Women, early-career academics more likely to feel like 'impostors' in disciplines that prize brilliance, study finds
New study uncovers obstacle to certain groups' professional advancement
in academia

Date:
August 5, 2021
Source:
New York University
Summary:
The more an academic discipline is perceived to require raw talent
or 'brilliance' for success, the more both women and early-career
academics feel professionally inadequate -- like 'impostors'
-- finds a new study of U.S. academics by a team of psychology
researchers.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The more an academic discipline is perceived to require raw talent or "brilliance" for success, the more both women and early-career academics
feel professionally inadequate -- like "impostors" -- finds a new study
of U.S.

academics by a team of psychology researchers.


==========================================================================
The results, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology,
were especially pronounced among women from racial and ethnic groups
that are traditionally underrepresented in higher education and academia
(i.e., Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino/a, American Indian
or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander).

"Based on previous research, it is likely that women from these groups
have stronger impostor feelings in brilliance-oriented fields because
they are targeted by negative gender, racial, and ethnic stereotypes
about their intellect," says Melis Muradoglu, a New York University
doctoral candidate and the lead author of the paper.

"Many high-achieving individuals feel inadequate despite evidence
of their competence and success," adds Andrei Cimpian, a professor in
NYU's Department of Psychology and the paper's senior author. "Our study
shows these sentiments are more likely to emerge in certain contexts
-- namely, those where brilliance is emphasized -- so efforts should
be focused on how higher education can create environments where all
academics feel capable of succeeding." Earlier research by Cimpian
and his colleagues found that men are more likely than are women to
be perceived as "brilliant," while another study he co- authored with
Princeton University's Sarah-Jane Leslie revealed that women and African Americans are underrepresented in careers where success is perceived to
depend on high levels of intellectual ability.

In the Journal of Educational Psychology work, Muradoglu, Cimpian,
and Leslie, along with the University of Edinburgh's Zachary Horne and
Victoria University of Wellington's Matthew Hammond, sought to better understand how the "impostor phenomenon," or a feeling of intellectual inadequacy despite evidence of competence and success, is manifested in academia, where intellectual ability is at a high premium.



==========================================================================
To do so, they analyzed survey responses of nearly 5,000 academics
(faculty [tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track], postdoctoral
fellows, medical residents, and graduate students) from a total of nine
public and private U.S.

universities and representing more than 80 fields. These included the
natural and social sciences, the humanities, and medicine.

The survey asked participants to rate their level of experiences of
impostor feelings (for example, "Sometimes I'm afraid others will discover
how much knowledge or ability I really lack") and their field's brilliance orientation (for example, "Personally, I think that being a top scholar of
[my discipline] requires a special aptitude that just can't be taught").

Overall, they found that the more a field was perceived to require "brilliance," or raw talent, for success by the study's participants,
the more women and early-career academics (that is, graduate students
and postdoctoral fellows) reported feeling like impostors relative to
other groups.

Moreover, impostor feelings in fields perceived to value brilliance
were especially strong among women from racial and ethnic groups that
are traditionally underrepresented in academia.

In addition, regardless of gender, career stage, race or ethnicity,
academics who reported more intense impostor feelings also reported less belonging in their field (that is, less of a sense of being connected
to and accepted by colleagues) and less confidence in their ability
to succeed in the future, pointing to potential ways in which impostor experiences may limit academics' success.

The researchers stress that while the impostor phenomenon is often
understood and portrayed as an individual affliction, the findings
illustrate instead that impostor experiences are a function of the
contexts that academics navigate.

This research was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science
Foundation (BCS-1530669 and BCS-1733897).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by New_York_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Melis Muradoglu, Zachary Horne, Matthew D. Hammond, Sarah-Jane
Leslie,
Andrei Cimpian. Women--particularly underrepresented minority
women--and early-career academics feel like impostors in fields
that value brilliance.. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2021;
DOI: 10.1037/ edu0000669 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210805124605.htm

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