptability, a discovery of structure in experience, a flowing, changing organization of self and personality ... It involves discovering the structure of experience in the process of living the experience. To open one's spirit to what is going on now, and to discover in that present process whatever structure it appears to have -this to me is one of the qualities of the good life, the mature life, as I see clients approach it. (1961, pp. 188-189).
As such we hypothesize that greater congruence is associated with greater mindfulness.
In support of this, Beitel et al (2014) found that self-actualization, a closely related concept to congruence, was associated with mindfulness, and Lakey et al (2008) found an association between scores on the Kernis and Goldman (2006) Authenticity Inventory and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003). Recently, Chen and Murphy (2019) replicated this finding with the Mindful Awareness Scale but this time using the Authenticity AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 7 Scale (Wood et al., 2008). Our choice was to follow this latter line of investigation to use the Authenticity Scale because its theoretical conceptualisation was based specifically on Rogers' (1959) description of congruence. However, the Mindful Awareness Scale is unifactorial and other newer measures of mindfulness provide multifactorial structures. As such we wished to extend this research to a more fine grained analysis of other dimensions of mindfulness.
No research has yet been carried out testing the association between the Authenticity Scale and emotional intelligence. However, Rogers' (1959) writings on congruence imply that in becoming more congruent, the qualities now described as emotional intelligence would also arise. As Rogers (1963) writes of the fully functioning person: 'He is able to experience all of his feelings, and is afraid of none of his feelings; he is his own sifter of evidence, but is open to evidence from all sources; he is completely engaged in the process of being and becoming himself, and thus discovers that he is soundly and realistically social…' (p. 22).
The aim of our study will be to test for the association between authenticity and the qualities of mindfulness and emotional intelligence. One of the criticisms that can be made of this line of investigation, however, is that associations between authenticity and other positively valued dimensions are simply a function of social desirability. Those with a tendency to present themselves in more socially desirable ways are likely to complete questionnaires to show themselves in a more positive light. An observed correlation between, for example, authenticity and emotional intelligence is simply due to the common correlation between each of the variables and the third variable of social desirability rather than any underlying causal AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 8 relationship between authenticity and emotional intelligence. Neither the studies by Lakey et al (2008) or Chen and Murphy (2019), included a measure of social desirability. More prone to social desirability effects, however, may be the test for emotional intelligence. It is known that emotional intelligence is "susceptible" to faking and so social desirability is a factor that can have an impact on the trait measure of emotional intelligence (Kluemper, 2008). While it is controversial whether social desirability measures are of much use as suppressor variables in correcting scores from other scales (McCrae & Costa, 1983), how social desirability is related to authenticity and influences its association with other variables is in our view an interesting and important line of enquiry. Authenticity research is in its infancy and as yet we do not know how it relates to other well established measures of social desirability, particularly that of selfdeception. The role of self-deception in positive psychology variables remains a strong focus of interest (Sheridan, Boman, Mergler, & Furlong, 2015). As such, the aim of our study will be to test for the association between authenticity and the qualities of mindfulness and emotional intelligence while also controlling for social desirability effects.

Participants
Using a convenience sample and an online survey, 197 participants (47% male and 54% female; age ranged from 18 to 73 with a mean age of 34.87 years, SD = 12.29; 57% were white, 23% were Arabs, 14% were Asian and 6% were either Latino or African) completed self-report measures of authenticity, emotional intelligence, and mindfulness.

Procedure
The study was conducted as part of the first author's MA dissertation. The researcher contacted students randomly at the University of Nottingham through the cafeteria, classes, coffee shops and the library asking them for their participation. All those that expressed interest were given information explaining what was involved and if they then agreed were asked to complete an informed consent sheet. Participants were then given a hard copy of the questionnaires to complete which was then collected in by the researcher on the same day. In addition, the Bristol online survey (BOS) was used to develop an online version of the questionnaires that was promoted by the researcher on social media. Online participants were required to read and accept the informed consent before they can get access to the booklet of questionnaires. All participants were required to be above eighteen years old and to be able to be fluent in English. All completed four self-report measures:

Authenticity Scale (AS).
The Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008) consists of 12 items which are scored to produce three 4-item subscales: authentic living (AL), (e.g., 'I think it is better to be yourself, than to be popular'); self-alienation (SA), (e.g., 'I don't know how I really feel inside'); and acceptance of external influence (AIE), (e.g., 'I am strongly influenced by the opinions of others'). Each items is rated on a 7-point Likert scale of 1 (Does not describe me at all) to 7 (Describes me very well). Higher scores on SA and AEI indicate lower levels of authenticity, and higher scores on AL indicates greater authenticity. A total score can also be calculated by reverse scoring the 8 items for self-alienation and accepting external influence and then summing all 12 items such that scores can range from 12 to 84, with higher scores on the total AS indicating greater authenticity.

Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS).
The Schutte Emotional Intelligence scale (SEIS: Schutte et al., 1998) consists of 33 items (e.g., 'I have control over my own emotions'; 'When I am faced with a challenge, I give up because I believe I will fail'). Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The overall emotional intelligence score is calculated by reverse scoring three items and then summing all 33 items such that scores can range from 33 to 165, with higher scores on the SEIS indicating greater emotional intelligence.

Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS).
The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS: Baer, Smith & Allen, 2004) consists of 39-items which are scored to produce four subscales of observing (12 items, e.g., 'I notice changes in my body, such as whether my breathing slows down or speeds up'); describing (8 items, e.g., 'I'm good at finding the words to describe my feelings'); acting with awareness (10 items, e.g., 'When I do things, I get totally wrapped up in them and don't think about anything else'); and accepting without judgement (9 items, e.g., 'I make judgements about whether my thoughts are good or bad'). Each item is rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (never, rarely) to 5 (Very often or always true). A total score can also be calculated by reverse scoring 17 items and then summing all 39 items such that scores can range from 39 to 195 with higher score on the total KIMS indicating greater mindfulness.

Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR).
The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR: Paulhus, 1984) consists of 40 items which are scored to produce two 20-item subscale scores of self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) (e.g., 'It's all right with me if some people happen to dislike me'); and Impression Management (IM) (e.g., 'I have said something bad about a friend behind his/her back'). Paulhus shown that continuous scoring produces higher convergent correlations (Stöber, Dette, & Musch, 2002) we chose to score the BIDR continuously. Each item is rated on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), such that scores can range from 20 to 140 with higher score on IM and SDE indicating greater desirable responses.

RESULTS
Mean score, Standard Deviation, and Cronbach's alpha for each of the AS, SEIS, KIMS, and BIDR are shown in Table 1. All scales and their subscales showed acceptable to excellent levels of internal consistency reliability. Only SDE fell below 0.70 and that was only marginally so.
Correlations were computed between scores on each of the scales. A strong association was found between scores on the AS and the SDE but not for IM. A similar pattern of associations was found for the AS subscales, except for a weak but statistically significant association between AL and IM. It was noted that scores on KIMS were moderately associated with scores on the SEIS, and that each was moderately associated with higher scores on the AS, as predicted.
Inspection of the correlations using the subscales of the AS showed a similar pattern of associations as the total AS. However, as it was also noted that the strength of correlation between the SA, AEI, and AL subscales were only moderate, it seemed appropriate to use these rather than the total score in the subsequent analysis.
-Insert Table 1 about here-Although not using the terms 'mindfulness' and 'emotional intelligence', we argue that in Rogers' (1959) theory that the characteristics described by these terms can be understood to be AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 12 the emergent properties of congruence. As such we were interested in whether scores on the AS were able to predict scores on KIMS and SEIS, respectively. We conducted two regression analyses.
In the first analysis, the KIMS was the dependent variable with age and gender entered in model 1, IM and SDE in model 2, SEIS in model 3, and finally scores on the exploratory variables SA, AEI, and AL in model 4 (see Table 2). This allows us to understand if authenticity is able to predict scores on mindfulness over and above the contribution of emotional intelligence taking into account social desirability and gender and age effects. It was found that KIMS was predicted by age in the first model, with older participants being more mindful, that the amount of variance predicted increased in the second model with the addition of SDE, again in the third model with the addition of the SEIS, but in the fourth model KIMS was now most strongly predicted by SA followed by AEI, SEIS, and age. SDE was no longer a statistically significant predictor.
In the second analysis, the SEIS was the dependent variable with age and gender entered in model 1, IM and SDE in model 2, KIMS in model 3, and finally scores on the exploratory variables SA, AEI, and AL in model 4 (see Table 3). This allows us to understand if authenticity is able to predict scores on emotional intelligence over and above the contribution of mindfulness taking into account social desirability and gender and age effects. It was found that SEIS was not predicted by either gender or age in the first model, but that the amount of variance predicted increased in the second model with the addition of SDE and now gender, with females being more emotionally intelligent, again in the third model with the addition of the KIMS, and in the fourth model, when AL emerged as a predictor followed by KIMS and gender, but following SDE which was the strongest predictor. Table 3 about here-Summarizing these two analyses, scores on the AS subscales are able to predict mindfulness and emotional intelligence controlling for age and gender and taking into account social desirability effects. However, authenticity subscales seemed to be differentially related to the KIMS and SEIS. AL was the only one of the three authenticity subscales to predict scores on the SEIS but it did not predict scores on the KIMS, which was predicted by the other two subscales of SA and AEI. In the final models gender was predictive of SEIS and age of KIMS, suggesting that there are cultural and developmental aspects that are not fully accounted for by the AS.

DISCUSSION
We found that authenticity was associated with emotional intelligence and mindfulness.
Authenticity predicted mindfulness taking into account emotional intelligence, and vice versa.
Emotional Intelligence seems more aligned with the external dimension of authenticity as measured by the AL subscale. Mindfulness seems more aligned with the internal dimension of authenticity as measured by the SA subscale. One of the novel features of our study was that we were able to show that the associations between mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and authenticity remained even when controlling for social desirability effects. Our research continues a trend towards examining convergence between humanistic and positive psychology (Joseph & Murphy, 2012), provides new evidence for the psychological benefits of authenticity, and opens up new directions for exploration. However, there are methodological limitations that need to be considered, notably the use of a small convenience sample of self-selected participants, the use of a cross-sectional design, and exclusive use of self-report measures.
First, the use of a cross-sectional design limits what we can conclude about the relationship between the variables. While we think that mindfulness and emotional intelligence are emergent properties of congruence, as these skills emerge, they will in turn provide the opportunity for the person to deepen their level of congruence. Carlson (2013) has discussed how mindfulness serves as a path to self-knowledge. But our cross-sectional data cannot address these questions of causality. This is a limitation of the study. Having established the associations between authenticity, mindfulness and emotional intelligence there is now a need for prospective research using multiple testing points to test for the causal nature of these relationships. That way it will be possible to show that mindfulness and emotional intelligence are emergent properties of congruence, and as people become more mindful and emotionally intelligent they move toward even greater congruence.
A second limitation is our exclusive reliance on self-report measures. Self-report measures are problematic for a number of reasons, but in this case we are dealing with concepts that seem particularly difficult to operationalize. One of the strongest associations we found was between authenticity and self-deceptive enhancement. In the psychometric development of the Authenticity Scale, Wood et al (2008) found that authenticity was not strongly associated with social desirability so this was unexpected. The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding provides scores for two forms of social desirability, impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. It is interesting that we found an association with the latter but not the former, with the exception of the Authentic Living subscale. It may be that our results reflect the fact that more authentic people do actually possess more of the qualities captured by the self-deceptive enhancement subscale such as being genuine in their acceptance that other people might not like them.
Other studies have also pointed to the possibility that the high correlation found between other measures of well-being and social desirability is due to content similarity than to a social desirability response bias (Kozma & Stones, 1987 and that self-reports of well-being can generally be taken as veridical assessments (McCrae, 1986). This possibility deserves more attention. After all, features such as being genuine in one's acceptance that other people might not like you is a defining characteristic of authenticity. It has long been thought by some researchers that social desirability scales are better interpreted as measures of substantive traits than as indicators of response bias (McCrae & Costa, 1983), leading us to wonder to what extent social desirability measures are in fact assessing components of authenticity. It was interesting that in the final models of the regression analyses when authenticity was entered that selfdeception was no longer a statistically significant predictor of mindfulness but it emerged as the stronger predictor of emotional intelligence. The association between authenticity and selfdeceptive enhancement and their relationship to other variables now deserves much closer scrutiny.
On the other hand, it may be that the measure of authenticity is flawed. While other research has shown that self-serving biases in self-perception that are often inferred from the correlations between well-being and social desirability measures may be best understood as a quality of positive health (e.g., Blaine & Crocker, 1993;Taylor & Brown, 1994) this cannot be inferred here. It may be the case that well-being as it is often understood may consist of some element of bias in self-perception, or self-deception and self-enhancement strategies may be used in some way to bolster well-being (Erez, Johnson, & Judge, 1995;Robins & Paulhus, 2001), but there is a distinction to be made between genuine mental health and illusory mental health (Shedler, Mayman, & Manis, 1993). Specifically, Rogers' (1959) conception of congruence is AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 16 that the more congruent one is, by definition the less self-serving bias or self-enhancement there should be. Congruence implies being realistic and honest in one's perceptions. The notion that a small amount of self-deception is possibly healthy does not apply to the concept of congruence. As such, evidence of self-serving bias associated with authenticity points to difficulties in the psychometric assessment of authenticity. It may simply be that those high on self-deception think of themselves as more authentic than they actually are. In that way, higher scores on authenticity may in fact reflect a degree of inner incongruence. In the current study we used the Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008) and it may be that our results are specific to this measure. Future research may be advised to use more than one measure of authenticity in order to test for the similarities and differences. Also, it is well established that people's capacity to evaluate themselves is modest (Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004). As Ryan and Ryan (2019) note there is a need for novel methods in the assessment of authenticity that go beyond the experiential selfreport realm.
Third, we used a small and self-selected group of participants. A larger representative sample would be desirable in future research, but that leads us to question who it ought to be representative of and the importance of examining the theory through a more culturally informed lens. For example, it is possible that there is a difference in authenticity between the Eastern and Western cultures. Conducting research such as that here across different cultures would help to confirm or refute this. Rogers' (1959) theory is intended as universal statement of the human condition, and in this respect we would not expect there to be differences in the general processes. As a Western theory, Rogers' approach may be seen by some to present a worldview that is different to Eastern world views such as Buddhism. In Buddhism, mindfulness is one of eight steps toward getting to "non-self" rather than enhancing the self. Following this path reduces craving and dread (self-focused strivings) and thereby reduces suffering. Mindfulness implies awareness of the present moment without judgement (and without claiming me or mine).
This brings an understanding that life is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and utterly empty (without self). Some critics might view this as different to Rogers' view of congruence and what they see as Rogers' view of the real self. But we would not agree. The self-structure, as discussed by Rogers (1959), develops as a result of incongruence. There is no self in Rogers' theory that exists beyond the conditions of worth from which it has developed. As in Buddhism, moving towards greater congruence is actually a process in which the person strips away their conditions of worth and thus the layers of their self-structure, which if it were possible to do completely would reveal only the need for maintenance and development of the organism. In this way, we would argue that Rogers' (1959) theory is actually closely aligned to Buddhism's view of non-self, and both present a similar rather than different worldview. Other writers such as Chang and Page (1991) and Bundschuh-Muller (2013) have previously expressed similar views about the convergence of Rogers' theory with Eastern worldviews but this is an area that deserves much greater exploration and attention by researchers.
Finally, the characteristics of a person that might be expected to be emergent from authenticity is wide ranging and while we think we have tested for two of the most important ones attracting interest in contemporary research, there remains much research yet to be carried out to test the boundaries of the nomological net thrown up by Rogers' (1959) theory, and the ways in which he describes personality development when congruence -the tendency toward actualization is unhindered (e.g., Cartwright, DeBruin, & Berg, 1991;Cartwright, & Mori, 1988). Our research has focused on individualistic aspects of Rogers' theory but his view was that congruence leads to movement toward both autonomous and socially constructive behaviors.

AUTHENTICITY, MINDFULNESS, AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 18
There is now a need for research into the social dimensions of congruence. Authenticity is one of the fundamental concepts in the humanistic psychotherapies (Cooper & Joseph, 2016).
Developing evidence that authenticity is associated with other variables in the ways that are to be expected from theory is important for the future development of humanistic psychotherapies. We also hope our research will help to continue the trend for greater convergence between humanistic and positive psychology as these older theoretical ideas begin to be put to new test.  Note. KIMS = Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (total); IM = Impression Management; SDE = Self-Deceptive Enhancement; SEIS = Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale; AL = Authentic Living: AEI = Accepting External Influence; SA = Self-Alienation.