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You have been hired as a consultant/adviser to address the issues related to education, covered this week. Please take 1/3 of your post to summarize the major social problems presented and why these are occurring (psychologically speaking). Then, for the other 2/3 of your post, please suggest ways that these issues can be addressed, as informed by psychology/psychological findings. Don't just move article by article and give a summary. You are being asked to read all of the materials and synthesize them into a "brief" - a short summary of the issues - for those that hired you. Additionally, for your suggestions/recommendations, please don't simply summarize the ideas others have given in your readings; come up with your own ideas as informed by what you've read. Make sure to support your ideas with evidence - why are you making these suggestions? What are they based on? Which findings suggest these ideas could help? Please use all of the resources for this week in your post and
use in-text citations
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Finally, at the end of your post, in a separate sentence (titled - "Remaining Question"), please post a question that you had, based on what you'd read. You should think of this as a discussion question you are proposing (not just a question about something in an article).
PSYCHOTHERAPY: THEORY, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE VOLUME 15, # 3 , FALL, 1978 THE IMPOSTOR PHENOMENON IN HIGH ACHIEVING WOMEN: DYNAMICS AND THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION PAULINE ROSE CLANCE SUZANNE AMENT IMES Georgia Slate University University Plaza Atlanta, Georgia 3 ABSTRACT: The term impostor phenomenon is used to designate an internal experience of intellectual phoniness which appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high achieving women. Certain early family dynamics and later introjection of societal sex-role stereotyping appear to contribute significantly to the development of the impostor phenomenon. Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the impostor phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise. Numerous achievements, which one might expect to provide ample objective evidence of superior intellectual functioning, do not appear to affect the impostor belief. Four factors which contribute to the mainte- nance of impostor feelings over time are explored. Therapeutic approaches found to be effective in helping women change the impostor self-concept are described. In the past five years we have worked in individual psychotherapy, theme-centered in- teractional groups, and college classes with over 150 highly successful women — women who have earned Ph.D.'s in various specialties, who are respected professionals in their fields, or who are students recognized for their academic excellence. However, despite their earned degrees, scholastic honors, high achievement on standardized tests, praise and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities, these women do not ex- perience an internal sense of success. They consider themselves to be "impostors." Women who experience the impostor phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact, they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks other- wise. For example, students often fantasize that they were mistakenly admitted to graduate school because of an error by the admissions committee. Numerous women graduate stu- dents state that their high examination scores are due to luck, to misgrading, or to the faulty judgment of professors. Women professionals in our sample feel overevaluated by colleagues and administrators. One woman professor said, "I'm not good enough to be on the faculty here. Some mistake was made in the selection pro- cess." Another, the chairperson of her depart- ment, said, "Obviously I'm in this position because my abilities have been overestimated." Another woman with two master's degrees, a Ph.D., and numerous publications to her credit considered herself unqualified to teach remedial college classes in her field. In other words, these women find innumerable means of negat- ing any external evidence that contradicts their belief that they are, in reality, unintelligent.1 Self-declared impostors fear that eventually some significant person will discover that they are indeed intellectual impostors. One woman stated, "I was convinced that I would be discovered as a phony when I took my com- prehensive doctoral examination. I thought the final test had come. In one way, I was some- 1 The question has been raised as to whether or not men experience this phenomenon. In our clinical experience, we have found that the phenomenon occurs with much less frequency in men and that when it does occur, it is with much less intensity. We have received mixed opinions from male colleagues with whom we have consulted. The attribu- tion research findings, summarized later, imply that the impostor phenomenon would be found less frequently in men than in women. We have noticed the phenomenon in men who appear to be more in touch with their "feminine" qualities. This clinical observation needs to be researched. 241 242 P. R. CLANCE & S. A. IMES what relieved at this prospect because the pre- tense would finally be over. I was shocked when my chairman told me that my answers were excellent and that my paper was one of the best he had seen in his entire career." Women who exhibit the impostor phenome- non do not fall into any one diagnostic category. The clinical symptoms most frequently reported are generalized anxiety, lack of self-confidence, depression, and frustration related to inability to meet self-imposed standards of achievement. Included in our sample have been 95 under- graduate women and 10 Ph.D. faculty women at a small academically acclaimed private mid- western co-educational college; 15 under- graduates, 20 graduate students, and 10 faculty members at a large southern urban university; six medical students from northern and southern universities; and 22 professional women in such fields as law, anthropology, nursing, counsel- ing, religious education, social work, occupa- tional therapy, and teaching. They were primar- ily white middle- to upper-class women be- tween the ages of 20 and 45. Approximately one-third were therapy clients with specific pre- senting problems (other than the impostor prob- lem); the other two-thirds were in growth- oriented interaction groups or classes taught by the authors. While our focus has been on understanding the more personal, experiential effects of the impostor feelings, we find confirmation of our observations in the experimental findings of attribution theorists, who in recent years have begun to study differential attribution of success by men and women. In her review of the research on sex differences in the attribution process, Deaux (1976) points to considerable evidence that women consistently have lower expectancies than men of their ability to per- form successfully on a wide variety of tasks. The findings of the research cited by Deaux are consistent with the following principles: 1) An unexpected performance outcome will be at- tributed to a temporary cause. 2) An expected performance outcome will be attributed to a stable cause. In line with their lower expectan- cies, women tend to attribute their successes to temporary causes, such as luck or effort, in contrast to men who are much more likely to attribute their successes to the internal, stable factor of ability. Conversely, women tend to explain failure with lack of ability, whereas men more often attribute failure to luck or task difficulty. Given the lower expectancies women have for their own (and other women's) per- formances, they have apparently internalized into a self-stereotype the societal sex-role stereotype that they are not considered compe- tent (see Broverman, et al., 1972; Rosenkrantz, et al., 1968). Since success for women is contraindicated by societal expectations and their own internalized self-evaluations, it is not surprising that women in our sample need to find explanations for their accomplishments other than their own intelligence—such as fool- ing other people. Thus, unlike men, who tend to own success as attributable to a quality inherent in them- selves, women are more likely either to project the cause of success outward to an external cause (luck) or to a temporary internal quality (effort) that they do not equate with inherent ability. Deaux suggests that "If . . . an unex- pected event is attributed to some temporary factor, then future expectancies may remain unchanged, producing a self-perpetuating cy- cle." She further proposes, however, that re- peated success experiences over a period of time should begin to change one's expectancies. We have been amazed at the self-perpetuating nature of the impostor phenomenon — with the pervasiveness and longevity of the impostor feelings of our high achieving women, with their continual discounting of their own abilities and persistent fears of failure. We have not found repeated successes alone sufficient to break the cycle. Additional factors which ap- pear to strengthen the maintenance of the im- postor phenomenon are discussed in the follow- ing section. ORIGIN, DYNAMICS, AND MAINTENANCE Why do so many bright women, despite consistent and impressive evidence to the con- trary, continue to see themselves as impostors who pretend to be bright but who really are not? What are the origins and dynamics of such a belief and what functions could be served by holding on to such a belief? We have observed that our "impostors" typically fall into one of two groups with respect to early family history. In one group are women who have a sibling or close relative who has been designated as the "intelligent" THE IMPOSTOR PHENOMENON IN HIGH ACHIEVING WOMEN 243 member of the family. Each of the women, on the other hand, has been told directly or indi- rectly that she is the "sensitive" or socially adept one in the family. The implication from immediate and/or extended family members is that she can never prove that she is as bright as her sibling regardless of what she actually accomplishes intellectually. One part of her believes the family myth; another part wants to disprove it. School gives her an opportunity to try to prove to her family and herself that she is bright. She succeeds in obtaining outstanding grades, academic honors, and acclaim from teachers. She feels good about her performance and hopes her family will acknowledge that she is more than just sensitive or charming. However, the family seems unimpressed, still attributing greater intelligence to the "bright" sibling whose academic performance is often poorer by comparison. On the one hand, the woman who feels she is an impostor continues to be driven to find ways of getting validation for her intellectual competence; on the other hand, she thinks her family may be correct, secretly doubts her intellect, and begins to wonder if she has gained her high marks through sensitivity to teachers'expectations, so- cial skills, and feminine charms. Thus, the impostor phenomenon emerges. A different family dynamic operates for the second group of women experiencing the im- postor phenomenon. The family conveys to the girl that she is superior in every way—intellect, personality, appearance, talents. There is no- thing that she cannot do if she wants to, and she can do it with ease. She is told numerous examples of how she demonstrated her precoc- ity as an infant and toddler, such as learning to talk and read very early or reciting nursery rhymes. In the family members' eyes she is perfect. The child, however, begins to have experi- ences in which she cannot do any and every- thing she wants to. She does have difficulty in achieving certain things. Yet she feels obligated to fulfill the expectations of her family, even though she knows she cannot keep up the act forever. Because she is so indiscriminately praised for everything, she begins to distrust her parents' perceptions of her. Moreover, she be- gins to doubt herself. When she goes to school her doubts about her abilities are intensified. Although she does out- standing work, she does have to study to do well. Having internalized her parents' definition of brightness as "perfection with ease," and realizing that she cannot live up to this standard, she jumps to the conclusion that she must be dumb. She is not a genius; therefore, she must be an intellectual impostor. One of our clients who had trouble with spelling remembers that she pretended to be "sick" for three consecutive Fridays when spelling bees were