Insights into the complexity of the impostor phenomenon among trainees and professionals in STEM and medicine
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Insights into the complexity of the impostor phenomenon among trainees and professionals in STEM and medicine HwaYoung Lee 1
&
Cheryl B. Anderson 1 & Melinda S. Yates 2 & Shine Chang 1 & Devasmita Chakraverty 3
Accepted: 23 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Although the imposter phenomenon (IP), characterized by fear of exposure as a fraud, is prevalent in higher education, studies disagree about its dimensionality, its relation to individual characteristics, and how IP relates to self-evaluation. Analyzing data from 959 graduate students and professionals in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and medicine, we examined the psychometric properties of the Clance IP scale and evaluated IP’s conceptual clarity in relation to demographics and self-evaluation. Factor analyses yielded three factors: Self-Doubt, Fear of Evaluation, and Luck. Older age groups, people currently not in-training, and men had lower sub-scale IP scores. We created four IP groups using factor scores and found that “Fear IP” (low self-doubt/high fear) and “High IP” (high self-doubt/high fear) groups reported less positive self-evaluations than “Self-Doubt” IP (high self-doubt/low fear) and “Low IP” (low self-doubt/low fear) groups. Findings suggest different types of IP that includes more strategic self-presentations of ability, and the defining feature of IP may be fear rather than self-doubt, with implications on training in higher education. Keywords Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale . Higher education . Impostor syndrome . Impostor phenomenon . Psychometric properties . Self-evaluation . STEM
The impostor phenomenon (IP) was first conceptualized in the late-seventies (Clance and Imes 1978), and research on IP has gained significant traction in the past decade, especially in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and medicine (LaDonna et al. 2018; Tao and Gloria 2019; Devasmita Chakraverty 2019). IP involves beliefs or selfperceptions centered around erroneous judgment about one’s competence, ability, and deservingness (Hawley 2019), also explained as “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness” * HwaYoung Lee [email protected] * Devasmita Chakraverty [email protected] 1
Division of Cancer Prevention & Population Sciences, Cancer Prevention Research Training Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1155 Pressler Street. CPB7.3559, Houston, TX 77030, USA
2
Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
3
Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation (RJMCEI), Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Wing 3-G, Old Campus, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380 015, India
(Clance and Imes 1978). It might be experienced when competent people do not view success as a result of their ability and fear that they are a fraud, fooling others into believing that they have high levels of ability (Harvey and Katz 1985, p.8). IP has b
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