4.68 GREATEST HITS - Why you should notice the paradox of imposter syndrome

With all those kind of caveats in place, what do I mean by the paradox of imposter syndrome? Now, some of you may have heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect before.

This is where people who have the highest abilities are most likely to feel like they're imposters.

And I did a little bit of reading around this.

There's some controversy around the original mathematics, the original analysis that demonstrated this as to whether it was a real effect or whether it was an artifact or not.

But essentially what they demonstrated was that if you were a high achieving person, you were much more likely to feel like an imposter than somebody who was not.

Everyone I work with are already in the kind of top end of educational experience, educational performance by virtue of the fact that they're either doing or have done a PhD.

I certainly see a very high rate of imposter syndrome amongst these people.

I don't have other people to compare them to, so I can't say it's necessarily more than the general population, but it's certainly a very high level for people who are objectively excellent at what they do.

The paradox that I've noticed, though, takes that one little step further.

It doesn't seem to me that it's just that people who are more capable are more likely to perceive themselves as imposters.

It's that these high achieving people who are having all these imposterish thoughts are also holding themselves to a standard that is not realistic.

So in my experience, most people are not criticising themselves for being a bit too average.

They are simultaneously telling themselves that they are worse than everybody else, that everyone else can do this more easily, everyone else is more successful than me.

And...

At the same time, they are telling themselves that they shouldn't find this difficult, that they should be able to write a good first draft first attempt, that they shouldn't need multiple redrafts, that they shouldn't get this much feedback.

And even when you kind of try and normalise those processes, that everyone writes a somewhat shoddy first draft, unless it's something they've written in many formats before, they somehow still believe that that's true, but that they shouldn't.

That they should be able to perform at this exceptionally high standard.

that they should be able to do things easily without too much effort and in a way that is pretty good quality first time.

Okay.

I want you to reflect.

Does that feel like your thinking? Are you holding these two really contradictory thoughts in your head? That you're not good enough, that you've convinced everybody that you are, but you've conned them in some way.

Yet at the same time, there's an expectation that you should be exceptional.

If that feels true to you, it's OK.

I see an awful lot in academia and I have some ideas as to where it comes from.

Now, this is not based in research, what I'm about to say.

With all those kind of caveats in place, what do I mean by the paradox of imposter syndrome? Now, some of you may have heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect before.

This is where people who have the highest abilities are most likely to feel like they're imposters.

And I did a little bit of reading around this.

There's some controversy around the original mathematics, the original analysis that demonstrated this as to whether it was a real effect or whether it was an artifact or not.

But essentially what they demonstrated was that if you were a high achieving person, you were much more likely to feel like an imposter than somebody who was not.

Everyone I work with are already in the kind of top end of educational experience, educational performance by virtue of the fact that they're either doing or have done a PhD.

I certainly see a very high rate of imposter syndrome amongst these people.

I don't have other people to compare them to, so I can't say it's necessarily more than the general population, but it's certainly a very high level for people who are objectively excellent at what they do.

The paradox that I've noticed, though, takes that one little step further.

It doesn't seem to me that it's just that people who are more capable are more likely to perceive themselves as imposters.

It's that these high achieving people who are having all these imposterish thoughts are also holding themselves to a standard that is not realistic.

So in my experience, most people are not criticising themselves for being a bit too average.

They are simultaneously telling themselves that they are worse than everybody else, that everyone else can do this more easily, everyone else is more successful than me.

And...

At the same time, they are telling themselves that they shouldn't find this difficult, that they should be able to write a good first draft first attempt, that they shouldn't need multiple redrafts, that they shouldn't get this much feedback.

And even when you kind of try and normalise those processes, that everyone writes a somewhat shoddy first draft, unless it's something they've written in many formats before, they somehow still believe that that's true, but that they shouldn't.

That they should be able to perform at this exceptionally high standard.

that they should be able to do things easily without too much effort and in a way that is pretty good quality first time.

Okay.

I want you to reflect.

Does that feel like your thinking? Are you holding these two really contradictory thoughts in your head? That you're not good enough, that you've convinced everybody that you are, but you've conned them in some way.

Yet at the same time, there's an expectation that you should be exceptional.

If that feels true to you, it's OK.

I see an awful lot in academia and I have some ideas as to where it comes from.

Now, this is not based in research, what I'm about to say.