People seek out situations that “fit,” but the concept of fit is not well understood. We introduce State Authenticity as Fit to the Environment (SAFE), a conceptual framework for understanding how social identities motivate the situations that people approach or avoid. Drawing from but expanding the authenticity literature, we first outline three types of person–environment fit: self-concept fit, goal fit, and social fit. Each type of fit, we argue, facilitates cognitive fluency, motivational fluency, and social fluency that promote state authenticity and drive approach or avoidance behaviors. Using this model, we assert that contexts subtly signal social identities in ways that implicate each type of fit, eliciting state authenticity for advantaged groups but state inauthenticity for disadvantaged groups. Given that people strive to be authentic, these processes cascade down to self-segregation among social groups, reinforcing social inequalities. We conclude by mapping out directions for research on relevant mechanisms and boundary conditions.

人们会寻找“合适”的情况，但是人们对合适的概念还不太了解。我们引进小号大老一个uthenticity作为˚F它的é环境（SAFE），一种概念框架，用于了解社会身份如何激发人们接近或避免的情况。借鉴但扩展了真实性文献，我们首先概述了三种类型的人-环境适应：自我概念适应，目标适应和社会适应。我们认为，每种类型的配合都会促进认知流利度，动机流利度和社交流利度，从而促进状态的真实性并推动方法或回避行为。使用这种模型，我们断言上下文以暗示每种适应的方式隐含地暗示着社会身份，从而为处于不利地位的群体带来了国家的真实性，而为处于不利地位的群体带来了不真实的状态。考虑到人们努力成为真实的人，这些过程逐渐演变为社会群体之间的自我隔离，加剧了社会不平等。