Is Imposter Syndrome Real? The Surprising Upside of Feeling Like a Fraud at Work

There is a particular kind of anxiety that tends to arrive shortly after success.

You are promoted into a bigger role, invited into a more important meeting or asked to present your ideas to people whose opinions carry weight. From the outside, it looks like progress. Inside, however, a rather different calculation is taking place.

You know how much you do not know. You remember the mistakes that other people have forgotten. You can see the role that timing, support and good fortune played in your success. Meanwhile, everyone around you appears fluent, composed and suspiciously certain of themselves.

Then the thought arrives: sooner or later, somebody is going to realise.

We have come to call this imposter syndrome. The phrase has become so familiar that it is now used to explain almost any professional self-doubt, from nerves before a presentation to a persistent conviction that an entire career has been built on an administrative error.

But is imposter syndrome actually real?

The most accurate answer is yes, although probably not in the way the name suggests.

The experience is real. The distress can be real. The consequences can be serious. But “syndrome” is a misleading word for something that is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis, has no universally agreed diagnostic criteria and may be partly created by the environments in which people work.

More surprisingly, recent research suggests that some forms of imposter thinking may occasionally make people better at their jobs.

The question, therefore, is not simply whether imposter syndrome exists. It is whether we have confused a potentially useful form of self-questioning with a psychological defect that must always be eliminated.

It was never originally called a syndrome

The concept originated in 1978, when psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes published a paper based on their work with more than 150 high-achieving women.

These were not people with thin CVs or questionable credentials. They included university faculty members, medical students, lawyers, nurses and women with advanced degrees. Despite substantial evidence of their competence, many remained convinced that they had somehow fooled the people around them.

Clance and Imes called this the impostor phenomenon, describing an internal experience in which capable people struggled to accept evidence of their own ability. Success was attributed to luck, effort, charm, timing or the mistaken judgement of others. Failure, or even the possibility of failure, was treated as evidence of an underlying lack of intelligence.

The distinction between a phenomenon and a syndrome matters.

A syndrome implies a recognised collection of symptoms belonging to an identifiable medical or psychological condition. A phenomenon describes something people experience. Clance and Imes were documenting a pattern they had observed, not proposing a new psychiatric disorder.

Their original research was also far more limited than the enormous cultural life of the concept might suggest. Their sample consisted primarily of white, middle-class and upper-middle-class American women, some of whom were already receiving therapy. It was an important piece of clinical observation, but it was not a representative population study.

Over time, however, the impostor phenomenon became imposter syndrome. A description of an experience gradually began to sound like a diagnosis.

That change made the idea easier to popularise, but it may also have encouraged us to locate the entire problem inside the individual.

The experience is real. Measuring it is harder.

Since 1978, the impostor phenomenon has been studied across professions, countries, ages and demographic groups.

A major systematic review published in 2020 examined 62 studies involving 14,161 participants. It found evidence of impostor feelings among men and women, from adolescence through to senior professional life. The phenomenon appeared in fields including medicine, education, business and academia.

On the surface, that sounds conclusive. Look more closely, though, and the research reveals a problem.

Estimates of prevalence ranged from 9 per cent to 82 per cent.

That is an extraordinary range. If researchers cannot agree whether a phenomenon affects roughly one person in ten or more than eight people in ten, the figure tells us as much about the inconsistency of the measurement as it does about the prevalence of the experience.

Different studies have used different questionnaires, definitions, thresholds and populations. Some measure a relatively stable tendency to feel fraudulent. Others capture temporary thoughts triggered by a particular situation. Some combine fear of failure, perfectionism, difficulty accepting praise and doubts about competence into a single score.

The result is that “imposter syndrome” can refer to several related but distinct experiences.

This does not mean people are imagining it. It means the popular label is more precise than the underlying science currently allows.

Research is strongest when describing the experience itself: a person believes that others have overestimated their competence and fears being exposed. It becomes less certain when deciding where ordinary professional uncertainty ends and a distinct psychological phenomenon begins.

Success does not always correct the belief

The defining feature of impostorism is not simply a lack of confidence.

Most people experience nerves when attempting something difficult. There is nothing irrational about feeling uncertain when entering a new role, working with unfamiliar subject matter or operating beyond the limits of your previous experience.

Impostor thinking becomes more distinctive when evidence repeatedly fails to update the person’s view of themselves.

A promotion does not prove competence because the interview panel must have made a mistake. A successful presentation does not count because the audience was friendly. A major client win is credited to the product, the market or the rest of the team. Positive feedback is discounted, while criticism is accepted immediately.

Clance and Imes observed that repeated achievements were often insufficient to break this cycle. The person prepared obsessively, succeeded and then concluded that the preparation, rather than their ability, had rescued them. The success therefore reinforced the belief that they must work unsustainably hard to prevent their inadequacy from being discovered.

It is an ingenious psychological trap.

When things go badly, the person concludes they were never good enough. When things go well, they conclude they nearly got found out.

The belief becomes difficult to disprove because every possible outcome can be recruited to support it.

The costs can be substantial

It would be a mistake to romanticise this experience.

The 2020 systematic review found that impostor feelings were frequently associated with anxiety and depression, as well as lower job satisfaction, impaired professional performance and burnout. The researchers also noted that the available studies were highly varied and that rigorous evidence about effective treatments was strikingly limited.

Chronic impostorism can produce behaviours that are particularly destructive in professional environments.

Some people overprepare for every interaction, turning ordinary work into a continuous test of whether they deserve to be employed. Others procrastinate, providing themselves with an explanation should they fail. Some avoid opportunities that would make them more visible. Others become reluctant to speak, delegate, negotiate or apply for promotion.

Even success can become exhausting because it raises the perceived standard that must now be maintained.

The individual is not merely attempting to perform well. They are attempting to prevent an imagined investigation into whether they belong there at all.

That is not a sustainable source of motivation.

And yet it does not follow that every impostor thought is harmful.

Self-doubt can sometimes improve performance

For many years, research and popular commentary treated impostorism as uniformly negative. More recent work has begun to challenge that assumption.

Basima Tewfik of MIT introduced the idea of workplace impostor thoughts, defined more narrowly as the belief that other people at work may overestimate your competence.

This reframing is important because a thought is not an identity. Someone can experience an impostor thought in a particular meeting or assignment without possessing a permanent syndrome.

Across four studies involving 3,603 people, Tewfik found that employees who experienced workplace impostor thoughts were often rated by others as more interpersonally effective. They tended to become more attentive to the people around them, adopting a more other-focused orientation. They listened more carefully, asked more questions and appeared more sensitive to social cues.

Crucially, these interpersonal benefits did not appear to come at the expense of how competent they were judged to be.

This presents a rather different picture from the stereotypical insecure professional.

The person who quietly wonders whether they know enough may pay closer attention. They may be less likely to dominate a conversation, assume they have understood or dismiss another person’s perspective. Their uncertainty can create curiosity.

By contrast, someone entirely convinced of their own brilliance has little psychological reason to listen.

An even more recent study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2026, examined how workplace impostor thoughts affected employees facing role overload, the experience of having too much work and too little time.

Across a field study, a preregistered experiment and a preregistered survey, employees who experienced more frequent impostor thoughts responded to heavier demands by exerting more effort. They were more likely to interpret the workload as a challenge and an opportunity to demonstrate their capability. This additional effort subsequently benefited their job performance.

In those studies, the increased effort was not accompanied by higher subsequent stress or emotional exhaustion, although that finding should not be interpreted as proof that sustained overwork is harmless.

Together, these findings suggest that certain forms of professional doubt can perform a useful function.

They can make us prepare.

They can make us listen.

They can make us examine our assumptions.

They can encourage us to take a difficult assignment seriously rather than assuming that previous success guarantees future competence.

The useful element is not the belief that we are fraudulent. It is the recognition that competence is never complete.

The difference between useful doubt and destructive impostorism

The research does not show that imposter syndrome is secretly good for us.

It shows that the phenomenon is more complicated than the popular discussion allows.

Temporary impostor thoughts can sharpen attention and effort. Chronic impostorism can damage well-being and restrict careers. The difference lies partly in what the person does with the doubt.

Useful doubt produces an enquiry:

What do I need to learn, prepare or understand?

Destructive impostorism produces an identity judgement:

What is wrong with me, and when will everyone else notice?

The first thought remains connected to the task. The second becomes a verdict on the self.

A professional who recognises a gap in their knowledge can close it. A professional who believes they are fundamentally fraudulent can never gather enough knowledge to feel safe, because the real problem is no longer the work. It is their perceived right to be doing it.

Healthy self-questioning also changes when credible evidence arrives. It permits feedback, results and experience to update the person’s view of their ability.

Impostorism discounts the evidence. It requires every success to be explained away.

The aim, therefore, should not be perfect confidence. Perfect confidence is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable. The aim is accurate self-perception.

Sometimes the environment is the problem

The traditional language of imposter syndrome encourages organisations to view the issue as an individual confidence deficit.

The employee feels inadequate, so the employee must become more confident. They are offered coaching, mentoring, resilience training or another presentation about believing in themselves.

Those interventions may sometimes help, but they can also allow the organisation to avoid a more uncomfortable question:

What is happening here that makes capable people repeatedly question whether they belong?

Researchers have argued that impostor feelings can develop “from the outside in”. Poor representation, discrimination, ambiguous expectations, a lack of useful feedback and narrow stereotypes of what leadership or expertise should look like can all influence whether people interpret themselves as legitimate members of a group.

A 2024 meta-analysis found that women reported higher impostor phenomenon scores than men on average, although the phenomenon was clearly not exclusive to women. Research involving racially and ethnically minoritised groups has also highlighted the danger of treating all self-doubt as an irrational personal belief without examining experiences of exclusion, stereotyping and discrimination.

In other words, someone may question whether they fit the image of a successful leader because the image has historically excluded people like them.

Telling that person to work on their confidence is not necessarily wrong. It is simply incomplete.

Recent experimental and survey evidence has strengthened the case for examining the workplace itself. Across six studies involving 1,288 participants, researchers found that highly competitive work climates increased employee impostorism. These environments encouraged people to compare themselves with higher-performing colleagues, which in turn intensified fears that others had overestimated them.

This helps explain why imposter syndrome appears so common in elite professions.

The more accomplished the environment, the more extraordinary the comparison group becomes. A capable person stops comparing themselves with the wider population and begins comparing themselves exclusively with the most impressive people they encounter.

Modern work adds another distortion. We experience our own career from the inside, complete with uncertainty, discarded ideas, mistakes and last-minute improvisation. We experience other people’s careers largely from the outside, through polished presentations, confident opinions, promotions and selectively shared successes.

It is hardly surprising that the comparison sometimes feels unfavourable.

Professionals do not need to eliminate every impostor thought

The self-help industry has often framed imposter syndrome as an enemy to be defeated. The research suggests a more measured objective.

Do not eliminate the doubt. Improve the way you interpret it.

When an impostor thought appears, it is worth separating three different possibilities.

The first is that you genuinely have a capability gap. You may be new to the role, underprepared or working beyond your current expertise. In that case, the thought contains useful information. The appropriate response is learning, support or preparation.

The second is that your competence is broadly established, but your internal view has not caught up with the evidence. In that case, the work is to stop moving the standard every time you meet it.

The third is that the environment is continually sending signals that you do not belong. Expectations may be opaque. Feedback may be scarce. Recognition may be distributed unevenly. The culture may reward self-promotion while disguising it as competence.

That cannot be solved entirely through positive thinking.

Because rigorous treatment research remains limited, professionals should be wary of anyone claiming to possess a scientifically proven five-step cure. What can be done is to build a more reliable system for evaluating competence.

Look for specific evidence rather than relying exclusively on how confident you feel. Examine the quality of your decisions, the consistency of your results, the feedback of credible people and your ability to learn from mistakes. Distinguish between needing help and being incapable.

Most importantly, avoid using anxiety as your only source of ambition.

Fear can produce preparation, but it is an expensive fuel. It may help you through an important presentation or demanding period, but a career cannot be spent permanently attempting to prove that your appointment was not a clerical error.

The goal is calibration, not confidence

Imposter syndrome is real in the sense that millions of capable people recognise the experience it describes and research has repeatedly documented its relationship with distress, burnout and professional behaviour.

But it is not a neat medical condition with an agreed diagnosis, a single cause or a universally effective treatment.

Nor is it always evidence that something has gone psychologically wrong.

In moderation, the thought that we may not know enough can encourage preparation, humility and attention to other people. It can remind us that experience is not omniscience and that previous success does not remove the obligation to keep learning.

The danger begins when doubt stops being information and becomes identity.

The healthiest professionals are not those who never question their competence. They are those who can question it accurately. They can recognise a genuine weakness without converting it into a verdict on their worth. They can accept praise without treating it as evidence that the person offering it has poor judgement. They can enter difficult situations knowing that uncertainty is not proof of fraudulence.

Perhaps the opposite of imposter syndrome is not confidence.

Perhaps it is the ability to see ourselves clearly.

Aaron Evans

5 August 2026

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