Few feelings in one’s professional life can top the elation of landing a coveted job or promotion: the excitement of new responsibilities, greater prestige, and (hopefully) more money. But that elation often quickly has to compete for emotional bandwidth with a specific flavor of workplace anxiety known as “imposter syndrome.” Many people have probably heard the term but may be unsure about what it really means and if they might be experiencing it themselves.
Origins of the Term
Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes coined the term “imposter phenomenon” in their article, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” published in Psychotherapy Theory, Research, and Practice Volume 15, #3, Fall 1978. As the title suggests, the term was originally applied by Clance and Imes to women specifically.
“Women who experience the impostor phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact, they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise,” Clance and Imes write. Some cited examples include:
- Students admitted to graduate school feel there was some sort of mistake that allowed them to pull the wool over the eyes of the admissions committee.
- Women graduate students believe their high exam scores are more likely related to error or luck, rather than to their own capabilities.
- Women in professional settings have a tendency to believe that others think more highly of them than is warranted–at least when compared with their own self-beliefs.
One way to look at imposter syndrome is as a disparity between the objective requirements of a position and the subjective self-evaluation of the holder of that position.
Imposter Phenomenon: Driven by the ‘Gap’
In the graduate student example, scores received on an examination should theoretically be extremely objective. Everyone is given the same test, and there are objective criteria for evaluating performance. Such examinations may even be graded without knowing the identity of the student. Despite the objective results of the examination, a test-taker’s self-perception may be that she is not intelligent enough to have done well.
When the objective results contradict that self-assessment, this gap is what we think of as imposter phenomenon or syndrome.
Broader Application
While Clance and Imes focused their research on high-achieving women, today the term imposter syndrome is applied broadly to all genders. Furthermore, imposter syndrome doesn’t necessarily need to apply to “high-achieving” individuals. Anyone can feel like a fraud despite being perfectly competent at his or her work. Imposter syndrome may be more common among high-achievers, however, simply because they are in objectively challenging fields or jobs.
For instance, a manager overseeing 1,000 employees is probably more likely to experience imposter syndrome than one overseeing a single employee, simply because the former job is objectively more challenging than the latter. Greater challenges mean much more space to grow between the objective challenges of the job and the subjective self-evaluation of the employee’s abilities.
Imposter syndrome can be a truly tragic psychological condition, depending on its severity. Doubting one’s worthiness for a well-deserved position saps the pride and elation out of such achievements and leads to significant stress and anxiety. Understanding the condition exists is a first step in addressing it.