The Hidden Struggle: Peer Perceptions of Imposter Phenomenon and the Impact of Gender

Imposter Phenomenon (IP) affects about 82% of people and can have detrimental effects on the mental health and achievement of sufferers (Bravata et al., 2020). Given the previous literature on IP and research on bias in interpersonal judgments based on gender, I explored how the expression of imposter feelings impacts interpersonal perceptions of competence and intelligence, and how gender moderates this relationship. Participants read one of four vignettes and indicated how competent and intelligent they viewed the individual in the vignette in which a high achieving man/woman college student does/does not express IP. Results of the 2 (Gender Pronouns: He/Him vs. She/Her) x 2 (IP: Imposter vs. Not Imposter) ANOVA, indicated a main effect for IP such that expression of IP lead to lowered perceptions of intelligence (M = 4.84, SD = .98) compared to no expression of IP (M = 5.27, SD = .90), F(1, 177)= 9.32, p = .003, η2 = . 0.05. I did not find evidence for a main effect of gender (F(1, 177) = 0.004, p = .95, η2 = 0.00) or an interaction effect (F(1, 177) = 0.19, p =.66 , η2 = 0.001) in perceptions of competence. I found no significant group differences for perceptions of competence (all ps >.58). The findings suggest that if an individual expresses feelings of being an imposter, those around them may view that individual as less intelligent, possibly reinforcing the imposter’s self-perceptions.