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Being Your Actual or Ideal Self? What It Means to Feel Authentic in a Relationship

Overview of attention for article published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (80th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
10 news outlets
blogs
3 blogs
twitter
3 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

dimensions_citation
16 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
106 Mendeley
Title
Being Your Actual or Ideal Self? What It Means to Feel Authentic in a Relationship
Published in
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 2017
DOI 10.1177/0146167216688211
Pubmed ID
Authors

Muping Gan, Serena Chen

Abstract

Relational authenticity-which refers to subjective feelings of authenticity in a specific relationship-confers well-being; yet little is known about what gives rise to it. The present research tested competing hypotheses about the basis of relational authenticity, whether it arises from being one's actual self in a relationship (actual-relational selves overlap), ideal self (relational-ideal selves overlap), or both. A pilot study examined lay beliefs about the basis of relational authenticity. Study 1 then showed that relational-ideal, but not actual-relational, overlap predicts relational authenticity. The remaining studies experimentally manipulated relational-ideal overlap, and showed that low overlap reduced relational authenticity compared with a control condition (Study 2), with varying actual-relational overlap (Study 3), and with varying actual-ideal overlap (Study 4). Several alternative accounts (e.g., negative general relationship perceptions) were addressed. We conclude that relational authenticity emanates largely from being one's ideal self in the relevant relationship, and discuss implications and future directions.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 106 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 2 2%
Luxembourg 1 <1%
Canada 1 <1%
Austria 1 <1%
Unknown 101 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 23 22%
Student > Master 14 13%
Student > Bachelor 9 8%
Researcher 8 8%
Student > Postgraduate 6 6%
Other 25 24%
Unknown 21 20%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 53 50%
Social Sciences 10 9%
Business, Management and Accounting 4 4%
Medicine and Dentistry 3 3%
Computer Science 2 2%
Other 6 6%
Unknown 28 26%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 94. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 July 2023.
All research outputs
#414,139
of 24,034,335 outputs
Outputs from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
#300
of 2,796 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#10,024
of 433,237 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
#7
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,034,335 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,796 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 433,237 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.