What is impostor syndrome? Why capable people feel fake

Impostor syndrome, also spelled imposter syndrome, is the persistent feeling that you don't deserve your success and will one day be exposed as a fraud, even when the evidence says you are capable. People who have it credit their achievements to luck, timing or other people's mistakes. The psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes first described it in 1978 as the "impostor phenomenon". It is a common experience, not a mental illness or a medical diagnosis.

In short

• The core of impostor feelings is a gap between the evidence of competence and the person's belief in it: success is explained away, and fear of being "found out" persists.
• It is widespread among high achievers of every gender, and especially among people who are new, or in a minority, where they work or study.
• It isn't a diagnosis, and no treatment has been tested in trials, but naming it, comparing notes with others and, for persistent distress, talking with a professional are the usual starting points.

Where does the idea come from?

In the 1970s, Clance and Imes, psychologists at Georgia State University, worked with more than 150 highly successful women: students with top grades, women with PhDs, respected professionals and department heads. In their 1978 paper, The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women, they wrote that despite degrees, honors and praise, these women "do not experience an internal sense of success". Students believed they had been admitted by mistake. One professor said, "I'm not good enough to be on the faculty here. Some mistake was made in the selection process."

They called it a phenomenon, not a syndrome, because it described an experience, not a disorder. "Impostor syndrome" is the popular name that stuck. Both spellings, impostor and imposter, are correct; psychologists mostly use "impostor". In 1985 Clance published a 20-question self-rating test, the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, which remains the most used measure in research.

What does impostor syndrome feel like?

The defining pattern is that success doesn't count as evidence. A promotion proves only that the boss was fooled. Good grades mean the test was easy. Each new achievement raises the stakes, because there is now further to fall when the truth comes out. People describe it as a background hum of worry before new tasks, intense relief afterward, and no lasting confidence.

Clance described this as a cycle, and it helps to walk through one turn of it with a single task, such as a big presentation at work.

1. The task arrives. Worry and self-doubt start straight away: this will be the time they find out.
2. Two responses. Some people over-prepare, rehearsing for days far beyond what the task needs. Others procrastinate, then work in a panic at the last minute.
3. It goes well. The presentation succeeds, and colleagues say so.
4. The success is explained away. The over-preparer concludes it went well only because of all that extra work, so they must not be naturally able. The procrastinator concludes they got lucky.
5. Nothing is learned. Confidence doesn't grow, the praise is dismissed, and the next task brings the same fear. Each turn of the cycle seems to confirm the belief it should have disproved.

Who experiences it?

Far more people than Clance and Imes first thought. They believed it was mainly a women's experience, and suggested in a footnote that it was rarer and milder in men. Later research didn't bear that out. A 2020 systematic review led by Dena Bravata pooled 62 studies of 14,161 people. Of the 33 studies that compared men and women, 16 found women reported more impostor feelings and 17 found no difference. The authors concluded it affects both.

How common it is depends heavily on how it is measured. The studies in that review found rates anywhere from 9% to 82%, mostly because they used different questionnaires and different cutoffs. Rates were particularly high among ethnic minority groups, and it appears often among students, doctors, academics and people starting new roles. Impostor feelings frequently came alongside depression, anxiety and burnout, though the studies couldn't say which causes which.

How is it different from humility or real inexperience?

Impostor feelings are easy to confuse with other things. This comparison shows the differences.

	Impostor feelings	Real inexperience	Humility
What the evidence shows	You are doing well	You are still learning the basics	You are doing well
How you read that evidence	As luck or a mistake	Accurately	Accurately, without boasting
What feedback does	Bounces off	Helps you improve	Is accepted
How it feels	Anxious, fearful of exposure	Uncertain, but open	Calm

The opposite error is the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people with little skill overrate themselves. Impostor feelings run the other way, with skilled people underrating themselves. It also resembles cognitive dissonance: when success clashes with a settled belief of not being good enough, the person resolves the clash by discounting the success, not by changing the belief.

Is it a problem with the person, or with the place?

Still argued

Psychologists and writers disagree about where impostor feelings come from and so what should be done about them. The original view, from Clance and Imes, places the cause largely within the person, shaped by family messages and stereotypes, and points to individual change. Critics such as Ruchika Malhotra and Jodi-Ann Burey, writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2021, argue that labeling women and people of color as having "impostor syndrome" turns real bias and exclusion at work into a personal flaw, and that workplaces, not individuals, need fixing. Many researchers now see both at work: feeling like an outsider is more likely where people really are treated as outsiders.

What helps with impostor syndrome?

There is less evidence here than the many self-help articles suggest. The Bravata review found no published trial of any treatment for impostor feelings, so the following are common approaches, not tested cures. This note explains; it isn't medical or psychological advice.

Naming the pattern is often the first step, because people who feel like impostors usually believe they are alone, and learning that many respected colleagues feel the same can loosen its grip. Talking with peers and mentors helps for the same reason. Some people keep a written record of what they have done and what others said about it, to check the feeling against the facts. It can also help to separate feeling unready from being unready: doubt before a new task is normal and doesn't mean the doubt is right.

When the feelings are persistent, cause real distress, or come with signs of anxiety or depression, a psychologist or other licensed professional can help. Psychology offers well-studied therapies for those conditions, even though impostor feelings themselves have not been tested on their own. The deeper question of why people need to feel they have earned their place connects to the esteem level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and to how the brain weighs evidence against belief.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: why does success fail to cure impostor feelings, and what happens instead?
• What did the 2020 review find about men and women, and why do estimates of how common it is vary so much?
• How would you tell impostor feelings apart from simply being new at something?

Sources

• The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention — Clance and Imes, Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice, 1978
• Impostor Phenomenon — Pauline Rose Clance
• Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: a Systematic Review — Bravata et al., Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2020
• Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome — Malhotra and Burey, Harvard Business Review, 2021