by Marie-Anne Markey, Giulia Mazzola and Marlieke Shaw
“I don’t belong” and “They’ll soon find out they made a mistake hiring me”. Everyone around you seems so in control of what they’re doing, while you’re just trying your best not to feel like a fraud. Does this feeling hit close to home? Widely known as the ‘impostor syndrome’, this feeling isn’t an actual syndrome, but an episodic experience among people in highly competitive work environments.
The voice
People affected by impostor syndrome feelings are typically high achievers (Weir 2013), attributing their success to luck rather than ability. Isn’t it ironic that many successful people feel so insecure? The impostor phenomenon is indeed a conflict between self-perception and other-perception of one’s professional skills, so it’s no wonder that it’s widespread among academics, and especially young ones: the academic environment in itself requires outstanding performances in order to survive job insecurity and competition.
Bravata et al.’s overview of existing studies confirms that a large number of students are affected by the debilitating feelings of impostorism. These feelings are related to perfectionist traits, low self-esteem, and the fear of showing one’s weaknesses and imperfections. Impostor feelings also significantly increase the risk of burnout, but there’s no difference between impostors and non-impostors in terms of grades and quality of performance, which indicates that the impostor feeling is nothing but a mean liar’s voice within. This doesn’t mean you have to downplay or neglect the voice: listen to it, try to deal with it, but don’t take its words too seriously!
(Darwin Correspondence Project 2013)
Despite the lack of studies on treatment and prevention in the academic and professional environments (Bravata et al. 2020), there are some strategies to overcome the impostor phenomenon. First we’ll discuss its causes, describing how social context plays a key role.
Impostor individual in an impostor society
Everyone feels insecure from time to time, especially in new situations. While researching this post, we talked to friends and family, and nearly all of them have felt like impostors at some point. Did you know that even people commonly considered geniuses, like Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, were reported to suffer from the impostor phenomenon (Darwin Correspondence Project 2013; Cox 2018)? Insecurity is particularly prominent when taking on a new task, but as the situation becomes more familiar, the feelings of impostorism decrease. While feeling like an impostor is highly common, few people actually talk about it, which can make us feel lonely and even more inadequate. This is what Elisabeth Cox has called pluralistic ignorance: we all fake self-confidence, making others believe they’re the only ones feeling insecure.
For some, time doesn’t diminish their impostor feelings. This could be due to a mismatch between one’s talents and the goal one is working towards (Whittaker 2021). You may not be an impostor, as you’re talented and capable, but you’re in the wrong room, and not working towards your authentic goal. The impostor phenomenon may also be aggravated by early childhood experiences. For instance, in their seminal work Clance and Imes found that both people who had been deemed the smart child and those with a ‘superior sibling’ struggled with feelings of impostorism. Clance and Imes link both childhood situations to a constant search for validation: either the ‘real world’ doesn’t bring the validation created by the parents’ unrealistic faith in one’s capacities, or the validation provided can’t be trusted. In addition to this search for validation, always striving for perfection may exacerbate feeling like a fraud.
(Darwin Correspondence Project 2013).
Impostor feelings aren’t only tied to the individual, human experience, but also to the structure of our societies. Clance and Imes’s seminal work centres around young women in academia, who’re particularly susceptible to the impostor phenomenon. More recent studies indicate that minorities in American society, too, are more likely to experience the impostor phenomenon. Factors such as ethnicity, gender, and religion seem to influence the intensity of the feelings. Tulshyan and Burey argue that societal issues such as discrimination, racism, or xenophobia as well can cause the impostor phenomenon. The researchers point to discrimination overall, but they also flag the lack of role models for women of colour in high-achieving positions. This lack of role models is a double-edged sword: young women of colour have fewer role models to mirror, leading to feeling of impostorism, and (young) women of colour may be deemed less professional by others in the workplace, who may judge them more harshly and thus creating (systemic) exclusion. In other words, individual impostor feelings can’t be disconnected from larger issues in society, and the impostor phenomenon can only be reduced by addressing those issues.
SOS Impostor Phenomenon
Doing research is demanding enough without those debilitating thoughts of self-doubt striking every time we’re assigned a new task. Unfortunately there’s no ready-made solution to such feelings, and we can’t change society in a blink, but there are some ways which may help you cope better.
- A first and crucial step is to acknowledge that you experience the impostor phenomenon. We recommend using the Clance IP Scale (Clance 1985) to verify how frequently and strongly you experience impostor feelings.
- Even though you may feel like you’re the only one feeling like a fraud, even experienced researchers often feel like impostors, which brings us back to Cox’ concept of pluralistic ignorance. If we collectively start to talk about our self-doubt we can break the circle of pluralistic ignorance. By sharing experiences, you help yourself as well as the people in your working environment, so consider it your random act of kindness.
- Just like on social media, even in the real world we tend to look at others through coloured glasses. Is everyone really that genius? Chances are that you think they are, but are you sure the others aren’t idealising you either? Everyone’s just trying to project a positive image of themselves, so try to rationalise your feelings of impostorism.
- Most of us experiencing the impostor phenomenon struggle to understand how we got where we are at a professional level. We have the honour of working with incredibly gifted and productive experts, or at least that’s what it looks like. But consider this: if your colleagues were really that gifted, would they make the mistake of hiring you in the first place? If you don’t trust yourself, at least trust those ‘incredibly gifted experts’ around you.
- When you’re going through a self-doubt crisis, remind yourself why you’re here, and try to stick to the facts. Take a piece of paper and write down in great detail what you’ve done in the past weeks, months or years. You’ll be surprised to see that list grow.
- Accept your impostor feelings, because despite the fact that you’re having them, you are where you are, and you’re getting things done anyway. And hey, you aren’t your thoughts!
- Feelings of impostorism are typically most intense when confronted with a task for the first few times, and they usually don’t go away, but they can decrease in strength and frequency with practice: the more you practise something, the quicker it comes, and the quicker it comes, the better you can deal with it and the less you experience anxiety. Sometimes the feelings come back, for instance when being faced with a new challenge or drawback. Stay alert, but also remember that you’ve tackled the task before, and that you can do it again.
- Don’t be scared to get professional help when your impostor thoughts become disproportionately overwhelming. Therapy may help you develop personalised strategies for your own comfort.
(Darwin Correspondence Project 2013).
We would like to thank Dr. Virginia Calabria for sharing her insightful comments on coping with the impostor phenomenon. We are also grateful to Juliane Elter for the idea to link our own experience to Darwin’s.
Cover picture:
Taheld. 2018. Rocky Road. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rocky_Road.jpg [Some rights reserved]
Sources:
Bravata, Dena, Watts, Sharon, Keefer, Autumn, Madhusudhan, Divya, Taylor, Katie, Clark, Dani, Nelson, Ross, Cokley, Ross & Hagg, Heather. 2020. Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: a Systematic Review. Journal of general internal medicine, 35(4), 1252–1275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1
Clance, Pauline Rose & Imes, Suzanne Ament. 1978. The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006
Clance, Pauline Rose. 1985. The Impostor Phenomenon: When Success Makes You Feel Like A Fake. 20–22. Toronto: Bantam Books.
Cox, Elizabeth. 2018. What is imposter syndrome and how can you combat it? https://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-is-imposter-syndrome-and-how-can-you-combat-it-elizabeth-cox [TED Talk]
Darwin Correspondence Project. 2013. Darwin’s bad days. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwins-bad-days#
Tulshyan, Ruchika & Burey, Jodi-Ann. 2021. Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. https://hbr.org/2021/02/stop-telling-women-they-have-imposter-syndrome [Blog post]
Weir, Kirsten. 2013. Feel like a fraud? https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2013/11/fraud [Cover story]
Whittaker, Christina. 2021. The one thing no one told you about the “impostor syndrome”. https://www.ted.com/talks/christina_whittaker_the_one_thing_no_one_told_you_about_the_impostor_syndrome/details [TED Talk]
Becoming a researcher 
