Research on the benefits of authenticity tends to focus on expressing one’s authentic individual aspects of self (e.g., personality traits, values, opinions) and less on other identities, such as the roles one inhabits and the collective groups to which one belongs. Across two studies and samples totaling over 4,500 working individuals, we test the relationships between work-related role and collective authenticity and well-being/withdrawal outcomes, as well as their added explanatory value above and beyond the traditional way of conceptualizing authenticity (individual authenticity). In Study 1, we find that both work-related role authenticity and collective authenticity predict well-being above and beyond individual authenticity, whereas only work-related role authenticity adds explanatory value to both withdrawal outcomes. In Study 2, we find a largely similar pattern of results between types of authenticity and well-being/withdrawal outcomes collected approximately 9 months after. Implications are discussed.
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