Imposter Syndrome: When Success Feels Like Getting Away with Something

You got the promotion, or the offer, or the compliment from someone whose opinion matters. For a moment it feels good. Then another feeling moves in, quieter but more persistent: They made a mistake. I’m not actually this good. It’s only a matter of time before they see it.

The thought does not respond well to evidence. Your track record is right there — projects delivered, problems solved, reviews that went well — and none of it quite lands. Each success gets filed under luck, timing or other people not looking closely enough. This article looks at why that happens, what the research says, and how to let the evidence count for a little more.

A fictional example

The following is an illustrative example, not a real person’s story.

Noor has been a software engineer for six years and was recently promoted to lead a small team. Her manager described her as one of the strongest technical contributors in the department.

• What she thinks: “They needed someone for the role and I was just available. I’ve been getting by on asking the right questions, not on really knowing things. If I lead this team, they’ll see I don’t have answers.”
• What she feels: a mixture of pride and dread, a queasy sense of being in the wrong seat, an urge to over-prepare for everything.
• What she does: works late revising decisions she has already made, volunteers for low-visibility tasks to avoid exposure, and deflects praise by crediting the team — not as genuine generosity, but as a shield.

Noor’s competence is visible to everyone except Noor.

What researchers call this

In 1978, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described the impostor phenomenon in a study of 150 high-achieving women who believed their success was undeserved despite strong evidence to the contrary [1]. The term has since been studied in men and women across professions.

A 2020 systematic review of 62 studies found that around 25% of people across the samples reported significant impostor feelings, with moderate correlations with anxiety and depression [2]. The prevalence varied widely — from 9% to 82% depending on the population and the measure used — so the 25% figure is a rough central estimate, not a precise rate.

The pattern is not a diagnosis. It is not in the DSM. But it is common enough, and distressing enough, to be worth understanding.

The attribution problem

What keeps the pattern going is not low self-esteem in the usual sense. It is a systematic way of sorting evidence.

• Success gets attributed to luck, timing, charm, or other people’s low standards. “I got through the interview because they asked easy questions.”
• Failure gets attributed to ability. “That bug I missed proves I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

This means the evidence is rigged. Good outcomes do not update the belief, because they are explained away. Bad outcomes confirm it. Researchers have documented this pattern directly: in three studies, people with impostor feelings presented themselves more modestly and attributed their success to external factors, even when their actual performance matched or exceeded their peers’ [6].

A review of the impostor phenomenon describes the resulting cycle: the person works extremely hard to avoid being exposed, succeeds, attributes the success to the effort rather than ability, and concludes they need the same extreme effort next time [5].

Who experiences it

The original study focused on women, and some later work found higher rates in women and ethnic-minority groups [3]. But the systematic review noted that the gender difference was not consistent across studies, and it appeared in men, women, students, doctors, academics and executives [2]. In a study of employees, impostor feelings correlated with neuroticism and negatively with self-efficacy, suggesting it sits alongside broader personality traits related to self-doubt [4].

It is worth noting that context matters. People who are visibly different in their workplace — by gender, ethnicity, age or background — may have rational reasons to feel scrutinized, and labeling their experience as “impostor syndrome” can locate the problem in the person rather than the environment.

A few things that make it worse

• New roles. Each transition resets the evidence. Noor’s six years of engineering experience feel irrelevant in her new role as a lead.
• Comparison with the edited versions of others. You see your own internal mess — the uncertainty, the re-reading, the Googling — and compare it with other people’s polished output.
• Cultures of effortless success. If your workplace rewards people who appear to find things easy, admitting effort can feel like admitting deficiency.
• Perfectionism. If the standard is “know everything, never stumble,” then ordinary human gaps feel like exposures.

A reflection exercise: the evidence audit

When the impostor feeling is loud, try writing answers to these:

1. Name three things you did this month that required skill, not luck. Be specific: not “the project went well” but “I caught the data issue before it reached the client.”
2. When you attribute something to luck, test it. Would luck have produced the same result for someone with no training? If not, skill is involved.
3. What would you say to a colleague describing your track record? Most people find they would reassure the colleague. The question is why you do not extend the same reading to yourself.
4. What is the actual evidence that you are about to be exposed? Not the feeling — the evidence. If there is none, notice that.

The goal is not to inflate your self-assessment. It is to notice the pattern — success discounted, failure weighted — and correct for it, the way you would correct for a bias in any other judgment.

When to look for more support. If the belief that you are a fraud is persistent and distressing, if it leads you to avoid opportunities, overwork to the point of burnout, or feel anxious most of the time, a psychologist or therapist can help. CBT approaches work directly on the attributional patterns that keep impostor feelings going. If you are in distress or having thoughts of harming yourself, contact emergency services or a crisis line now: in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123; in the US, call or text 988.

Related situations

Imposter syndrome often coexists with other forms of anxious self-monitoring. If a mistake at work feels like it reveals who you really are, see when a small work mistake feels like a verdict on you. If you replay your contributions to a meeting afterwards, why do I replay conversations after they end? describes the same review process. And if the thought “they’ll find out” is strongest when starting something new, the anxiety of starting a new job looks at that transition.