Impostor phenomenon and motivation: women in higher education

By Ashley R. Vaughn, Gita Taasoobshirazi, Marcus Johnson. Studies in Higher Education, 2020

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT This article analyses the relationship between impostor phenomenon and motivation in academic women. These highly successful academics often express feelings of self-doubt, lack of belongingness, and incompetence, ideas echoed within motivation literature. This project establishes IP prevalence within 1,326 self-identified academic women and examines the relationship between IP and motivation (operationalized by measures from Expectancy-Value Theory, Attribution Theory, and Self-Determination Theory). Findings indicate elevated levels of IP amongst our female academic sample. Statistically significant relationships were observed between IP and measures of motivation, including negative relationships between IP and sense of relatedness, as well as IP and attributions of success and failure. Results also indicate a combination of feelings of competence and relatedness, attributions to luck, ability, ease, and effort, and both cost and utility values predict 57.6% of the variance in IP sum score. Implications for graduate and early career supports, as well as systemic and cultural changes are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cbe370dbb01859895355967c3d37b823255b04cf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Kathryn M. Kroeper
2. Matthew D. Hammond
3. M. Murphy
4. Elizabeth A. Canning
5. J. LaCosse

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Kathryn M. Kroeper
2. Sarah-Jane Leslie
3. M. Murphy
4. Andrei Cimpian
5. Elizabeth A. Canning
6. J. LaCosse

In Social Psychology

1. J. LaCosse
2. Sarah-Jane Leslie
3. M. Murphy
4. Andrei Cimpian

Citations in the corpus

• Women—particularly underrepresented minority women—and early-career academics feel like impostors in fields that value brilliance. (2021, background): “While concerns about one’s abilities may be relatively common among early-career academics regardless of setting or field (Vaughn et al., 2020), the environment of brilliance-oriented fields is likely to exaggerate them.”
• Feeling Like an Imposter: The Effect of Perceived Classroom Competition on the Daily Psychological Experiences of First-Generation College Students (2019, background): “To date, researchers have documented increased rates of imposter feelings among women (e.g., Clance & Imes, 1978; McGregor, Gee, & Posey, 2008; Vaughn et al., 2019) and racial minorities (e.g., Cokley et al., 2013; Dancy & Brown, 2011; Peteet, Brown, Lige, & Lanaway, 2015).”