To Be Deserving Or Not To Be Deserving: Impostor Syndrome

You’ve achieved the grade, claimed the accolade, secured the opportunity.

Yet, you still can’t help but feel like a fraud.

You’re at this institution for a reason! Your friends lovingly insist, left and right. You couldn’t be more deserving of this outcome! Your family chimes in, positively beaming ear to ear with pride over what you’ve just accomplished. You witness the very culmination of your phenomenal work ethic and herculean perseverance, all finally amount to this one tangible, pinch-me moment.

Yet, you still can’t help but find yourself attributing your success to everything but your undeniable wealth of efforts.

For this, you have impostor syndrome to thank — the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals deem their external markers of success as unwarranted, and thereby fear being revealed as an “impostor” (Hawley). First coined from clinical observations during therapeutic sessions with high-achieving women by Dr Pauline Clance, these women were found to have a pervasive psychological experience in which they believed they were intellectual “impostors”, albeit possessing objective evidence of success, and were consequently afraid of being recognised as such, leading to feelings of anxiety, a fear of failure and overall life dissatisfaction (Salkulku and Alexander). Since this initial study, the heightened prevalence of impostor syndrome has been discovered to extend to ethnic minority groups, although more recent research suggests that men and women alike across a range of age groups are just as susceptible to experiencing it (Bravata et al.)

These findings have, naturally, raised questions on the potential causes underpinning this unsettling psychological phenomenon. These include personality, specifically related to that of the personality traits examined by the Big Five personality test, including neuroticism. Bernard et al. for example, concluded that individuals who ranked higher on trait neuroticism were more prone to experiencing impostor syndrome. By the same token, Ross and Krukowski identified anxiety and self-consciousness as predictors of impostor syndrome, as well as a Schizotypal personality, which implies that mental health conditions such as Schizophrenia may be comorbid with psychological phenomena as practically universal as impostor syndrome. Socioeconomic factors, on the other hand, such as family environment also play a role; specifically, parental encouragement has emerged as a protective factor against impostor syndrome, whilst a modest positive correlation can be drawn between paternal expectations and impostor-related feelings, not to mention between financial disadvantage and impostor-related feelings (Nori and Vanttaja).

Only with this awareness of its sources, can we better understand the consequences of the syndrome. And indeed, this internal experience of intellectual phoniness has been found to correlate with poorer mental health, depression, anxiety, burnout, low self-esteem, and psychological distress, to name a few (Thomas and Bigatti).

Fortunately, impostor syndrome is commonly framed as a bothersome individual pathology that can be overcome through self-help strategies or therapy at most (Langford and Clance). Evidence-based coping strategies for it can therefore involve drawing on the help of another person or resource, such as education, support from colleagues, and mentorship, all of which have demonstrated promise in helping alleviate impostor syndrome (Barr-Walker et al.).

Works Cited

“Coping with Impostor Feelings: Evidence Based Recommendations from a Mixed Methods Study – Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.” Érudit, 2025, https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/eblip/2020-v15-n2-eblip06975/1088812ar/abstract/. Accessed 13 Aug. 2026.

Bernard, Naijean S., et al. “Applying the Big Five Personality Factors to the Impostor Phenomenon.” Journal of Personality Assessment, vol. 78, no. 2, Apr. 2002, pp. 321–33, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa7802_07.

Bravata, Dena M., et al. “Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: A Systematic Review.” Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 35, no. 4, Dec. 2020, pp. 1252–75, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1.

Hawley, Katherine. “What Is Impostor Syndrome?” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, vol. 93, no. 1, 2019, pp. 203–26, https://doi.org/10.1093/arisup/akz003.

Langford, J., & Clance, P. R. (1993). The imposter phenomenon: Recent research findings regarding dynamics, personality and family patterns and their implications for treatment. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 30(3), 495–501. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.30.3.495

Nori, Hanna, and Markku Vanttaja. “Does Family Matter? Exploring the Role of Family Background on Impostor Syndrome among Successful Finnish University Students.” Social Psychology of Education, vol. 29, no. 1, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Mar. 2026, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-026-10197-y.

Ross, S. R., and R. A. Krukowski. “The Imposter Phenomenon and Maladaptive Personality: Type and Trait Characteristics.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 34, no. 3, Pergamon, Mar. 2002, pp. 477–84, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00067-3. Accessed 13 Aug. 2026.

Sakulku, Jaruwan, and James Alexander. “The Impostor Phenomenon.” The Journal of Behavioral Science, vol. 6, no. 1, 2011, pp. 75–97, https://doi.org/10.14456/ijbs.2011.6. Accessed 13 Aug. 2026.

Thomas, Mary, and Silvia Bigatti. “Perfectionism, Impostor Phenomenon, and Mental Health in Medicine: A Literature Review.” International Journal of Medical Education, vol. 11, no. 1, Sept. 2020, pp. 201–13, https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.5f54.c8f8. Accessed 13 Aug. 2026.