People who systematically underestimate themselves and their own performance suffer from the so-called Impostor Phenomenon. They think that any success is due to external circumstances or just luck and chance. Those people live in constant fear that their “deception” will be exposed.

It is common for people to question their abilities now and again. A healthy amount of reflection and

self-doubt can protect a person from acting impulsively. However, there are people who are permanently

plagued by a massive amount of self-doubt despite delivering a good performance. They think that all of

their successes are not a product of their skill or hard work, instead they attribute their own successes to external circumstances, for example, to luck and chance, or believe that their performance is massively

overestimated by others. Failures, on the other hand, are always internalised as the result of their own

shortcomings.

Psychologists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg examined the topic for the first time

under real-life conditions. Seventy-six participants completed a range of intelligence tests and received

positive feedback on them, regardless of their actual performance. They were then asked why they think

they did so well.

The study showed two things: First, the self-reported degree of Impostor Phenomenon is not related

to actual measured intelligence or performance. Secondly, the test supported the assumption that people

with a tendency to exhibit the Impostor Phenomenon devalue their objectively measured performance and attribute positive results to external causes such as luck and chance, but not to their own abilities. These results are also completely unrelated to age and gender.

A permanent underestimation of one’s own abilities is often accompanied by the fear that this supposed intellectual deception will be exposed sooner or later and that they will pay the price for this. The Impostor Phenomenon was first described in 1978 by US psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. They observed that there is a particularly high number of successful women who do not think they are very intelligent. The Impostor Phenomenon is not defined as a mental illness. However, people who suffer from it show a higher vulnerability to depression.