Why we should move beyond treating the Impostor Phenomenon as categorical construct and instead adopt the continuous approach.

IF 3.8 3区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Frontiers in Psychology Pub Date : 2026-10-15 eCollection Date: 2026-01-01 DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1991425

Kay Brauer

引用次数: 0

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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为什么我们应该超越将冒名顶替现象视为分类结构，而是采用连续的方法。

冒名顶替现象（IP）是一种心理特征，在各个研究学科中受到越来越多的关注。虽然IP被定义为描述从低到高连续表达的个体差异变量，但一些研究仍然将IP视为分类。这种方法的一个后果是，患病率的估计是基于武断和未经证实的截止值。我讨论了这种方法在理论和方法上的缺陷，在考虑最近三项关于IP的荟萃分析的结果时，这些缺陷也很明显。此外，我建议对IP采用连续方法，并根据来自137个样本（N = 22,552）的数据说明，目的是测试人群（即学生和员工）之间的差异，以及IP是否随着时间的推移而增加，可以使用分布参数很好地解决。我将讨论这种方法对该领域的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Frontiers in Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

5.30

自引率

13.20%

发文量

7396

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.