Imposter syndrome is not a diagnosis, and the strongest evidence about it is evidence about how loosely it is defined. A 2020 systematic review of 62 studies covering 14,161 people found prevalence estimates ranging from 9% to 82%, with the spread driven mainly by which questionnaire each study used and where it drew the cut-off. [bravata-2020-impostor]
A construct that 9% or 82% of people have, depending on the instrument, is not a condition anyone can be said to have or not have. That is worth knowing before you accept the label, because the label carries an implication the evidence does not: that this is a thing inside you, rather than something that happens between you and a room.
Where the term came from
The phrase entered the literature in 1978, in a paper describing the impostor phenomenon among high-achieving women in therapy. [clance-1978-impostor] It was a clinical observation about a particular group of people the authors were seeing, not a survey of the population.
The paper described women with strong evidence of accomplishment who nonetheless believed they had fooled everyone, and who attributed their success to luck, timing or having worked harder than they should have needed to. The authors proposed early family dynamics and internalised stereotyping about who is expected to succeed as contributors.
Two things happened to the idea afterwards. It broadened from that sample to nearly everyone, and it acquired the word syndrome, which the original paper did not use. Both changes made it more quotable and less precise.
What the research does and does not support
The research supports the experience and does not support the diagnosis. The 2020 review found no standardised definition, no agreed criteria, and few studies of treatment, and concluded that the evidence base does not currently justify diagnosing or treating imposter syndrome as a distinct condition. [bravata-2020-impostor]
What the review did find consistently is the company it keeps. Imposter feelings were associated with anxiety, depression and burnout across the studies, and were reported at particularly high rates among people from ethnic minority backgrounds. [bravata-2020-impostor]
That last finding points somewhere the popular version of this idea rarely goes. If the experience clusters among people who are outnumbered in the rooms they work in, then some of what is being measured is the room.
A schematic of the distinction argued in this section, not measured data. Most people sit somewhere between the two, and the research does not currently separate them.
The distortion worth working on
Where imposter feelings are a distortion, the specific error is asymmetric attribution: successes get explained by luck, timing or help, while failures get explained by you. That asymmetry is the part that responds to being examined, and it is more tractable than trying to feel confident.
The test is concrete rather than affirming. Take a recent piece of work that went well and write down what actually produced the outcome, including the part you did. Then take one that went badly and do the same. Most people find they applied two different standards of evidence without noticing, and that is visible on paper in a way it never is in your head.
What does not help is reassurance. Being told you deserve to be there fails for the same reason a compliment does, which our guide to why compliments make you uncomfortable covers in more detail: praise that contradicts a belief gets filed as evidence that the other person has been fooled.
When it is not a distortion
Sometimes the feeling is accurate reporting about an environment rather than a faulty belief about yourself. If you are the only person like you in the room, are interrupted more, have your contributions attributed to someone else, or are held to a standard your colleagues are not, then feeling like an outsider is a reasonable response to the available evidence.
The 2020 review’s finding of higher rates among ethnic minority groups is consistent with this reading, though it does not prove it: the studies measured who reports the feeling, not why. [bravata-2020-impostor]
The practical consequence is that individual confidence work aims at the wrong target here. What tends to help instead is external: people who will tell you accurately how your work compares, a mentor outside your immediate team, and where possible a room where you are not the only one.
Which of these two is this?
Tick anything true of the last few months at work or in study. This is a reflection prompt rather than a test, and it produces no diagnosis.
0 of 7 ticked
Asymmetric attribution plus the feeling persisting in rooms where you are treated well points at a belief that is worth examining rather than at an environment that needs changing. The written comparison described above is the concrete version of that work. If you ticked the last item, read the section on when to seek help.
Some of this looks like a belief about yourself and some may be an accurate reading of a difficult environment. Separating the two is the useful next step, and the fastest route is usually one person outside your immediate team who will tell you honestly how your work compares.
Not much here matches the attribution pattern this article describes. If you still feel out of place, that is worth taking seriously as information about the situation rather than about you.
No screener on this site measures imposter feelings, and none exists that is worth pointing you at, because there is no agreed threshold to score against. What is worth screening for is the company these feelings keep. The self-assessment hub has free two-minute screeners for anxiety, depression and burnout, all of which score in your browser and send nothing anywhere.
When to seek help
Speak to a GP if the feeling has come with low mood, loss of interest, persistent worry or exhaustion for two weeks or more, or if it has started to change what you do: turning down work you can handle, avoiding visibility, or working hours that are damaging your health.
The reason to go is not the imposter feeling itself, which no one will diagnose. It is that the conditions it travels with are diagnosable and treatable, and the review that found no support for treating this as a condition in its own right found those associations consistently. [bravata-2020-impostor]
Go urgently if you have thoughts of harming yourself. In the UK, Samaritans is free on 116 123 at any hour.
How MyFreud can help
The question that decides which of the two patterns above you are in is whether the feeling tracks particular rooms and particular weeks or stays flat regardless, and that is much easier to answer from a record than from memory. MyFreud gives you daily mood tracking that shows the pattern over weeks, which is what makes the difference between a belief you carry everywhere and a response to a specific situation visible.
Download MyFreud and start today: App Store or Google Play.