Imposter Syndrome

On the BSc Psychology course at UCL I teach a year 1 module called 'Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods'. For the lab report component, we first collect anonymous open text data from the students about some aspect of their life experiences. They then analyse this using thematic analysis. A further benefit of this approach to assessment is the insight it provides me into the lives of my students, and so this blog post is intended to share those insights.

In 2024 the project focused on Imposter Syndrome. The overall research question was 'To what extent do students experience imposter syndrome, what are the main reasons for it, and how does it affect their academic life?'

Participants: This data was collected at the end of term 2 in the 2023/24 academic year from a combined group of 179 Experimental Psychology and Psychology and Language Sciences cohort (ages 17-21, M = 18.8, SD=0.8, 85.7% females, 14.3% males). 107 participants responded to the survey call but we did not collect demographics from them to maximise anonymity.

Method: Students were sent a link to a survey and given the following definition of imposter syndrome:

Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people doubt their abilities, intelligence, or accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as frauds. This feeling is often resistant to external signs of success, which are often explained away as due to luck or something external. 

Quantitative: They were then asked to rate themselves on a scale from 0-100 their response to the following:

To what extent do you experience imposter syndrome with respect to your place on your degree? 

A histogram of these responses can be seen below.

Qualitative: They were then asked to write in an open text box answering the following question:

To what extent do you experience imposter syndrome with respect to your place on your degree? If you do, how does it manifest in terms of (1) attending lectures and taking part in group work, (2) completing and submitting coursework and (3) undertaking exams?

Generally the students (now in their analyst role) picked out consistent themes in their reports. To compose the following set of themes I looked at roughly ten of the highest graded reports and amalgamated/ reworded the most consistent themes. I have also presented them as best as possible in a kind of chronological narrative of what seems to be the process our students experience as they arrive at and attend university (for their first two terms at least).

(1) Becoming a small fish: transitioning to university

Given that these are year 1 students in their second term their place within the institution and the social / academic hierarchy is still very much in development. Given also that UCL has high requirements for entry, many students expressed a feeling of having moved from being one of the best students in their school to being average or less than average among this group of high achievers:

 P1: "Growing up I was part of the 'gifted and talented' group. My identity revolved around being the smartest…Always getting no less than 90%. Now I feel like a fish at sea."

Generally, UCL's prestigious reputation made some students feel like they didn't deserve their place:

P35: “I don’t belong here… like the admission team accidentally gave me the offer or something”

P104: “I still remember an underlying doubt about why it was that I was accepted”

(2) Socieconomic and education differences, contextual offers and international students

Building on the transition / UCL prestige of theme 1, some students felt highly aware of their different social background at their new instituion e.g. P25 (“I come from a MUCH different place socially”) and P81 (“I am from a disadvantaged area and low-income family”.)

Contextual offers provided a powerful reason to doubt the legitimacy of one's place at UCL and / or one's abilities:

P99: "I feel like everyone else in my degree is a genius, it doesnt help that i got in via a contextual offer."

P86: "I feel like I got into this university because I was just lucky enough to have a contextual offer, not because I was an "above average" student. I feel like I do not fully belong here."

P84: I got a contextual offer … I think that has more to do with feeling like an imposter at UCL in general because I don’t feel much imposter syndrome regarding the course.

Students who had not studied Psychology at A Level also found this a reason to begin the course with a sense of inferiority:

P27: "I will not reach the same level of those who already studied Psychlogy at High School"

Finally the perception of reduced language skills also contributed to this feeling among international students:

P80: "I feel like the main reason for the imposter syndrome is the language barrier since I am not a native English speaker"

P7: "English is not my first language ... when seeing what others have written, it feels like my coursework is a child's book"

(3) Sharing of grades and social comparison

Students spoke about a culture of grade sharing via messaging platforms which intensified feelings of comparison (especially as those who share their grades are likely to be those who did well, perhaps creating an illusion of everyone else doing well similar to the typical dynamic on social media):

P86: "I do not find myself feeling like this during lectures, however feelings of imposter syndrome increase when coursework marks are shared and spoken about. "

P33: “grades are always a hot topic between students”

P12: “I experience imposter syndrome after exam discussions allowing me to know what others have got”

P3: "Even if my grades are objectively good, I’ll feel really insecure when I hear about people who did even better than me. Or if I get an average grade, I’ll feel really bad too, even though it's a perfectly normal grade at uni. So sometimes I’ll end up not feeling good enough or smart enough to be here."

P30: “The feeling would fluctuate, arising most strongly the more input I would hear from peers in class. When left to my own devices, this would not be so bad.”

Another exacerbating influence here was the dynamics of the lecture hall. A minority of the most confident students tend to ask / answer questions in lecture halls, creating a misperception that they represent the majority:

P22: "Something about lectures which makes me feel like an imposter is when someone asks a question which seems like it's completely from out of nowhere, and I sit there and wonder if we have been taking the same course as it seems they have much more knowledge than me."

P78: "While in small tutorial groups I think openly and feely, in lectures I stop myself."

P107: "Everyone in the room is smarter than me... I don't deserve to be there."

(4) Perceptions of other students as better

Perhaps due to the above effects, many students used words like 'everyone' and 'others' creating an image of their peers as a homogenous superior whole:

P37: “Everyone seems to be doing better than me and I feel like I don't deserve my place”

P22: “I don’t know if the amount of work I put in will be enough to get high grades just like everyone else.”

P18: “everyone else is so smart and brainy and I’m not”

P3: “I feel like I’m not as good at psychology as other people, which makes me feel as though I am not fit for the course”

P22: “I can’t absorb information as well as other people on my course…this makes me feel less competent”

Some students had the insight to recognise the illusory aspect of this:

P105: "I've created this image of an excelling student with amazing time management ... but this student doesn't exist."

(6) Perfectionism...

Many students expressed having extremely high standards for themselves and an intense fear of failure:

P27: “I have a fear of not being a high-achieving student. This drives me to…constantly strive for perfection and the need to prove myself.”

P12: "Anything below a first freaks me out”

P19: “I actively attend lectures and usually initiate discussions when it comes to group work. I did well in the stats exam (estimating 90%ish). However, sometimes I do not feel like I am hardworking or that I am not putting in enough effort to achieve my full potential.”

P79: “[my] work is not perfect enough” P79

(7) ... which leads to maladaptive coping strategies and overworking

This perfectionism / fear of failure seemed to lead to a range of problematic approaches to coursework and exams, only exacerbating the feelings further:

P7: “I end up leaving [assignments] until the last minute because I get scared about not doing well enough”

P1:  My work never feels as though it is good enough quality, always just a little short of perfection…and I leave my coursework to the last minute...I usually end up burnt out or physically ill or both"

P26: “I find myself hesitating, unsure if my answers are accurate or comprehensive”

P78: “i realised i convince myself that i don’t care about the content to avoid  being faced with my fear of being too stupid to understand." 

P14: “I seem to consistently feel unsatisfied which means progressively I am becoming more and more demotivated as I see no point because there is never a change.”

P1: "On the surface, while it might look like a reluctance to get out of bed and laziness, I think it's more the fear of being surrounded by people who are much more intelligent than I am"

P37: Exams have always terrified me, the stats exam literally made me cry. I felt like I'd never opened R in my life even though I'd worked so hard prepping. The fraud energy is so real. 

(8) What helps? Positive coping strategies.

Imposter syndrome is fundamentally based on social comparison, and usually supported by an illusionary perception of the success of others. Unsurprisingly therefore, successful ways of countering the causes / feelings of imposter syndrome largely center around honest sharing, both of true levels of coping, and also of normalisation of imposter syndrome itself:

P48: “I am aware this [feelings of imposter syndrome] is normal and my peers feel this too”

P95: "I find peer discussion really helpful in minimising my anxiety because it reminds me that we are, more often than not, very much in the same boat."

P48: “I don't feel imposter syndrome because a lot of people around me are doing a lot worse”

Summary

It is important not to over generalise, and it is clear from the histogram that imposter syndrome is not universal among our students, with some feeling it very little, and this was also present within the qualitative data. For example P2 said "I am confident of my…abilities and skills that allowed me to be where I am today”.

However the themes presented above seem to represent broadly the experiences of a substantial proportion of our students. To summarise, they often have a history of high achievement relative to their school / college cohort and an identity based on being a good student. They then arrive at a highly prestigious and highly selective university surrounded by other high achieving students and in line with imposter syndrome often find it difficult to accept that they deserve their place here, often attributing this to luck or some kind of administration error, giving them a feeling of needing to prove something. This seems to be particularly profound for those students receiving contextual offers or perceiving themselves as from a different socioeconomic background to their peers. Being an international student and not having studied Psychology previously also seem to feed into this. The culture among students of sharing grades seems to exacerbate this. This is problematic as it is highly likely that those who share their grades are more likely to have achieved well. This illusory perception of their peers as superior also seems to be fed by a misperception that the minority of students who speak up and say impressive things in lectures are representative of the whole. This seems to be the case as many students used words like 'everyone' and 'other' creating a mental image of a homogenous cohort of people doing amazing in comparison to them who are the only ones struggling. All of this combines with the personality profile of many of our students having somewhat perfectionist tendencies, being prone to impossibly high standards and self criticism. Unfortunately these feelings often lead students to behave in ways that reduce their performance on coursework and exams, such as avoiding lectures, procrastination / not starting work until close to the deadline and high degrees of anxiety that reduce exam performance.

As can be seen this process is fundamentally about social comparison, and predicated upon illusions about the success of others. Unsurprisingly therefore successful coping strategies seem to revolve around piercing that illusion either through more honest conversations with other students or just obtaining a more accurate picture of other students' performance, or indeed others' experiences of imposter syndrome itself. In fact normalisation was another intended function of this assignment, as the students were required to read all their peers anonymous comments on this issue which they would be far less likely to express face to face. It may be worth considering how to (1) give students a more accurate depiction of grade distributions for assignments as well as (2) working normalisation of these feelings into the early stages of their university experience, such as during induction.