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.
Open to all Social Sciences staff and students.
Location
Round the Green Table in Psychology, 6th floor of the Copland building, New Cavendish Street Campus
About the speaker
Devasmita Chakraverty, PhD
Devasmita Chakraverty, PhD, is Associate Professor of Higher Education at the Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). She has been internationally recognized as one of the prolific publishers of peer-reviewed empirical research on the impostor phenomenon, popularly known as impostor syndrome. Dr. Chakraverty has actively worked in this area since 2017, published her research in various peer-reviewed international journals (such as CBE- Life Sciences Education; Violence and Gender; and BMC Medical Education), and spoken about her work, for example, at the University of Michigan; The Graduate School of Natural Sciences, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany; Princeton University Graduate Society of Women Engineers; Penn Society of Women Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania; Women at Expedia Leading and Learning in Seattle; the National Cancer Institute; IBM Research; and Microsoft Corporation. Dr. Chakraverty has a PhD in Science Education (University of Virginia) and Master of Public Health (University of Washington). Prior to IIMA, she was a faculty member at Washington State University. Dr. Chakraverty writes about her research @DevasmitaTweets and can be reached at [email protected].
