Pinning Down Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome, ambivalent darling of our culture, captures diverse investigations into how we understand ourselves, each other, and our relationships, grounded in unrelenting doubt.
Postmodern heroes struggle with this malady, from superheroes to antiheroes. Good and evil blur, sometimes becoming a matter of perspective. Moral choices—once so crisp and clear, full of idealism—yield to gray half-truths and perpetual lesser-of-two-evil choices. Moral injuries haunt us increasingly; the consequence of our actions thrown back at us. The alternative? Live in a bubble1. When we sense our own feelings of being an imposter, we are commonly both drawn in and repulsed.
Sigmund Freud (1916) described "Those Wrecked by Success", WWI-era harbinger of imposter syndrome:
So much the more surprising, and indeed bewildering, must it appear when as a doctor one makes the discovery that people occasionally fall ill precisely when a deeply-rooted and long-cherished wish has come to fulfilment. It seems then as though they were not able to tolerate their happiness; for there can be no question that there is a causal connection between their success and their falling ill.
External ambitions are a stand-in for deeper, forbidden wishes. People direct their energies to achieving the goals only to find not joy or satisfaction but disappointment, and they collapse as the failure hits home, but the meaning and root cause remain unconscious. We don't deserve to feel happy, punishing ourselves to alleviate guilt and bring a kind of justice, an act of "moral masochism".
Crucially, imposter syndrome draws our attention like a car crash, dancing across narcissism and the dark personality triad (which includes psychopathy and Machiavellianism with narcissism); insecure attachment (including preoccupied/anxious, dismissive/withdrawn, and trauma-associated disorganized attachment); the broader role of trauma and dissociation/disintegration in childhood and adult life; aspects of personality ranging from borderline personality disorder with chronic experiences of emptiness, identity instability; and relationship patterns connected with enmeshment, relationship dysfunction born out of intimacy fear and avoidance ("irrelationship"), abuse and gaslighting.
Perhaps feeling like an imposter lends a level of missing certainty, even if unappetizing, as contrasted with the more daunting prospect of locating oneself in a chaotic, changing world. Perhaps imposter syndrome is also an adaptation to the current context, a way of fitting in to a world mired in doubt and uncertainty.
Fleshing Out Imposter Syndrome
Researchers are still homing in on what imposter syndrome is and how to reliably measure it. As discussed by Walker and Saklofske in the journal Assessment (2023), the three current primary measures of the imposter phenomenon, while useful, are limited2, either by statistical inconsistency, incomplete coverage of all the relevant factors, or both.
Walker and Saklofske started fresh, using a list of over 80 items capturing aspects of imposter syndrome to derive a comprehensive and valid scale, the Imposter Phenomenon Assessment (IPA). Items were tested and refined over three studies, first to distill out key factors by asking participants to rate them, and then to refine and further test them. They used this definition of the imposter phenomenon: “the subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary.”
The initial imposter theoretical model had three main domains:
1. External Attribution3
Affirmative action
Discounting praise
Luck/mistakes
2. Negative Beliefs about the Self
Discrepancy between public and private self
Fear of failure/success
Self-doubt
3. Self-handicapping behaviors
Avoidance
Overpreparation
Deriving the Final 54-Item IPA
In the first study, 301 undergraduate students completed a survey of the original 72-items. Participants rated each item, and the results were analyzed to identify and remove redundant items and test the validity of the theoretical framework against participant responses. The statistical results suggested a good fit for a three factor model, with a resulting set of 54 items covering updated factors to include: 1) Doubts about achievement; 2) Perceived discrepancy; and 3) Self-handicapping behaviors.
Open Source, Walker & Saklofske (2023)
The second study tested the 54-item scale with 554 participants, confirming that the three factors captured the imposter phenomenon with reliable statistical value and internal consistency. In the third study, the 54-item IPA was tested again for further replication and validation with a different group of 562 students.
The researchers found that the imposter phenomenon was higher with neuroticism and perfectionism, and lower with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and self-esteem. Exploratory analyses looked for differences in IPA scores as a function of age, gender, and ethnicity, with intriguing but inconsistent findings given lack of diversity in participant pools in the studies.
Tentative Implications
While not developed for clinical use, the IPA is intriguing both as a measure of overall imposter feelings and as a way to identify areas of opportunity for growth and development. Notably, early research suggests that we can shift personality traits by identifying desired changes, regularly journaling and reflecting on efforts to change, and practicing specific behaviors associated with those desired traits. In principle, it may be possible to feel and/or become more secure by leveraging key behaviors identified in the IPA as core to imposter syndrome, to de-imposter ourselves.
Perhaps the imposter phenomenon represents a collective existential struggle, as humanity grapples with whether our culture is at heart authentic, legitimate, or based on illusion and self-deception—or both. Perhaps more important, what to do with this ever-shifting knowledge as we face an increasingly interconnected, technology-driven reality? Self-compassion is a key ingredient for authenticity and growth mindset, buffering imposterism and transforming doubt into a catalyst for change.
Future research will further test the IPA with a broader range of participants to look for patterns across different groups and to further understand how imposter syndrome may track with mental and emotional health, as well as clinical correlations with mental illness. Given the association with perfectionism, neuroticism, and low self-esteem, the IPA overlaps with, but is distinct from, negative personality traits and markers of mental health.
Open Source, Walker & Saklofske (2023)
References
1. Imposter syndrome subsumes many elements, highlighting individual concerns related to fears of being exposed as fraudulent, failed aspirations to “fake it until you make it”, excessive preoccupation with others’ perceived beliefs about our value, skewed to presume others think poorly of us, and narcissistic see-sawing from extremes of insecurity to suspicions of superiority, pivoting on an unformulated, often incoherent, inner sense of self punctuated by unease with success, difficulty with failure, and all-too-often self-defeating behaviors.
2. As authors describe in detail, the early Harvey Imposter Phenomenon Scale (HIPS), for example, centered on beliefs one was fooling others, with fears of being exposed and difficulty seeing success as the result of one own efforts, versus luck or drafting off of others’ work–but has inconsistent statistical validity and reliability. The Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale (CIPS) was developed to address shortcomings of the HIPS, including factors such as feeling like a fake and being successful due to luck, but showed variability in scoring in different research applications. The Perceived Fraudulence Scale (PFS), overlapped with the CIPS, adding additional dimensions around fraudulence, self-criticism, management of social image, pressure to succeed, and related factors. The PFS measures two underlying factors–inauthenticity and self-deprecation–covering select aspects of imposter syndrome with some statistical limitations.
3. External attribution refers to reasons or explanations for success which lie outside oneself, leading to discounting of one's own value and contribution.
Freud, S. (1916) Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 14:309-333
Walker, D. L., & Saklofske, D. H. (2023). Development, Factor Structure, and Psychometric Validation of the Impostor Phenomenon Assessment: A Novel Assessment of Impostor Phenomenon. Assessment, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911221141870
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Brenner is the co-author of three books Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy, Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships, and the most recent sequel [Feb 2023], Making Your Crazy Work For You: From Trauma and Isolation to Self-Acceptance and Love (Central Recovery Press). In addition, he is the author of the popular Psychology Today blog, ExperiMentations: Reflections on the Human Condition, with nearly 12 million views to date.