Echoes of Doubt. The Impostor Phenomenon as an Internalized Barrier for Educational Advancement

The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) represents a popular research topic among scholars in various disciplines, frequently approached through a lens of individualization and pathologization. This study explores its relevance within the educational domain and contextualizes the IP by examining its association with social group membership along the dimensions of gender, immigration origin, and socioeconomic status. Providing empirical insights into the implications of the IP for social upward mobility through educational gains, this study addresses two research questions: (1) “who is particularly affected by the IP?” and (2) “is the IP negatively associated with educational efficacy beliefs and educational aspirations?”. To investigate these questions, the study applies a sociological framework for understanding the IP from a lens of social theory and examines its social stratification drawing on data from a register-based data collection among German adolescents aged 15-18 (n=4,697). The results of linear regression and probability models for three dependent variables show that (1) the IP is positively associated with disadvantaged social group membership, whereas it is negatively associated with two drivers for educational upward mobility, namely (2) educational efficacy beliefs and (3) educational aspirations. These findings suggest that the IP can undermine opportunities for social upward mobility by reinforcing internalized notions of inadequacy and not belonging to higher educational spheres. As individuals from disadvantaged social groups are more susceptible to the IP, which is associated with lower confidence in educational abilities and reduced pursuit of higher education, the IP appears to constitute an internalized barrier to upward social mobility. These results highlight the societal role of the IP, emphasize the value of understanding it from a sociological perspective, and demonstrate the importance of analyzing it through a lens of social stratification, both within and beyond the educational domain.