7 ms·

The concept of Impostor Syndrome has become ubiquitous

51 points by cocacola1 4y ago

shureluck 4y ago
I do not think I have ever felt imposter syndrome, in all honesty. Do most people honestly feel this?
- Izkata 4y ago
  There's another thread further down of us. Personally I think the author (or editor, whoever chose the title) feels it and is projecting onto everyone else.
_yb2s 4y ago
This article does not make any sense to me. It basically explains imposter syndrome as the consequence of having unrealistic external expectations of success and ability, requiring a fake persona, e.g. being the result of privilege and expectations that come with it, but then also dismisses mens experience of this phenomenon, and talks about how it’s basically the result of systematic injustice against women. How can it be both? And how can they justify hand waving away the fact that men also experience this?
- 1shooner 4y ago
  >Although men do report feeling like impostors, the experience is primarily associated with women No citation on that one...
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    Anecdotally, as a man in academia, all of the men I know closely also experience this. It’s pretty much universal for men and women. If it’s more associated with women, I think that is because it’s less socially acceptable for men to be vulnerable, or discuss their feelings. It makes sense to me that it is in a sense a consequence of privilege, success, and opportunities. If nobody believes in you, or expects a lot from you, you won’t feel like an imposter.
    - wahern 4y ago
      > I think that is because it’s less socially acceptable for men to be vulnerable, or discuss their feelings. This is also true in the broader sense of public discourse. I remember talk shows like Oprah Winfrey in the 1990s discussing women's sexual health and how women never get to discuss or explore women's sexual health issues. Fast forward 30 years and I've come to realize that this narrative--1) women experience X, 2) women never get to openly discuss X--is a constant. Not just in the past 30 years, but going back for a least a century if you read popular women's magazines. Heck, just last night on NPR (KQED) there was discussion about menopause and how women are ignorant about the physiology of menopause because it's never openly discussed. And I'm like, "are you kidding me! I don't have enough fingers to count how many times over the past 20+ years I've heard a program on KQED not only dedicated to menopause, but claim that nobody ever talks about menopause." As contrasted to men's health issues, where I definitely have enough fingers. Which isn't to deny a deficit in open discourse regarding many women's issues, but certainly there's no deficit in the narrative that women's issues are never openly discussed; quite the opposite, they're constantly discussed--on the air, in print, etc, because apparently there's strong demand among women to discuss them.
      - 1shooner 4y ago
        I wouldn't consider the last century, 30 years, or even 5 years as providing a constant pattern for the level and access to discourse about issues impacting non white males. There is a world of difference between Oprah in the 80s and 90s making a space to address these things, and NPR today.
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  A classic "world to end tomorrow - women and minorities hardest hit" article
- wahern 4y ago
  Surmising from the article, it appears that Imposter Syndrome was originally conceptualized in the context of feminist thought and at some later point migrated into wider cultural discourse as a more gender neutral concept. But for people immersed in feminist literature and discourse it's probably still very much a feminist concept, especially as it relates to experiences. Because of how women physically and emotionally mature and the social roles they grow into, I can easily imagine that there are dimensions to Imposter Syndrome as originally conceived which would be less familiar to or less intense for most men. For example, stressors regarding dress, tensions between sexuality and professionalism, dilemmas between following the rules vs breaking the rules, etc. But I'm being charitable. The quick dismissal by the author is indeed disheartening.
  - knaik94 4y ago
    I feel less charitable. In the last couple of decades, there has been meaningful change in people adhering to traditional gender roles. Especially in the last 10 years, I have seen a huge push to break the cultural acceptance of toxic masculinity. Pretending that men would be less familiar or feel it less intensely, in this day and age, is continuing the underlying themes of toxic masculinity. It's not just disheartening, it's disrespectful. I understand arguing that it affects women disproportionately, but I can't understand arguing that it won't affect men. Even if you are immersed in feminist literature, you have to be aware of the changing gender norms.
    - RajT88 4y ago
      Indeed. I am no part of the LGBT+ community, but articles like this make me realize there are emotional elements of the female experience that resonate with me. Certainly imposter syndrome is something I have struggled with and continue to. I had an interaction just this week which brought it up. All that said, if some feminist idea wasn't intended for me, I am not going to sweat it. Feminism at its core is the idea that people are people regardless of gender and should be treated accordingly.
      - knaik94 4y ago
gopalv 4y ago
> her mother had taught her that naturally smart people don’t have to study. Of all the parts of the article, that little bit stands out. Because I see my older kid do that all the time, as if putting in effort to do something is somehow not the real thing. As if things learned from mistakes and practice is not progress - a substitute for talent.
- vba616 4y ago
  You can't divine the value of experience, except from experience.
- knaik94 4y ago
  It's related to pride, in my experience tutoring high school and college kids. That was my own experience while growing up as well, there's a sentiment that "natural" smartness and hard-working smartness are two seperate things. I feel like kids have been moving away from this mindset, but maybe it's changed names. Growing up being a "nerd" was uncool, and studying was "nerdy". After college, I talked to some of the people who were the "naturally" smart kids and I found out they lied so much about how much time they spent not studying. Everyone lies. Part of it, I learned, was that my graduating class ended up with a lot of cut-throat people, they lied about how much work they put in to gatekeep. I don't speak to a single person from my graduating year now even though I am friends with some teachers as well as kids from other years. A similar concept but less isolated to academics has been kind of a popular "insult". I sometimes hear the concept of "sweaty" being uncool among the youngest ages I teach. Sweaty, as in working so hard towards something that you work up a sweat. It's doesn't have to be a physical activity, you can be called sweaty at video games, or sweaty at math. Education is a weird place to use the word talent, looking back. You can't wake up knowing new information. Everyone has to learn, the people who look talented just learned it earlier than everyone else. I am not sure why hard working is seen as uncool at that age. I wonder if it's different in other parts of the world, I learned that I have a very typical north eastern USA experience.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    The most successful people I know are regular smart folks who have patience, and can get into deep focus mode / zone at-will. The smartest people I know have 0 focus, but they can grasp insanely complex topics that are interesting to them super fast.
d_t_w 4y ago
I have never felt like I am faking it, is that really strange?
- ip26 4y ago
  Do you ever feel like the job comes easy to all your coworkers while you are struggling to stay with the pack?
- mesozoic 4y ago
  Me either
- andirk 4y ago
  Yeah people in hard sciences can't really fake as a workhorse. However, I have worked at a job where almost everyone but me was an onshore offshore copy/paste StackOverflow "software engineer" and they were absolutely fakers but they truly didn't see themself as such. Their main defense was to make sure to only hire other "engineers" who were even worse than them. That type of hiring cascades to zero nicely.
- Izkata 4y ago
  For the latecomers - It was originally posted here with the title on the page, not the title in the URL: "Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It". I was also was gonna post something like "...uh, no I don't", but decided to hold off and see what others thought. Guess it was a good idea for a different reason, the title on here having changed.
nixpulvis 4y ago
This seems to be talking almost exclusively about faking intellectualism, but I believe there's a bigger cultural issue going on. Nevermind that intellectualism requires humility and the ability to be wrong and in fact feel stupid from time to time. Something which is poorly taught. But I digress... We all have just splintered into so many little groups, pods, and sadly solos, that to fit in anywhere requires a serious bit of "faking it". Unfortunately, this spills over into the workplace, even when much of the work is technical and answer oriented. I'm not fresh enough to feel like I'm faking it (I never really did), but I haven't been around long enough to be used to the feeling of being left behind (I hope I never do). I am resentful for how things have changed out from underneath me. And I'm regretful for the people I didn't foster better relationships with.
temptemptemp111 4y ago
[dead]
amriksohata 4y ago
Because for centuries we only had a few professions which were passed down in each family and now we have so many specialist roles to work with material nature that no one really is an expert
vr46 4y ago
We've found a cure to imposter syndrome, well, if we could only bottle George Santos.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  hey, don't be knocking george santos! he was the first openly gay jewish monk to set himself on fire to protest the vietnam war! the man is an icon!
quectophoton 4y ago
To balance things out, the opposite is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. "I'm bad at this. Oh, but maybe it's the Impostor Syndrome and that means I'm actually good? Oh but then maybe that's the Dunning-Kruger Effect and I'm actually bad." Repeat until both cancel out and your mind settles on some middle point, not worrying about "maybe I'm bad and nobody else knows", and not being overconfident.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Dunning-Kruger's not real: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202012/dunning-kruger-isnt-real https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020...
  - Izkata 4y ago
    This doesn't seem like it's debunking anything to me, instead debunking the author's own understanding. The alternate explanation they come to is how I've always understood it, which the footnote at the bottom kind-of acknowledges.
IshKebab 4y ago
The biggest issue with Imposter Syndrome is the name. It makes it sound like some kind of abnormal medical issue that some people "have". I think part of its popularity is because people make it part of their identity. It's like people saying they are OCD when really they just like things to be neat. It's should be called "lack of confidence", but they you probably couldn't write papers and books about it. You could probably come up with more "syndromes" that are really common and normal human behaviours if you want to make a name for yourself! "morning syndrome" (difficult to get up in the morning), "hunger syndrome" (being hungry even when you've eaten a sensible amount of food), "stranger syndrome" (not being confident at talking to strangers), "Smalltalk syndrome" (being shit at Smalltalk), etc.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mensetmanusman 4y ago
If we are all imposters, then no one is.
jessekv 4y ago
I had a job shovelling mulch once. No imposter syndrome. edit: Not to trivialise the article, its a good one and worth reading and learning from.
drewcoo 4y ago
Everyone doesn't feel like an imposter. But most of us feel we're surrounded by them. I hear "fake it til you make it" coming from children's mouths these days, not just startup hustlers.
- shureluck 4y ago
  This is exactly right. Been seeing this a lot, especially in the last five years. Most of my tech interview strategy has adapted to weed out candidates that are imposters.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    This has always been a problem though, it's how simplistic programming tests like FizzBuzz got started: Non-imposters find it trivial, imposters can't figure it out on the fly. Then that one got too popular, solutions are all over the internet, the imposters started memorizing it, and now we've ended up with a crazy variety of programming tests that have drifted extremely far from the original intent.

51 points by cocacola1 4y ago

shureluck 4y ago

I do not think I have ever felt imposter syndrome, in all honesty. Do most people honestly feel this?

Izkata 4y ago
There's another thread further down of us. Personally I think the author (or editor, whoever chose the title) feels it and is projecting onto everyone else.

_yb2s 4y ago

This article does not make any sense to me. It basically explains imposter syndrome as the consequence of having unrealistic external expectations of success and ability, requiring a fake persona, e.g. being the result of privilege and expectations that come with it, but then also dismisses mens experience of this phenomenon, and talks about how it’s basically the result of systematic injustice against women. How can it be both? And how can they justify hand waving away the fact that men also experience this?

1shooner 4y ago
>Although men do report feeling like impostors, the experience is primarily associated with women No citation on that one...
- _yb2s 4y ago
  Anecdotally, as a man in academia, all of the men I know closely also experience this. It’s pretty much universal for men and women. If it’s more associated with women, I think that is because it’s less socially acceptable for men to be vulnerable, or discuss their feelings. It makes sense to me that it is in a sense a consequence of privilege, success, and opportunities. If nobody believes in you, or expects a lot from you, you won’t feel like an imposter.
  - wahern 4y ago
    > I think that is because it’s less socially acceptable for men to be vulnerable, or discuss their feelings. This is also true in the broader sense of public discourse. I remember talk shows like Oprah Winfrey in the 1990s discussing women's sexual health and how women never get to discuss or explore women's sexual health issues. Fast forward 30 years and I've come to realize that this narrative--1) women experience X, 2) women never get to openly discuss X--is a constant. Not just in the past 30 years, but going back for a least a century if you read popular women's magazines. Heck, just last night on NPR (KQED) there was discussion about menopause and how women are ignorant about the physiology of menopause because it's never openly discussed. And I'm like, "are you kidding me! I don't have enough fingers to count how many times over the past 20+ years I've heard a program on KQED not only dedicated to menopause, but claim that nobody ever talks about menopause." As contrasted to men's health issues, where I definitely have enough fingers. Which isn't to deny a deficit in open discourse regarding many women's issues, but certainly there's no deficit in the narrative that women's issues are never openly discussed; quite the opposite, they're constantly discussed--on the air, in print, etc, because apparently there's strong demand among women to discuss them.
    - 1shooner 4y ago
      I wouldn't consider the last century, 30 years, or even 5 years as providing a constant pattern for the level and access to discourse about issues impacting non white males. There is a world of difference between Oprah in the 80s and 90s making a space to address these things, and NPR today.
gotoeleven 4y ago
A classic "world to end tomorrow - women and minorities hardest hit" article
wahern 4y ago
Surmising from the article, it appears that Imposter Syndrome was originally conceptualized in the context of feminist thought and at some later point migrated into wider cultural discourse as a more gender neutral concept. But for people immersed in feminist literature and discourse it's probably still very much a feminist concept, especially as it relates to experiences. Because of how women physically and emotionally mature and the social roles they grow into, I can easily imagine that there are dimensions to Imposter Syndrome as originally conceived which would be less familiar to or less intense for most men. For example, stressors regarding dress, tensions between sexuality and professionalism, dilemmas between following the rules vs breaking the rules, etc. But I'm being charitable. The quick dismissal by the author is indeed disheartening.
- knaik94 4y ago
  I feel less charitable. In the last couple of decades, there has been meaningful change in people adhering to traditional gender roles. Especially in the last 10 years, I have seen a huge push to break the cultural acceptance of toxic masculinity. Pretending that men would be less familiar or feel it less intensely, in this day and age, is continuing the underlying themes of toxic masculinity. It's not just disheartening, it's disrespectful. I understand arguing that it affects women disproportionately, but I can't understand arguing that it won't affect men. Even if you are immersed in feminist literature, you have to be aware of the changing gender norms.
  - RajT88 4y ago
    Indeed. I am no part of the LGBT+ community, but articles like this make me realize there are emotional elements of the female experience that resonate with me. Certainly imposter syndrome is something I have struggled with and continue to. I had an interaction just this week which brought it up. All that said, if some feminist idea wasn't intended for me, I am not going to sweat it. Feminism at its core is the idea that people are people regardless of gender and should be treated accordingly.
    - knaik94 4y ago

gopalv 4y ago

> her mother had taught her that naturally smart people don’t have to study. Of all the parts of the article, that little bit stands out. Because I see my older kid do that all the time, as if putting in effort to do something is somehow not the real thing. As if things learned from mistakes and practice is not progress - a substitute for talent.

vba616 4y ago
You can't divine the value of experience, except from experience.
knaik94 4y ago
It's related to pride, in my experience tutoring high school and college kids. That was my own experience while growing up as well, there's a sentiment that "natural" smartness and hard-working smartness are two seperate things. I feel like kids have been moving away from this mindset, but maybe it's changed names. Growing up being a "nerd" was uncool, and studying was "nerdy". After college, I talked to some of the people who were the "naturally" smart kids and I found out they lied so much about how much time they spent not studying. Everyone lies. Part of it, I learned, was that my graduating class ended up with a lot of cut-throat people, they lied about how much work they put in to gatekeep. I don't speak to a single person from my graduating year now even though I am friends with some teachers as well as kids from other years. A similar concept but less isolated to academics has been kind of a popular "insult". I sometimes hear the concept of "sweaty" being uncool among the youngest ages I teach. Sweaty, as in working so hard towards something that you work up a sweat. It's doesn't have to be a physical activity, you can be called sweaty at video games, or sweaty at math. Education is a weird place to use the word talent, looking back. You can't wake up knowing new information. Everyone has to learn, the people who look talented just learned it earlier than everyone else. I am not sure why hard working is seen as uncool at that age. I wonder if it's different in other parts of the world, I learned that I have a very typical north eastern USA experience.
- whatever1 4y ago
  The most successful people I know are regular smart folks who have patience, and can get into deep focus mode / zone at-will. The smartest people I know have 0 focus, but they can grasp insanely complex topics that are interesting to them super fast.

d_t_w 4y ago

I have never felt like I am faking it, is that really strange?

ip26 4y ago
Do you ever feel like the job comes easy to all your coworkers while you are struggling to stay with the pack?
mesozoic 4y ago
Me either
andirk 4y ago
Yeah people in hard sciences can't really fake as a workhorse. However, I have worked at a job where almost everyone but me was an onshore offshore copy/paste StackOverflow "software engineer" and they were absolutely fakers but they truly didn't see themself as such. Their main defense was to make sure to only hire other "engineers" who were even worse than them. That type of hiring cascades to zero nicely.
Izkata 4y ago
For the latecomers - It was originally posted here with the title on the page, not the title in the URL: "Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It". I was also was gonna post something like "...uh, no I don't", but decided to hold off and see what others thought. Guess it was a good idea for a different reason, the title on here having changed.

nixpulvis 4y ago

This seems to be talking almost exclusively about faking intellectualism, but I believe there's a bigger cultural issue going on. Nevermind that intellectualism requires humility and the ability to be wrong and in fact feel stupid from time to time. Something which is poorly taught. But I digress... We all have just splintered into so many little groups, pods, and sadly solos, that to fit in anywhere requires a serious bit of "faking it". Unfortunately, this spills over into the workplace, even when much of the work is technical and answer oriented. I'm not fresh enough to feel like I'm faking it (I never really did), but I haven't been around long enough to be used to the feeling of being left behind (I hope I never do). I am resentful for how things have changed out from underneath me. And I'm regretful for the people I didn't foster better relationships with.

temptemptemp111 4y ago

[dead]

amriksohata 4y ago

Because for centuries we only had a few professions which were passed down in each family and now we have so many specialist roles to work with material nature that no one really is an expert

vr46 4y ago

We've found a cure to imposter syndrome, well, if we could only bottle George Santos.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
hey, don't be knocking george santos! he was the first openly gay jewish monk to set himself on fire to protest the vietnam war! the man is an icon!

quectophoton 4y ago

To balance things out, the opposite is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. "I'm bad at this. Oh, but maybe it's the Impostor Syndrome and that means I'm actually good? Oh but then maybe that's the Dunning-Kruger Effect and I'm actually bad." Repeat until both cancel out and your mind settles on some middle point, not worrying about "maybe I'm bad and nobody else knows", and not being overconfident.

drewcoo 4y ago
Dunning-Kruger's not real: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202012/dunning-kruger-isnt-real https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020...
- Izkata 4y ago
  This doesn't seem like it's debunking anything to me, instead debunking the author's own understanding. The alternate explanation they come to is how I've always understood it, which the footnote at the bottom kind-of acknowledges.

IshKebab 4y ago

The biggest issue with Imposter Syndrome is the name. It makes it sound like some kind of abnormal medical issue that some people "have". I think part of its popularity is because people make it part of their identity. It's like people saying they are OCD when really they just like things to be neat. It's should be called "lack of confidence", but they you probably couldn't write papers and books about it. You could probably come up with more "syndromes" that are really common and normal human behaviours if you want to make a name for yourself! "morning syndrome" (difficult to get up in the morning), "hunger syndrome" (being hungry even when you've eaten a sensible amount of food), "stranger syndrome" (not being confident at talking to strangers), "Smalltalk syndrome" (being shit at Smalltalk), etc.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mensetmanusman 4y ago

If we are all imposters, then no one is.

jessekv 4y ago

I had a job shovelling mulch once. No imposter syndrome. edit: Not to trivialise the article, its a good one and worth reading and learning from.

drewcoo 4y ago

Everyone doesn't feel like an imposter. But most of us feel we're surrounded by them. I hear "fake it til you make it" coming from children's mouths these days, not just startup hustlers.

shureluck 4y ago
This is exactly right. Been seeing this a lot, especially in the last five years. Most of my tech interview strategy has adapted to weed out candidates that are imposters.
- Izkata 4y ago
  This has always been a problem though, it's how simplistic programming tests like FizzBuzz got started: Non-imposters find it trivial, imposters can't figure it out on the fly. Then that one got too popular, solutions are all over the internet, the imposters started memorizing it, and now we've ended up with a crazy variety of programming tests that have drifted extremely far from the original intent.