Inauthenticity from Transgressive Events: Situational Emotions and Generalized Distress

The affect control theory of self explains how interactions that challenge our core sense of self produce inauthenticity —a discrepancy between who we generally feel we are and how we feel about ourselves in specific events. However, the consequences of inauthenticity for emotions and psychological distress are not specified by this theory. We begin to address this gap in knowledge by exploring the association between inauthenticity from unequal, discriminatory, and violent encounters—which we term “transgressive events”—and both situation-level emotions and person-level distress using original survey data from an online convenience sample of emerging adults. We find that inauthenticity within transgressive events is associated with negative emotions (N = 10,641 transgressions) and that accumulated inauthenticity across transgressive events is associated with person-level depression, anxiety, and stress (N = 1,484 respondents). Parallel to other social psychological theories yet distinct in its mathematical formulation, our findings illuminate multilevel pathways linking self-processes to emotional experiences.