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4 CAREER ADVICE FOR LIFE SCIENTISTS

The Impostor Phenomenon

Sue Wick

University of Minnesota

H

ave you ever felt that you did not deserve the

professional status you have achieved or the

recognition you have received for your career

accomplishments? Do you wonder whether being

admitted to graduate school, being awarded your

Ph.D., being offered an exciting postdoc position, or

getting a “real job” was just a mistake on the part of

others who will eventually figure that out and expose

your inadequacy? If so, you may be demonstrating a

classic case of the Impostor Phenomenon—you and

perhaps as many as half of your colleagues!

The term “Impostor Phenomenon” was coined by

psychology professor Pauline Rose Clance and psy-

chotherapist Suzanne Imes in 1978 to describe a sample

of more than 150 high-achieving women. Impostor

Phenomenon (also known as the “Impostor

Syndrome”) has been defined variously as the persist-

ent belief in one’s lack of competence, skill or intelli-

gence in the face of consistent objective data to the con-

trary; an internal experience of intellectual fraudulence,

particularly among high-achievers; the belief that one is

not deserving of his/her career success and that others

have been deceived into thinking otherwise; an intense

subjective fear of the inability to repeat past success; a

self-concept that one’s record of accomplishments is not

Do you wonder whether being admitted

to graduate school, being awarded your

Ph.D., being offered an exciting post-

doc position, or getting a “real job”

was just a mistake on the part of others

who will eventually figure that out and

expose your inadequacy?