The Authenticity Complex : Why Just Being Yourself Isn’t Enough

''No one asks better questions, or comes up with more intriguing answers,'' Malcolm Gladwell, author of THE TIPPING POINT

In her critically acclaimed bestseller The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar transformed our understanding of how we make choices in a world of growing complexity. Now, in The Authenticity Complex, Iyengar, a blind, Indian-American female social scientist, dares to ask the questions many of us seek to avoid - ''Who am I?'' And, given who I am, what should I choose?

We most often associate the following words with authenticity: real, true, honest, genuine, original. Somewhat less frequently they say: pure, natural, reliable-or just good. But when they evaluate authenticity, they often do so on very different terms. And when they explain their reasoning, they may refer to still different, even contradictory, criteria. The variations we see in the lab reflect the multitudinous nature of authenticity and demonstrate that it is, for lack of a better word, slippery.

Using techniques developed and tested in her own lab, this extraordinary work will show readers how to think bigger about authenticity and creatively construct a larger, more authentic sense of who they really are. The experiments attest that authenticity is powerful and delicate, possible to organize and spontaneously occurring. It''s steady and constant but also unrestrained and boundless.