"Fighting an uphill battle": Exploring how language is framed to describe the impostor phenomenon using metaphors

Date 26 November 2025
Time 1 - 2pm
Location On campus
Westminster Students sat around table talking

Open to all Social Sciences staff and students.

Impostor phenomenon occurs when successful people disbelieve their success, attributing it to luck or other external factors unrelated to their ability or competence. Using conceptual metaphor theory, this US-based study conducted a secondary analysis of 410 semi-structured interviews (62 male) with PhD or MD students, postdoctorates, faculty members, residents, physicians, and scientists outside academia, experiencing impostor phenomenon. Qualitative text of 2.2 million words was generated and analyzed using hybrid (inductive/deductive) coding. A number of metaphor families were identified as most widely used when framing responses to questions on the impostor phenomenon. This includes war metaphors (fighting an uphill battle); sport metaphors (playing in an unequal field); health metaphors (suffering from a condition without a cure); and animal metaphors (feeling like a fish out of water), among others. Metaphorical representations of impostor phenomenon are unexplored but useful in designing future interventions to help people manage it better through training in conscious language framing.

Location

Round the Green Table in Psychology, 6th Floor – Copland Building, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6UW

About the speakers