Why we should move beyond treating the Impostor Phenomenon as categorical construct and instead adopt the continuous approach
- 1Psychological Assessment and Differential Psychology, Department of Psychology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg , ,
Abstract
The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is a psychological trait that receives increasing interest across study disciplines. Although the IP is conceptualized as an individual difference variable that describes expressions on a continuum from low to high expressions, some studies still treat the IP as categorical. One consequence of this approach is that prevalence rates are estimated based on arbitrary and unvalidated cutoffs. I discuss the theoretical and methodological flaws of this approach, which are also evident when considering findings from three recent meta-analyses of the IP. Further, I suggest adopting the continuous approach to the IP and illustrate, based on data from 137 samples (N = 22,552), that aims such as testing differences between populations (i.e., students and employees) and whether the IP increased over time can be well addressed using distributional parameters. I discuss implications of this approach for the field.
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BibTeX
@article{brauer2026should,
title = {{Why we should move beyond treating the Impostor Phenomenon as categorical construct and instead adopt the continuous approach}},
author = {Kay Brauer},
journal = {Frontiers in psychology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1991425},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13716722},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Why we should move beyond treating the Impostor Phenomenon as categorical construct and instead adopt the continuous approach
AU - Kay Brauer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
JO - Frontiers in psychology
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1991425
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13716722
AB - The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is a psychological trait that receives increasing interest across study disciplines. Although the IP is conceptualized as an individual difference variable that describes expressions on a continuum from low to high expressions, some studies still treat the IP as categorical. One consequence of this approach is that prevalence rates are estimated based on arbitrary and unvalidated cutoffs. I discuss the theoretical and methodological flaws of this approach, which are also evident when considering findings from three recent meta-analyses of the IP. Further, I suggest adopting the continuous approach to the IP and illustrate, based on data from 137 samples (N = 22,552), that aims such as testing differences between populations (i.e., students and employees) and whether the IP increased over time can be well addressed using distributional parameters. I discuss implications of this approach for the field.
SN - 1664-1078
ER -