Q. What is authenticity?

A. Authenticity in relationships can be defined as one’s ability to be open and to represent your true self and your true experience. By the age of 12 or 13 — by seventh grade — kids can distinguish between what their true selves and false selves are. At younger ages, they can’t differentiate. You are who you are.

Q. Why is authenticity important?

A. Having a lower level of authenticity is a very strong predictor for depression and other mental health outcomes.

Q. Why did you study 14-year-old girls?

A. We know there are no gender differences in depression or self-esteem in children, but post-puberty girls are much more at risk for depression and low self-esteem [than boys].

Q. What factors affect authenticity?

A. My research shows girls who have secure attachment with their parents, who feel comfortable with their parents, who feel safe and secure, have higher levels of authenticity. The flip side — insecure attachment, feeling distant from parents, feeling like they can’t turn to them with a problem — is a predictor of lower levels of authenticity.

Q. Did that sense of authenticity extend outside the home?

A. Attachment with parents did carry over to authenticity with teachers.

Q. What about friends?

A. It did not relate to being authentic with best friends, classmates, or peers, which is disappointing. It may be the time period. Research shows that around 13 or 14, it’s not that parents become less important. It’s that peers grow in importance. They’re helping drive the bus.

Q. What can teachers learn from this?

A. If a teacher feels like she’s working with a female or male student who isn’t really being open and seems to be struggling, that teacher could suggest the parents have a more open and honest relationship with their kid. The student could be really busy or ambivalent about spending more time with parents, but it would help if parents make a special effort to spend more time with their kids and really have conversations with them.

Q. Does authenticity matter for boys, too?

A. It’s just as important for boys and girls, particularly for depression. It’s really important to figure out why this is happening and what sort of intervention programs we can create. We worry more about girls, which doesn’t mean we should ignore boys.

Q. What’s your next project?

A. I’m working on a study looking at trauma. Trauma is a big predictor of levels of authenticity. It may be if you experience childhood trauma, you split your true and false selves as a kind of survival. Trauma belongs to the false self or “bad’’ self. If it happens at a really early age, it may be adaptive short term but pretty maladaptive in terms of longer-term relationships.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Interview was condensed and edited.

Elizabeth Cooney can be reached at ecooney@globe.com.