Performed Authenticity: How Authenticity Cues Impact Perceptions of Politicians and Electoral Support

Authenticity has become one of the most powerful lenses through which citizens evaluate political actors, a shift amplified by digital and social media where politicians strategically stage personal, emotional, and spontaneous performances (Luebke et al., 2021; Kenny et al., 2021). Scholars have identified four core dimensions that reliably shape perceptions of political authenticity online—consistency, immediacy, ordinariness, and intimacy (Luebke & Engelmann, 2020)—and emerging evidence suggests that such cues can affect how voters judge candidates (Breitenstein et al., 2023; Siters et al., 2023). Yet we still lack causal evidence that performances on social media platforms along these dimensions actually heighten perceived authenticity, affect electoral support or improve candidate evaluations. Even more striking, no study to date has examined all four dimensions simultaneously or contrasted them with explicit inconsistency, the very opposite of authentic political behavior. Using an experiment fielded in Austria (n = 800) and Flanders (n = 800), this study directly addresses these gaps by systematically manipulating each authenticity dimension—as well as an inconsistency condition—in realistic social media posts of a fictional political candidate. We evaluate their effects on perceived authenticity, candidate evaluations, and voting intentions. We expect authenticity cues to produce more favorable electoral judgments, whereas inconsistency should have the opposite effect. By isolating and comparing all key dimensions of performed authenticity across two political contexts, this study offers the first comprehensive causal test of how distinct authenticity signals in social media communication shape citizens’ perceptions of political figures and the willingness to support them at the ballot box.