Abstract
The Imposter Phenomenon—i.e., the phenomenon of feeling like a fraud and like your successes aren’t really yours—is typically construed not just as a crisis of confidence, but as a failure of rationality. On the standard story, “imposters” have bad beliefs about their talents because they dismiss the evidence provided by their successes. Here I suggest that this standard picture could be mistaken, and that these “imposters” may actually be more rational (on average) than non-imposters. Why? Accounting for the non-talent causes of your successes may require you to lower your confidence in your talents, in which case, “imposter” beliefs are rational. I then go on to suggest a second reason to worry about the standard picture: It does not adequately address the possible role that one’s environment has in the production of the phenomenon. To give an example, I hypothesize that environments that host a “culture of genius” can alter our evidential landscape in a way that promotes the Imposter Phenomenon. Finally, I argue that my alternative picture of the Imposter Phenomenon should prompt us to opt for a conception of self-worth that is more deeply tied to virtues like intellectual humility than to relative talent possession.
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Notes
My evidence of this is mostly anecdotal, although, see Hawley’s (2016) talk, “Philosophical Reflections on Imposter Syndrome,” and Sosis 2017’s What its like to be a philosopher interview with Rebecca Tuvel following 2017 interview from the What its like to be a philosopher blog for examples: http://www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher.com/rebecca-tuvel/.
There is some reason to worry that labeling those who experience IP as IPPs perniciously essentializes these individuals. I am sympathetic to this point and don’t advocate using this label in a public setting. Here, however, brevity demands its use.
I do not take my explanation of IP to be complete in the sense that it should (or is likely to) explain every instance of IP. For instance, while my explanation assumes that the affective components of IP are causally downstream of the doxastic components of the phenomenon, it is highly plausible that there are cases of IP in which the causal order is reversed, so that IP beliefs are a product of IP feelings and other attitudes. Since my model won’t capture such cases, it can’t fully explain IP. The extent to which my account is explanatory is an empirical matter that we currently cannot settle (since we don’t know enough about how IP beliefs and feelings are causally related).
Sometimes this help comes in the form of reassuring women that many famous people experience IP (Kate Winslet!). Other times it comes in the form of pithy advice:
“Lean in!”
“Be less nice!”
“Steeple instead of slouch!”
“Fake it until you make it!”
In an interview, Clance reports that from the outset that she and Imes were concerned not to have IP be taken as “another ‘defect’ in women or a pathologizing of women” (Clance & O’Toole, p. 160). In fact, this reason is why they were deliberate in calling this experience a phenomenon rather than a syndrome since the latter can connote defect or disease. Nevertheless, they themselves first link the phenomenon to women in particular, which no doubt has influenced how it has been adapted into the public discourse. Simmons (2016) also traces the intellectual origins of IP to earlier well-known twentieth century psychological research programs that pathologize women—e.g., programs studying “the need for achievement” (posited as the universal source of cultural and economic development) and “the fear of success” (posited to explain why in tests women displayed greater drive to achieve, but in practice were much less successful than men).
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for forcing me to clarify the connection between IP and historically disadvantaged groups. My own suspicion is that the “cultures of genius” that I discuss below are ultimately bound up with sexist and racist (and classist) institutions and ideologies, though in complicated ways. But since untangling these relations is beyond the scope of this paper, the relevant point is that we have independent reason to investigate IP, and therefore needn’t first do this untangling.
For an example of a recent popular discussion of IP that focuses primarily on fit-beliefs, see Amy Olberding’s 2018 Aeon essay “The Outsider.” Olberding reports feeling out of place in Academia because of her class backgroung, but interestingly, does not talk about this estrangement as leading to doubts about her ability to succeed in Academia.
We should also recall that the claim here is that IPPs are non-ideally rational. Potentially one way in which it is non-ideal is that their beliefs are formed against a background framework that assumes ‘talent’ as a meaningful concept. But it is worth noting that IPPs and non-IPPs alike have beliefs about how talented they are, so to the extent that this is erroneous, it’s not a failure that is particular to IPPs.
These categories are not mutually exclusive, of course. One can have, for instance, a comparative backwards-looking T-belief.
In fn. 3 above, I mention the important possibility of IP cases where beliefs are causally downstream from the affective components of the phenomenon, which we are setting aside in our present discussion in order to focus on cases where beliefs are causally upstream of the affective stuff. We can now better see the reason for setting aside this other kind of case—viz., that our target in the paper, the standard view, itself assumes that beliefs are causally upstream of affectivity.
Clance & Imes (1978), p. 1.
This example is a favorite of Reuben Stern’s. I’m grateful to him for letting me borrow it.
We might not like having to recognize affirmative action (“AA”) interventions as evidence of non-talent causes since it’d be unfortunate if interventions designed to correct opportunity discrepancies or increase diversity rationally require recipients to lower their confidence in their talents. But it seems to me this is so. To return to the analogy above, it’s like AA recipients getting evidence that it was lunch that poisoned them, but non-AA recipients getting evidence that it wasn’t lunch that poisoned them. One might insist that this can’t be the rational way to think about AA policies because when operating well, they are merely tie-breakers among equally talented individuals. But if there is widespread belief that the policies aren’t being ideally enacted, then individuals benefitting from AA may rationally treat their awards as evidence against their talents anyhow. Further, even if the policies are ideally enacted (as tie-breakers), it still isn’t clear how this should boost the confidence of rational AA-recipients since this information just tells them definitively that it was something other than their talent that made the difference in their being awarded the scholarship, job, award, etc. For a nice discussion of what attitudes one all-things-considered should have towards being the beneficiary of affirmative action policies, see Gheaus (2015).
Whether they are irrational may also depend on whether I update my beliefs appropriately in other ways—e.g., that I don’t decrease my confidences too much, or that I have coherent beliefs. Since my aim here is just to identify a rational method of belief-updating that may fuel IP, we needn’t dwell on these other ways in which such agents can fail to be rational.
You might reasonably infer that you’ll continue to be the beneficiary of the mechanisms of privilege that you believe helped give you your current successes (if you think these mechanisms are stable). But this belief is subtly but importantly different than thinking you qua your abilities can be successful again.
Murphy and Dweck (2010).
An anonymous reviewer asks: Where, exactly, are the cultures of genius? This is a good question that I can’t satisfactorily answer, but that is worth flagging. Clearly, Dweck and Murphy’s research identifies cultures of genius in various corporate environments. Recent work in Leslie et al. (2015) and Meyer et al. (2015) investigate cultures of genius in academia (and find that this culture appears to be especially prevalent in philosophy). Are there more systemic patterns that we can identify and use to predict what gives rise to cultures of genius? This is an important question worthy of future empirical investigation.
One might balk here at the suggestion that effort-hiding is prominent in such cultures, thinking perhaps of the “careerist” proclivities prominent in many professional domains (including philosophy). It is important to distinguish between effort and what we might call, by contrast, hard work. Effort is the strenuous cognitive exertion put forth when one finds accomplishing a task difficult, whereas hard work is the devotion of most of one’s time and attention to a task. To my mind, most things that require effort also demand hard work, but not everything towards which one works hard requires effort. In this way, widespread effort-hiding is consistent with widespread hard-work-signaling—e.g., being very public about one’s long hours, grueling travel schedule, bursting inbox, etc.
The idea that effort is much more a talent than non-talent is one that is made often in discussions about egalitarian justice. For one nice example, see Brighouse and Swift (2014), where they discuss some of the complicated ways in which effort looks to be a kind of talent, and further, in which talent and effort can both depend crucially on environment (pp. 16–18). Why we tend to ignore the fact that effort itself is a kind of talent is difficult to say, though one guess to venture is that recognizing effort as such doesn’t easily square with the American ideology of success as available to anyone who is willing to work for it.
Thanks to Erin Beeghly for first pointing out this way of seeing the revised view.
Here I follow Alessandra Tanesini’s account of epistemic humility (Tanesini 2016). Her account of epistemic humility is notable because it does not require the humble individual to ignore their talents and successes. Very often the advice is given to IPPs to stop caring about their talents and to stop engaging in interpersonal comparisons, which I find has the pernicious implication that non-IPPs must already be doing these things. But there is no evidence to support the idea that non-IPPs care less about their talents or make fewer interpersonal comparisons. The advice is bad for the further reasons that (1) it’s very psychologically demanding to withdraw care and refrain from comparisons altogether and (2) there remain some important reasons to engage in these practices.
Though, as an anonymous review points out to me, even this account of self-worth may leave one feeling badly about one’s (lack of) talents given that one may (appropriately) care so much about the realization of certain epistemic goods so as to lament not being able to realize them. Does this put the virtue-based account of self-worth right back on a par with the talent-based one? I think not. If we’re damned to bad feelings any which way, those that allow us to preserve our rationality and that reflect recognition of the loss of something genuinely valuable are the better bad feelings.
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Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to Harry Brighouse, Gina Schouten, Russ Shafer-Landau, Michael Titelbaum, and audiences at the 2017 APA Pacific meeting and the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy’s 2017 “Values in Science” workshop for their helpful criticisms and suggestions. I owe special thanks to Erin Beeghly for her comments and conversation at the APA Pacific and to Reuben Stern for extensive discussion.
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Slank, S. Rethinking the Imposter Phenomenon. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 22, 205–218 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-09984-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-09984-8