1. The Psychology of Imposter Syndrome - why do you feel like such a fraud??
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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the very unprofessional podcast whereby I, Gemma, your unqualified guide, talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Well, welcome to our first official episode and I thought what better way to get started than by talking about imposter syndrome.

I thought this would be a really appropriate first episode as I begin this new thing, this new podcast, just because there are heaps of unknowns and it was a real struggle to get started because I was so nervous about seeming like an imposter, not being good enough, not knowing enough or not having worthwhile stuff to say. But fuck it, I did it. And as an ode to those self-doubts, why not make an episode about them to begin? So let's get into it.

I'm sure we've all been scrolling LinkedIn at some point, like the good career focused 20 something year olds we are and bam, that awful feeling, the feeling of just being utterly incompetent in the things we do, our careers, our social circles, and especially in regards to our goals.

imposter syndrome it's basically this sense that we're a phony compared to all these other super impressive people with their lives entirely in order and they definitely deserve this their success because you know they're worthwhile and they're very impressive but somehow we've ended up where we are just by our sheer ability to fake it never mind any of our skills or worth ethic or abilities and

So you do feel like a bit of a fraud and I thought this would be something that we should discuss and investigate because this is a huge thing in our 20s, especially in our professional lives. We can feel incredibly insecure and underqualified for the jobs we have or the jobs we want and when we do reach positions where we've been striving for, we've been striving for them or we do have some level of expertise and experience to contribute to a situation, it's very easy to feel like you don't deserve the opportunities you have.

especially when you may be the youngest person in the room or see other people who you believe are more deserving. And what ensues can include a pretty savage pattern of self-sabotage and often attributing your success to external factors. So on this episode, we're going to talk about the origins of imposter syndrome and the psychology of imposter syndrome in our 20s.

There are an abundance of links to social anxiety and perfectionism that we'll get into, but we're also going to discuss the purpose of imposter syndrome from an evolutionary perspective. I think a real perspective I have about many psychological concepts or psychological phenomenon is if it survived, it must have a purpose in nature.

But what might that be from a psychological perspective and how is imposter syndrome perhaps being exacerbated by the modern day labor, cultural and social context?

I think especially in this kind of information saturated and very socially dominated modern day, it's so much easier to compare yourself to others and judge your own competencies. This is particularly brutal for our minds and our psychology and has created this almost pandemic of imposter syndrome and self-doubt amongst I'm sure many of you as well. And the final thing I really want to talk about is that this is particularly the case for women.

And all these theories emerging from social psychology really demonstrate that there are these stark differences between genders on the prevalence of imposter syndrome, particularly directed towards our professional careers. So let's get to discussing this. So let's begin by getting some of the broad contextual knowledge out of the way, mainly just what is imposter syndrome.

One of the best definitions of imposter syndrome that I came across when researching this episode was from this author and artist. His name is Austin Kleon. He's done a lot of work on imposter syndrome, particularly in the art world. And the way he put it was pretty spot on. Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomena in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. That pretty much sums it up.

So the term it was first used by these two psychologists, Susan Ims and Pauline Rose Clance in the 1970s. And we'll go on to reference Clance quite a bit. She was quite a pioneer around this concept and she kept, it was kind of her niche and she continued to do a lot of work on it into the 80s and the 90s and really kind of popularised the term.

So it was first used to describe this form of self-doubt that was primarily affecting successful women, which we'll discuss a little bit more later on. But now it's kind of evolved from its initial applications to describe these feelings of self-doubt, fear of success, fear of failure and self-sabotage. It's become more of a popular term, so I'm sure you've seen it referenced

across pop culture, the internet. I saw memes about it on Instagram the other day. So it has started being applied to just more self-doubt in general rather than the specific feelings of fears of success and failure and of being a fraud. So although it's not an official diagnosis listed in the DSM-5, which is this big manual of all mental disorders and psychological disturbances,

I think at this time psychologists and others and even psychiatrists they've really come to acknowledge it as a very real and very specific form of intellectual self-doubt.

And these imposter feelings are generally accompanied by anxiety and often depression. So it's not just another symptom of low confidence or excessive humility. But that's also the reason why they don't list it as a psychological disorder, because many of the symptoms are actually those of other disorders. So sometimes they do just see it as perhaps almost a new manifestation of a disorder someone might already have.

I actually think that it should be listed as its own disorder or perhaps as a specifier.

Just because it is pretty serious. So people experiencing imposter syndrome, they may firstly have a lot of functional difficulties, so they might underestimate their abilities, really struggle to believe in themselves, feel like they don't deserve their successes and opportunities. It's also accompanied by this deep sense that they're a fraud. And there have been some studies that have kind of suggested that it has almost a delusional basis,

whereby people who have imposter feelings, they're almost a little bit delusional. They can't really confirm the reality of their success and they can end up suffering a pretty great deal of anxiety in their professional lives. So Forbes magazine, I'm sure we've all heard of them, they've labeled it the domain of the high achiever. Just because it's more likely to be experienced by those who have those sense of achievements or those successes that they do actually have the capacity to doubt,

I kind of disagree with this. I think it's a lot more universal than we imagine, especially amongst women and people of colour. And some studies have even concluded that up to 70% of people will experience an instance of imposter syndrome in their lives. Obviously, that is, you know, I'm sure only a couple of studies have found such a significant number, but it shows that it's not exactly rare.

And the huge problem with imposter syndrome is that the experience of doing well at something does nothing to change your belief that you don't belong or don't deserve to be there. Just because of how insidious this thought pattern is. So every time you get more success, it almost just reaffirms your ideas of being a fraud in the first place. And it makes you feel almost slightly more uncomfortable, right?

And I came across like a bunch of interviews when I was researching this episode. Interviews with people like Serena Williams, Natalie Portman and Sheryl Sandberg. So arguably women at the very highest points in their fields and industries. And they've all admitted to this crippling imposterism. So it's almost this cognitive compulsion that even if you have every indication of legitimate success, you still have these reasons to doubt that.

I don't know, this is kind of more anecdotal, but I don't really know anyone who doesn't at times feel this way, especially in an age where we can constantly compare ourselves with others we deem more worthy or more competent. I'm sure we've all felt that feeling before. But I think this is the thing I was discussing with my friends the other day.

for someone else you are the comparison it's like this kind of horrendous cycle you know you feel really in comparison to someone else who has their own person whom they compare themselves to and i'm sure there's someone out there who's looking at you thinking you're really impressive and you know yeah you're worthy of your success but they aren't so even though we are able to rationalize imposter syndrome and recognize our strengths

And this almost universal nature of self-doubt, we really still can't escape it and it can really hold us back, especially in our 20s when we're really trying to find our place in our chosen fields and our lives in general. So let's now talk about where this feeling comes from. What are the general origins of imposter syndrome?

So as this term has become more ubiquitous, so is the interest in this concept. So in particular, researchers have often really questioned its existence. As with most new concepts, there's that preliminary questioning of is this syndrome, is imposter syndrome real? And the short answer is yes, it is. It definitely is. So I read this study and this kind of summary of all these studies and across 62 studies,

There were 20,000 participants and 14,161 of them met the inclusion criteria for imposter syndrome. Just anecdotally, I felt it, I'm sure you have as well. It does definitely seem to be these feelings that are very real and very, very impactful in our lives.

So some pretty prominent theories kind of circulate the origins of imposter syndrome. My favorite is by Pauline Clance. So Clance was the woman who we talked about before, who kind of discovered this kind of experience amongst high achieving women. And she proposes this cycle of behaviors and reactions that lead to imposter syndrome. And crucially, if you can kind of break the chain within this cycle, perhaps avoid the

progressing along these different stages she suggests that you can actually kind of almost cure your imposter syndrome or it's kind of like a gateway into integrative self-confidence so this first stage is when the imposter cycle kind of begins it's when a person feels these initial feelings of anxiety when they're assigned a task so this is kind of like a trigger so you know this stimulus this task that they've been asked to do or something that they need to complete

So the second stage is the need to be special or the need to be the very best. And this is really linked to perfectionism, which we'll talk about a little bit more later on. So this need to be the very best is obviously pretty anxiety inducing. And this anxiety, it leads to extreme overpreparation. And many imposters or people who suffer from imposter syndrome, they often secretly harbor the need to be, you know, deemed as the most competent compared to their peers.

And like I kind of mentioned, this does create a lot of initial feelings of fear in approaching the task because your expectations are so high. The next stage is Superman or Superwoman aspects.

So now that this person has committed to the idea they're going to be the very best, they'll often overwork and overwork themselves and believe that they have some sort of superhuman ability or need to adopt some superhuman ability in order to really propel themselves and do their very best at this. This is often met with stage four, which is a fear of failure.

So they're kind of overworking themselves. They have these really just unrealistic expectations. And imposter anxiety is often exacerbated when you're exposed to an achievement related task because that fear of failure is such a possibility. So it really kind of makes it very real for them in the realm of which they're feeling insecurity.

Once the task is finished or they're near the end, there's this denial of competence and discounting praise. So this is stage five.

there's a real difficulty internalizing their successes and accepting praise as valid. And crucially, this is not just a display of false modesty. Because they've set their expectations so high and they've almost convinced themselves that they need to have these superhuman abilities to achieve the goal they've set out for, it's really hard to then take credit for it at the end because they often have this sense that, oh, this was something outside of me that allowed me to do this.

And then finally there's stage six. So this is fear and guilt about success. For example, if success is unusual amongst their family or their peers, imposters often feel less connected and more distant. And then they are kind of overwhelmed by this guilt about being different and worrying about being rejected by others, which is often why we sometimes see it amongst high achievers who perhaps came from less privileged backgrounds.

So there is this huge link and I've kind of mentioned it before but one of the most prominent links and theories around imposter syndrome is this relationship between perfectionism and imposter anxiety. So if you're a self-described perfectionist you're more likely to kind of view yourself as an imposter and research has shown they often go hand in hand so

people who have imposterism or imposter syndrome will often report feelings of needing to be perfect. So much like impostors perfect, much like impostors in that, in Clance's kind of six stage model, perfectionists will often set these excessively high, unrealistic goals and then experience a lot of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors when they can't reach those goals because they're so beyond their limits.

So within the clinical literature on imposter phenomena and imposter syndrome, perfectionism, it's repeatedly discussed as a dominant theme. Almost every paper you read will at least briefly mention perfectionism. So the need to be the best, the need to be able to do everything flawlessly and their tendency to overwork are the characteristics of imposters. And that's also consistent with the pursuit of perfectionism.

And the other thing that's really interesting is impostors' tendency to discount positive feedback and maintain high standards for self-evaluation. But they're also very critical of their inability to realise these standards, which could also be considered consistent with perfectionism.

because perfectionists do really tend to feel self-conscious about everything they do. So this does lead to a lot of self-reflection and for some to feelings like they are an imposter, that they're not as good as others because they've really kind of put the microscope on themselves. And even if an individual is competent, smart and highly accomplished,

Having maladaptive perfectionist tendencies can contribute to this feeling, which is why it is such a dominant theme in the literature around imposter syndrome. The next kind of, I would say, theory, but it's more like a broad-based approach.

kind of idea that gets applied to a lot of different areas in psychology. It's that imposter syndrome is a result of your personality. It's a result of your disposition. So personality traits associated with neuroticism, they're more likely to predict imposter syndrome in research that has been done in recent years.

Researchers examined the relationship between imposter fears and the big five personality traits, which we'll definitely discuss in a later episode. They particularly wanted to look at medical students. They had this sample in Sweden and they found that neuroticism was a significant predictor of imposter fears. Neuroticism

is a trait that often predicts anxiety, so hence the relationship here. It often predicts self-consciousness, irritability and emotional stability, which is good.

So neuroticism may be a strong pre-existing trait in impostors because it refers to this predisposed trait for negative affect and for low self-esteem. So imposter feelings comprise of prominent negative effect states such as self-doubt. And so it kind of makes sense that these go hand in hand. And there was another study published.

I think it was run on Harvard students, around 200 Harvard students. And it also confirmed that self-identified imposters are higher in neuroticism, showing and kind of reaffirming this really significant link.

Like I said, I'm sure we'll talk about the big five personality traits in a later episode, but many psychologists and researchers in personality psychology in particular, they do really believe that a trait like neuroticism is permanent and lifelong. It's a part of our disposition. So it can be hard to alter these pre-existing personality features, meaning many people who do feel like imposters are

they might firstly not have themselves to blame, but secondly, it's a very difficult thing to change, which is a pretty bleak conclusion for those of you out there who might have these feelings. But that's just a theory. That's just one of many. And let's consider something else that some would say we can change, but we can at least interact with, whereas our personality or our disposition seems pretty permanent. So let's talk about family and cultural context. It's not

a psychological concept or a podcast on psychology if the nature and nurture debate isn't mentioned at least once. So here it is for this episode. So far, many of the explanations that we've been discussing about the origins of imposter syndrome, they're from the nature side. So ideas of personality, ideas of

neuroticism and perfectionism they're all things that a lot of psychologists often assume are innate and have been with us since birth they're very difficult to change however there is this component of imposter syndrome that is related to nurture particularly our family environment and the manner in which we are raised and a lot of researchers have found that this has a stronger correlation with feelings of imposterism than some of those personality or disposition features

So family environment, family dynamics, parental rearing styles, they can really affect the achievement values and achievement behavior of a child and influence how a child learns to deal with success and failure. Many young adults who do feel like imposters, they grow up in families that place a big emphasis on achievement. In particular, this one study was really discussing the

Kids who have imposter syndrome, often their parents will send out very mixed messages about success. So alternating between overpraise of their kids, oh, you're amazing, you're so smart, you're so intelligent, and then criticism.

And this can really increase the risk of future fraudulent feelings because you don't really have a stable basis to judge your own intelligence and competence. If you've got a parent or a teaching figure who's constantly kind of hyping you up and then also tearing you down. So of course you're going to feel like a fraud because you don't feel like your personality or your sense of accomplishment is consistent.

The other thing is family messages about the importance of being naturally intelligent. And I found this really, really interesting. So family, this kind of broad based family philosophy that many have about, you know, whether natural intelligence is real can really influence the ambitions and expectations of so-called imposters from a pretty early age.

Impostors they do have this need and very strong need to please which may cause children to alter their behaviour just in order to prevent the loss of affection from their parents and this kind of also comes into attachment style. Impostors they do tend to conform to the standards of the family in order to gain positive feedback and verify their sense of self-worth.

And these modified behaviours may in turn conflict with their needs and their capabilities as a child because they're kind of pursuing this more dominant need to feel like they're loved. And it can create problems within our ability to internalise our success as we become more independent, become young adults and, yeah, just active members of society.

And also, if your family has emphasized natural rather than developed intelligence, it becomes a lot easier to apply that logic to your successes. Because intelligence, if it's not something you've earned and it's a reason for your success, then your success is not something that you've earned.

So that's those feelings of being a fraud, feeling like you don't deserve your success. That can really come from this almost childhood philosophy that your parents may have had. And the other thing is societal pressures. And they can really add to this problem as well. So in our society, there's this huge pressure to achieve. I'm sure we've all felt it. And there can be a lot of confusion between approval and

and love and worthiness. So self-worth can become contingent on achieving rather than just unconditional. But it's really interesting to kind of think about where this fits in terms of an evolutionary perspective because a big belief, and I've said this before, I have in terms of our psychology and different mental phenomena is that if it survived, it must have a function if it's still here.

But I don't really see how that does relate to imposter syndrome because surely a feature of our minds that makes us feel incompetent or insecure in comparison to people we see as competition is a pretty poor adaptive feature. You know, imagine you come across this new tribe or new group of people.

and within your first encounter you're left feeling you know these crippling sense of self-doubt you sabotage your own abilities you fear you won't you live up to your expectations I don't think it would be a very helpful asset I don't really know why it would survive either because it could probably end up you know minimizing your chances of survival if you doubt your ability to perform which hence influences your ability and

So surely I think we would be more genetically predisposed or evolutionary predisposed to excessive confidence instead. But then we also have, you know, species filled with narcissists, which is in itself seen as a disorder. So imposter syndrome is not a disorder, but narcissism definitely is. So there seems to be some adaptive benefit to humility and perhaps a tiny bit of self-doubt, but also adaptive benefit to confidence as well.

But it's just a real wonder why it's manifested in such a deeply seated way in the minds of so many 20-year-olds at the moment. You know, it's very interesting to think self-doubt doesn't really seem to have a function in terms of helping us survive. Then how come it's become just so prevalent and widely spread? Let's talk about LinkedIn or social media kind of more generally, which really was the inspiration for this episode, right?

I think the sharing of huge amounts of personal information online has made it a lot easier to compare ourselves to others. So social media, including professional platforms, LinkedIn is probably the primary one, but also Facebook and Instagram can really act as a trigger for imposter syndrome because it gives us this benchmark to compare and judge ourselves against. And it implicitly may result in a judgment of whether or not you deserve to be where you are.

For example, someone who's in a similar position that you are now may have done two paid internships and worked for a top firm before getting their current job, whereas you've just come straight out of uni. So this does create a direct point of comparison for you to create a false idea that you've only gotten where you are, not because you deserve it, but because of luck or some other factor.

These platforms also provide an opportunity to view people more successful than you or doing things you aspire towards but haven't had much success in yet.

Which is kind of no wonder imposter syndrome has become so prevalent with the introduction of these platforms because we can instantly judge ourselves against others at any point, any time, any situation. You know, when you're in your bed on a Saturday night and you probably don't need to be looking at these things that are going to make you feel bad. But this self-doubt that comes from this new normal can be fairly insidious and I've definitely felt it. I know heaps of you have as well.

So I've kind of been teasing it for a while, but we're going to talk about the interaction between women and imposter syndrome. So far, I think we've covered that imposter syndrome can be experienced by anyone, and particularly when you're in your younger years, in your 20s. But I think this term or phrase, it's more often applied to women, right?

And that's a huge issue I have with the term and something I've really tried to emphasize that this is not a female issue. It's universal. But many aspects of our patriarchal society have led women to experience self-doubt in their professional lives a lot more, which is what many people see as a criteria for imposter syndrome. It's also really important to

to recognize that many of the environments women enter can make it hard not to feel like we are less deserving, less respected, and therefore perhaps a little bit less worthy as well. And this is especially the case in professional workplaces, which history can kind of explain in many ways. There was an excellent article written about this recently in the Harvard Business Review, definitely a worthwhile read if you want to do some more homework on this topic.

It's called Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. So Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. And it is a very insightful read. And yes, those two psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Ims, they did first study imposter syndrome in women. But let's kind of ask ourselves why it was that these women with outstanding academic and professional successes, these high performing women, why was it them that

that believed they were intellectual frauds or imposters and not their male counterparts. Because when this initial study was first run, there was sample from both genders.

And as the authors of this article that I just mentioned explain, we do often falsely equate confidence, most often the type demonstrated by white male leaders with competence and leadership. So employees who can't or perhaps won't conform to these male biased social styles are told that they have imposter syndrome because they're not willing to be treated

these excessively and aggressively confident people in the workplace and they're kind of made to feel bad about that and that then leads to this sense of self-doubt that they maybe don't really deserve to be there.

And I think also it's important to realise up until about 80 years ago, professional environments were pretty hostile to the idea of including women in a high up or in an advanced way. Some would argue that in some industries this is still the case. I'm sure we can all think of a few examples.

Therefore, if you're a woman entering an environment where you automatically feel as if you don't belong, it's understandable that you begin to doubt your own worthiness. And the impact as well of systematic racism, classism, xenophobia and other biases, they were kind of categorically absent when the concept of imposter syndrome was developed. So it wasn't really mentioned. It was kind of around second wave feminism.

They really just focused on women. And yes, they did include some women of colour, but it wasn't really like they were looking to identify in broader kind of groups of people. So many of the groups that were excluded from the study enlarged, so namely women of colour and people of various income levels and different professional backgrounds included

Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome really does put blame on individuals without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of color and white women. So imposter syndrome directs our view towards fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work and doesn't always account for the fact that no wonder women feel like shit. No wonder we get accused of imposter syndrome more.

No wonder that's even more prevalent amongst other minority groups because of the historical basis in which we've been made to feel accepted in different environments.

So it kind of brings this back to this discussion of whether imposter syndrome exists, which is where we kind of started. Or is it just a cultural construct used to, you know, shame people who are victims of their personality and upbringing or historical trauma of exclusion from certain environments? And I think regardless of your perspective, what is obvious is that these feelings of being a fraud are pretty universal.

And if you have experienced this type of self-doubt before, you're definitely not alone. And isn't that kind of a nice feeling? I always think that's a nice feeling, not being alone in something. And if there's another thing this episode has taught us, it's, I guess, to stop going on LinkedIn to compare ourselves. I don't know. Maybe this has just turned into an episode where I hate on LinkedIn. But you got where you are for a reason and you do deserve every opportunity that comes your way. Imposter syndrome...

It's not your fault. Like, it's definitely been kind of ingrained in us. It all comes from our families or our disposition or our personality. So you can definitely kind of skirt some of the blame on that one.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this first structured episode. Next week, we're going to be discussing breakups. So yes, the big one. We've all been there. I've been there recently, so I feel like we do have heaps to discuss and hopefully bring in some useful psychological theories to explain why breakups just fucking suck as much as they do. And thanks again for listening. If you've made it this far...

This is a work in progress and I am new to this and I'm sure I'll improve every episode. But thanks for your support thus far. And if you do have any feedback, you can DM me on Instagram, 20spsychologypodcast. And we'll talk next week. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I hope you guys have a great weekend and enjoy all the things this next week has to bring.

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