[pessimizer]

It does. Women and minorities are primed to think that they suck anyway - and tech is a place where most of the ancient masters are white men. It takes a bit longer to learn to think of yourself as like those people, rather than a bargain replacement for them.

Everybody can feel like an impostor when objectively competent; it could have been your parents or your older brother who primed you to think that any success you have comes from faking it, but that's not the same as saying that sex or race has "absolutely nothing" to do with it.

[smsm42]

Impostor syndrom happens not because somebody was "primed", but because one knows one's own limits of competency and internal doubts better than anyone, but of course in others such things are not noticeable, so comparing oneself to others causes the person to self-doubt since everybody seems to be lacking internal struggles, deficiencies and doubts that are so clearly obvious to self.

Of course, various "positive discrimination" programs won't help this too, since once one belongs to a group which such a program targets, one has yet another - in this case, externally validated - cause to doubt if one's achievements are of one's own merit or were just bestowed by somebody else due to the fact of belonging to the targeted identity group. In this case, if the identity group is gender- or race-specific, of course this component is very prominent.

[cantankerous]

Yes! I find myself dealing with this issue really frequently. I have to remind myself that, while I can't see it, everybody's got their own internal crap they're working through and I just can't see it...so I need to stop comparing my internal bs to external achievements of others.

[nooneelse]

Absolutely. When I also derived that commonly known idea for myself (seems the only way to have a hope of internalizing it and having it stick), I tried to think of a pithy way to say it, so I would have a better chance of remembering it when in the moment. The version that won by being remembered the most, "They didn't take pictures of Lincoln's messy closets."

[wpietri]

If that's the case, then everybody would experience impostor syndrome equally; we are all more aware of our internal struggles than those of others.

Note that there are plenty of things one can do to fight structural sexism besides positive discrimination, so picking that out of the blue to discuss is a bit of red herring.

[smsm42]

Not really, the dependence on the external validation and on comparison with other people is different for different people, and so is the self-esteem and reflexiveness. So everybody would be feeling or not feeling it in a different way. The fact that some psychological problem has objective background does not mean everybody would have it the same way - people are different.

>>>> Note that there are plenty of things one can do to fight structural sexism besides positive discrimination, so picking that out of the blue to discuss is a bit of red herring.

I did not pick it "out of the blue", I chose it specifically because presence of such thing can support Impostor syndrome. I quite agree that there are better ways to go than discrimination, but I was not suggesting any and I wasn't discussing it, I was discussing possible causes for Impostor syndrome.

[Tuna-Fish]

We actually have good data on this. 4 studies have been made on the prevalence of the impostor syndrome, none of them revealed any difference between the genders, even in fields considered to be heavily male dominated. Beegee posted references higher up on this thread.

[wpietri]

Which study are you thinking is most relevant to this? I read the Langford and Clance paper (but not the source papers, and I didn't see anything that I would consider as "good data" for answering this question).

From what I read, I might go as far as saying we have some reason to think that impostor syndrome might be equally prevalent in men and women in tech. On the other hand, if research found the opposite, I could come up with a half-dozen reasons why that wouldn't be surprising.

And I didn't see anything related to impact. It could well be that in tech men and women experience it with the same frequency, but it has more impact for women (or other people easily perceived as outsiders).

[mnicole]

Likewise, I don't think a study that simply states that both genders are affected equally actually answers the question here; there's a depth that needs to be calculated, rather than just a yes/no.

The Langford study also says that men afflicted with Imposter Syndrome are much more likely to take risks than their female counterparts. I think that says a lot more about how women interpret themselves due to the societal expectations they mention in the beginning of the paper than the final results the study infers.

Do both genders feel this way? Yes. Are you less likely to act on something because of it? If you're a woman, yes.

[belorn]

What we have is one study that say that when faced with imposter syndrome, correlations show that women tend to have extra low impulsivity and a need for stability and order in their life. Men on other hand when facing imposter syndrome had extra high impulsivity with a low need for order and stability.

I don't see how either type of reaction can be consider good, bad, worse or better. Both has potential strong negative consequences. Too high impulsivity can lead to anything from death, bankruptcy, failure, or in rare occasions: success. Too low impulsivity can lead to an downward spiral, inaction, disadvantages, failure, or in rare occasions: success.