The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It

by Valerie Young

  16. K. M. Hayes and S. F. Davis, “Interpersonal Flexibility, Type A individuals, and the Impostor Phenomenon,” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 31 (1993): 323–25.

  17. Deborah Tannen, “Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why,” Harvard Business Review, September 1, 1995.

  18. Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, no. 5 (1995): 797–811.

  19. Jennifer Steele and Nalini Ambady, “ ‘Math Is Hard!’ The Effect of Gender Priming on Women’s Attitudes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42, no. 4 (2006): 428–36; and Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Steven J. Heine, “Exposure to Scientific Theories Affects Women’s Math Performance,” Science 314, no. 5798 (October 20, 2006): 435.

  20. Mary C. Murphy, Claude M. Steele, and Janes J. Gross, “Signaling Threat: How Situational Cues Affect Women in Math, Science, and Engineering Settings,” Psychological Science 18, no. 10 (2007): 878–85.

  21. P. G. Davies, S. J. Spencer, and C. M. Steele, “Clearing the Air: Identity Safety Moderates the Effects of Stereotype Threat on Women’s Leadership Aspirations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88, no. 2 (2005): 276–87.

  22. Sabine C. Koch, Stephanie M. Müller, and Monika Sieverding, “Women and Computers: Effects of Stereotype Threat on Attribution of Failure,” Computers & Education 51, no. 4 (December 2008): 1795.

  23. P. G. Davies et al., “Consuming Images: How Television Commercials That Elicit Stereotype Threat Can Restrain Women Academically and Professionally,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 12 (2002): 1615–28.

  24. Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African-Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, no. 5 (November 1995): 797–811.

  25. Jean-Claude Croizet and Theresa Claire, “Extending the Concept of Stereotype to Social Class: The Intellectual Underperformance of Students from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24, no. 6 (June 1995): 588–94.

  26. Anne M. Koenig and Alice H. Eagly, “Stereotype Threat in Men on a Test of Social Sensitivity,” Sex Roles 52, nos. 7–8 (2008): 489–96.

  27. Jeff Stone et al., “Stereotype Threat Effects on Black and White Athletic Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, no. 6 (1999): 1213–27.

  28. Margaret Shih, Todd L. Pittinsky, and Nalini Ambady, “Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance,” Psychological Science 10 (1999): 80–83; and Margaret Shih, Todd L. Pittinsky, and Amy Trahan, “Domain-Specific Effects of Stereotypes on Performance,” Self and Identity 5: 1–14.

  29. “The Supergirl Dilemma: Girls Grapple with the Mounting Pressure of Expectations,” nationwide survey of school-age children conducted for Girls Inc. by Harris Interactive, 2006.

  30. Judith Warner, “Women in Charge, Women Who Charge,” New York Times op-ed, June 5, 2008.

  31. Adrienne Rich, Of Women Born, reissue (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).

  [4]

  Hiding Out

  1. Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice 15, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 1-8; Clance et al., “Impostor Phenomenon in an Interpersonal/Social Context: Origins and Treatment,” Women & Therapy 16, no. 4 (1995): 79–96.

  2. Ellyn Spragins, What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self (New York: Crown Archetype, 2006).

  3. Donovan Webster, “The Eliot Spitzer Question: Are You an Impostor? Why Do Some Successful Men Self-destruct When They Reach the Top? Are They Phony, Hypomanic, or Just Plain Scared?” Best Life, August 2008.

  4. Gerald Weinstein, Education of the Self: A Trainers Manual (Amherst, Mass.: Mandala Press, 1976).

  5. Julie K. Norem, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Pessimism to Harness Your Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak (New York: Basic Books, 2003); and Susan Pinker, “Feeling Like a Fraud,” Globe and Mail, June 2, 2004: C1.

  [5]

  What Do Luck, Timing, Connections, and Personality Really Have to Do with Success?

  1. Marlo Thomas and Friends, The Right Words at the Right Time (New York: Atria Books, 2002), 5.

  2. Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, and Andrew D. Henderson, “A Random Search for Excellence: Why ‘Great Company’ Research Delivers Fables and Not Facts,” Deloitte Development 2009.

  3. Robin Roberts, From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, reprint ed. (New York: Hyperion, 2008), xiii.

  4. Shannon McCaffrey on Ivanka Trump’s presentation at the Glazer-Kennedy Marketing Super Conference, April 2009, Shannon’s Marketing Implementer Newsletter, June 2009.

  5. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Dell: 2006).

  [6]

  The Competence Rule Book for Mere Mortals

  1. Credit for this saying goes to motivational speaker Mike Litman.

  2. James Bach, “Good Enough Quality: Beyond the Buzzword,” Computer 30, no. 8 (August 1997): 96–98.

  3. K. A. Ericsson, et al., eds. Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 658–706.

  4. J. McGrath Cahoon, Vivek Wadhwa, and Lesa Mitchell, “Are Women Entrepreneurs Different Than Men?” A study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation 2010.

  5. J. Evans, “Imposter Syndrome? Women, Technology and Confidence,” Globe and Mail, June 6, 2001.

  6. The Supergirl Dilemma: Girls Grapple with the Mounting Pressure of Expectations, Girls Inc./Harris Interactive: 2006.

  7. “Tina Fey: From Spoofer to Movie Stardom,” Independent, March 19, 2010.

  [7]

  Responding to Failure, Mistakes, and Criticism

  1. Sharon Fried-Buchalter, “Fear of Success, Fear of Failure, and the Imposter Phenomenon: A Factor Analytic Approach to Convergent and Discriminant Validity,” Journal of Personality Assessment 58, no. 2 (1992): 368–79.

  2. C. S. Dweck and T. E. Goetz, “Attributions and Learned Helplessness,” in New Directions in Attribution Research, ed. J. Harvey, W. Ickes, and R. Kidd, vol. 2 (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1978).

  3. Deborah Phillips, “The Illusion of Incompetence Among Academically Competent Children,” Child Development 58 (1984): 1308–20.

  4. Betty Shanahan, “Authentic Women and Effective Engineers … Create the Future,” presentation, Michigan Technical University, November 19, 2008.

  5. S. Van Goozen et al., “Anger Proneness in Women: Development and Validation of the Anger Situation Questionnaire,” Aggressive Behavior 20 (1994): 79–100.

  6. Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007).

  7. Quoted in Marlo Thomas and Friends, The Right Words at the Right Time (New York: Atria Books, 2002), 48.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Karen Wright, “How to Take Feedback,” Psychology Today (March/April 2011).

  [8]

  Success and the Female Drive to Care and Connect

  1. “The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity,” Catalyst study, January 2004, http://catalyst.org/publication/82/the-bottom-line-connecting-corporate-performance-and-gender-diversity.

  2. Anna Fels, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives (New York: Pantheon, 2004).

  3. Suzie Mackenzie, “Talented, Clever, Sexy … and Guilty,” Guardian Unlimited, March 22, 1999, www.guardian.co.uk.

  4. “Spellbound,” Dateline, December 22, 2000.

  5. Mariah Burton Nelson, “Sisters Show How to Compete—and Care,” Newsday, September 11, 2001.

  6. Lee Anne Bell, “Something’s Wrong Here and It’s Not Me: Challenging the Dilemmas That Block Girl’s Succes
s,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 12, no. 2 (1989): 118–30.

  7. Georgia Sassen, “Success Anxiety in Women: A Constructivist Interpretation of Its Sources and Its Significance,” Harvard Business Review (1980).

  8. Carol Stocker, “When Even the Most Successful People Have a Gnawing Feeling They’re Fakes,” Boston Globe, March 22, 1986.

  9. Sheryl Sandberg, “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders,” speaking at TED Conference, December 21, 2010.

  10. M. C. Murphy, C. M. Steele, and J. J. Gross, “Signaling Threat: How Situational Cues Affect Women in Math, Science, and Engineering Settings,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 879–85.

  11. Clay Shirky, “A Rant About Women,” January 15, 2010, www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women.

  12. Richard L. Luftig and Marci L. Nichols, “An Assessment of the Social Status and Perceived Personality and School Traits of Gifted Students by Non-Gifted Peers,” Roeper Review 13, no. 3 (1991): 148–53.

  13. Kimberly Daubman and Harold Sigall, “Gender Differences in Perceptions of How Others Are Affected by Self-disclosure About Achievement,” Sex Roles 37, nos. 1–2 (1997): 73–89.

  14. Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, and Lei Lai, “Social Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations: Sometimes It Does Hurt to Ask,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103, no. 1 (May 2007): 84–103.

  15. Girl Scouts of USA study, “Change It Up! What Girls Say About Redefining Leadership, 2008.

  16. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, In the Company of Women; Indirect Aggression Among Women; Why We Hurt Each Other & How to Stop (New York: Tarcher, 2003), 53.

  [9]

  Is It “Fear” of Success or Something Else?

  1. Sharon Hadary, former founding executive director of the Center for Women’s Business Research, “Why Are Women-Owned Companies Smaller Than Men-Owned Companies?” Wall Street Journal post, May 17, 2010.

  2. Ann J. Brown, William Swinyard, and Jennifer Ogle, “Women in Academic Medicine: A Report of Focus Groups and Questionnaires, with Conjoint Analysis,” Journal of Women’s Health 10 (2003): 999–1008.

  3. J. McGath Cohoon, Vivek Wadhwa, and Lesa Mitchell, “Are Successful Women Entrepreneurs Different from Men?” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, May 2010.

  4. Lorraine S. Dyke and Steven A. Murphy, “How We Define Success: A Qualitative Study of What Matters Most to Women and Men,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 55, nos. 5–6 (2006): 357–71.

  5. Akira Miyake et al., “Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation,” Science 330, no. 1006 (November 26, 2010): 1234–37.

  6. Peggy McIntosh, “Feeling Like a Fraud: Part I,” Paper No. 37 (1989); “Feeling Like a Fraud: Part II,” Paper No. 18 (2002), Work in Progress Series, Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, Wellesley, Mass.

  7. Response to a question following a 2006 appearance at the Women’s High-Tech Coalition, a Silicon Valley group.

  8. “Leaders in a Global Economy: A Study of Executive Women and Men,” joint study by Catalyst, the Families and Work Institute, and the Center for Work and Family at Boston College, January 2003.

  9. Lin Chiat Chang and Robert M. Arkin, “Materialism as an Attempt to Cope with Uncertainty,” Psychology & Marketing 19, no. 5 (2002): 389–406.

  10. Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode, “The Psychological Consequences of Money,” Science 314, no. 5802 (November 17, 2006): 1154–56.

  11. Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” Science 319, no. 5870 (March 24 2008): 1687–88.

  12. Rosie O’Donnell interview conducted by Troy Roberts, CBS Sunday Morning, July 7, 2009.

  13. Mary Godwyn and Donna Stoddard, Minority Women Entrepreneurs: How Outsider Status Can Lead to Better Business Practices (Greenleaf, Stanford University Press, 2011).

  14. Gary S. Cross, Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1993).

  15. Daniel McGinn, “The Trouble with Lifestyle Entrepreneurs,” Inc., July 2005.

  16. “Chris Rock Is Ready to Rock Broadway,” interview by Harry Smith on CBS Sunday Morning, April 3, 2011.

  [10]

  Why “Fake It Till You Make It” Is Harder for Women—and Why You Must

  1. William Fleeson, “Towards a Structure- and Process-Integrated View of Personality: Traits as Density Distributions of States,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 6 (2001): 1011–27.

  2. Erica Heath, “Incompetents Who Sing Strengths Go Far,” Rocky Mountain News, March 25, 2006.

  3. Steve Schwartz, “No One Knows What the F*ck They’re Doing (or ‘The Three Types of Knowledge’),” https://blog.bridge-global.com/3-types-of-knowledge, February 9, 2010.

  4. Traci A. Giuliano et al., “An Empirical Investigation of Male Answer Syndrome,” paper presented at the 44th Annual Convention of the Southwestern Psychological Association, New Orleans, La., April 1998.

  5. Rebecca Solnit, “Men Who Explain Things,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2008.

  6. Newsweek on Campus, November 1985, 10.

  7. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  8. Deborah Tannen, Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work, (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1995).

  9. Jeanne Wolf, “You’ve Got to Be a Fighting Rooster,” Parade, June 15, 2008, 4–5.

  10. Steve Schwartz, “No One Knows What the F*ck They’re Doing (or ‘The 3 Types of Knowledge’).

  11. Robert Siegel, “Daniel Schorr: 90 Years in a Newsworthy Life,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, August 31, 2006.

  12. In the 1988 vice presidential debate between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, Bentsen was responsible for one of the most memorable moments of the campaign. When Quayle compared his length of time in the Senate to that of the late president John F. Kennedy, Bentsen, famously replied, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

  13. Video interview with Harry G. Frankfurt, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html.

  [11]

  Rethinking Risk Taking and Cultivating Chutzpah

  1. Jacqueline Reilly and Gerry Mulhern, “Gender Differences in Self-Estimated IQ: The Need for Care in Interpreting Group Data,” Personality and Individual Differences 18, no. 2 (1995): 368–73.

  2. Christine R. Harris, Michael Jenkins, and Dale Glaser, “Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why Do Women Take Fewer Risks Than Men?” Judgment and Decision Making 1, no. 1 (2006): 48–63.

  3. M. H. Matthews, “Gender, Home Range, and Environmental Cognition” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 12, no. 1 (1987): 43–50; and Making Sense of Place: Children’s Understanding of Large Scale Environments (Hertfordshire, U.K.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).

  4. Ruth Sunderland, “Women Hedgies Leave Guys in the Shade,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2009.

  5. Elke U. Weber, Ann-Renee Blais, and Nancy E. Betz, “A Domain Specific Risk-Attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 15 (2002): 263–90.

  6. Shamala Kumar and Carolyn M. Jagacinski, “Impostors Have Goals Too: The imposter Phenomenon and Its Relationship to Achievement Goal Theory,” Personality and Individual Differences 40, no. 1 (2006): 147–57.

  7. Mark McGwire, interview by Ken Burns, USA Today, April 23, 1999, 6W.

  8. Richard Corliss, “I Dream for a Living: Steven Spielberg, the Prince of Hollywood, Is Still a Little Boy at Heart,” Time, July 15, 1985.

  9. Stephen Shadegg, Clare Boothe Luce: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).

  10. James R. Haggerty, Wall Street Journal, Februar
y 19, 1999.

  11. Claudia Jessup, Supergirls: The Autobiography of an Outrageous Business (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Thanks to my friend Barbara Winter for turning me on to these women’s stories.

  12. Denzel Washington, interview by George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America, April 10, 2010.

  13. Elizabeth Alexander, interview by Erin Moriarty, 48 Hours, January 2009.

  14. Presentation-skills tips come from the training company Communispond.

  15. Helen Gurley Brown, I’m Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 67.

  16. Garrison Keillor, commencement address, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn., 2002.

  [12]

  Playing Big

  1. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love (New York, HarperCollins, 1992).

  2. Marlo Thomas and Friends, The Right Word at the Right Time (New York: Atria Books, 2002), 364.

  3. Steve Young, Great Failures of the Extremely Successful: Mistakes, Adversity, Failure, and Other Stepping Stones to Success (Los Angeles: Tallfellow Press, 2002), preface.

  4. Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, and Kathleen L. McGinn, “Constraints and Triggers: Situational Mechanics of Gender in Negotiation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89, no. 6 (December 2005): 951–65.

  5. Back in the early eighties a lot of my fellow students in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts created some groundbreaking educational materials. In our naïve desire to share and learn, many of us put our work out there for all to use. Not only did it never occur to us to copyright it, but more often than not, we never even put our names on the document! This list of rights was one of those wonderful documents that circulated among the students in my department at the time, most likely from the Education of the Self program. I’ve modified it over the years, but the true credit lies with its very wise, generous, and unrecognized creator.