You’re an Imposter!

How Imposter Syndrome Plagues Successful People

There has been a resurgence of research into imposter syndrome (or phenomenon) in recent years. The seemingly inexplicable case of when successful, often highly successful people, feel underserving of their success and feel like frauds, fakes, and, well, imposters.

You’re an imposter. Yes, you! You don’t know what you are, and I have just uncovered what you really are – nothing but a small person trying to look like you know your job.

Apologies for the above accusations. I'm sure you know that I didn't mean that! I am sure most of you know that I am a very kind-hearted person.

The point is, though, that the above thoughts are what, according to one meta analysis, over 80% of the population will feel like at some stage of their lives. Feeling like you are incompetent, not up to your job, that your successes have all been a fluke and that you will be uncovered and shown to be a fraud and an imposter.

Hence the name imposter syndrome. And no this is not restricted to those lower on the socioeconomic ladder, or of lower qualifications, intelligence, or ability.

One website lists 18 celebrities who have and do suffer from imposter syndrome. The quotes range from Albert Einstein:

“The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”

...to Tom Hanks:

"No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?'”

...to Sheryl Sandberg:

“Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself - or even excelled - I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.”

Indeed, it seems rife in Nobel laureates, respected CEOs, and successful actors alike, in fact any successful person in any field.

So, what is imposter syndrome?

Imposter syndrome was first put forward in a paper published in 1978 titled "The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention" by Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes. They defined the phenomenon as (now normally called a syndrome):

"an internal experience of intellectual phoniness" and initially focused their research on women in higher education and professional industries”.

As the name suggests, a key attribute is that feeling that you will be found out – that you are somehow bluffing along and are not worthy of your successes.

What is notable is that commonly these people are overachievers, being successful in multiple roles in society. One of the reasons is they attribute success to external factors, or sheer luck, rather than their own ability. This is in contrast to another phenomenon whereby we often attribute ability to luck and being deserving of success. For example, in controlled experiments with games of chance people often over attribute their influence and their deservedness in keeping their winnings!

In addition to externalising success the counter side and supporting factor is that of internalising failures. So, this is a double whammy externalising success and internalising failure.

Summary

Imposter syndrome is the condition of

• Feeling that you are not good enough

• Feeling that you are a fraud

• Feeling that you may be uncovered, exposed

• Putting down your successes to external factors such as luck or circumstance

• Being critical of your own failures

All of this in spite of being intelligent, effective, and successful in whatever role you are in.

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Reading through this you may find yourself nodding - I certainly do. I find that I often fall into the overconfidence trap but also fall into imposter syndromes at times – for those who know me, I regularly speak in public as a professional speaker. I am often announced as an expert in the field - and initially felt guilty and unworthy of this title. I have come to feel comfortable in this position but still experience a slight unease (which I have learnt to ignore).

But before I discuss ways out of it, let’s review a more recent study because the nature of this study shows us more about imposter syndrome. All studies to date are a versions of what are called vignette studies. This is when participants are asked how much they relate to certain statements. You know the type of thing: rate on a scale of five of whether you sometimes feel unworthy of your position.

This study by Brauer and Proyer of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg investigated imposter syndrome in real-life conditions. Participants took a range of intelligence tests and received positive feedback on them regardless of performance. They were then asked why they thought they had done so well.

They found strong agreement with the previously described factors. Namely that those high on imposter syndrome attributed their success to external factors and not their own abilities. What was important is that this was unrelated to age and gender and unrelated to intelligence or performance.

This shows a number of things and is proof that there is no reasonable basis to imposter syndrome and two that it is not a gender specific phenomenon – though some studies have shown it to manifest stronger in certain contexts.

A study released in 2021 by Muradoglu et al. showed that women felt more like imposters in academic fields that prized brilliance. For example, physics often has towering individuals such as Einstein and this perception of amazing individual ability seems to magnify the imposter syndrome in women. This effect, was also present in minority groups. It seems to show that those fields where stereotypical models of genius are rife seem to implicitly impact people’s view of themselves. Particularly those that do not fit into the stereotype.

This shows that imposter syndrome may be more prevalent in certain groups and in certain fields or that context plays an important role.

Personality

You may also wonder whether this is based on personality and/or brain functions. Are some people more disposed to this and what is happening in their heads? The research points to a number of factors: