How to Know You’re Not a Phony

Impostor syndrome can certainly harm your happiness. Here are three ways to get over it.

Excerpt: "I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people,” wrote John Steinbeck in his private journal when he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 epic novel about a family fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl during the Depression to seek a better future in California.

You might think he was simply experiencing momentary self-doubt but, informed by my work as an academic and writer, I see a hint of something more insidious, which plagues many people of great intellect and erudition: impostor syndrome. For many of these high achievers, the more plaudits they receive, the more they worry that they’re putting one over on everyone.

You don’t even have to be a genius to feel like an impostor. In today’s environment, when people are assiduously cultivating an image on social media that accentuates the positive and buries the negative, anyone can be made to feel they’re a failure and a phony. If you worry about this too, I have some good news for you: The fact that you have the worry means you probably aren’t a phony; the true phony is convinced they’re not one. Even so, suffering from impostor syndrome is certainly deleterious to your happiness. But you can do something about that.

The condition was first described in 1978 by two psychologists in the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice as the common affliction in which people who possess real skills and knowledge secretly believe they’re inadequate or incompetent. The authors of the study found evidence that many high-achieving women felt insecurity about their abilities—“an internal experience of intellectual phoniness.” Later research found that this phenomenon applied not just to women or to any particular demographic group; “impostor phenomenon,” as they labeled it (syndrome was a later refinement), was something anyone could experience. (One exception is age—older people experience it less than younger adults.)

A number of tests have been validated for impostor syndrome. One is theClance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, which asks respondents whether they agree with such statements as “I’m afraid people important to me may find out that I’m not as capable as they think I am.” (You can get an idea of how you score on the scale by using a slimmed-down online survey.)

By testing, researchers find that certain personalities tend to experience the syndrome more than others. People high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness are more afflicted than others.

Perhaps not surprisingly, introverts are prone to feeling fake more than extroverts (who tend toward narcissism).

Perfectionists typically feel like phonies, because they’re so focused on their own perceived errors."