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The debate over whether imposter syndrome is a personal psychological condition or a systemic response to structural inequity has intensified significantly since 2021. Researchers, including Kevin Cokley and Ruchika Tulshyan, argue that for marginalised groups, imposter feelings often accurately reflect systemic barriers and double standards rather than cognitive distortion. Critics of the imposter syndrome framework argue it pathologises rational responses to inequitable environments. Both perspectives have research support and important practical implications.
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In 2021, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey published a Harvard Business Review article that immediately became one of the most-read pieces in the publication’s history. Its title was direct: Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. Its argument was provocative: that imposter syndrome, as commonly framed, is a concept that places the burden of fixing a structural problem on the individuals most harmed by it. Women, particularly women of colour, who feel like frauds in professional environments that were not designed for them are not experiencing cognitive distortion, Tulshyan and Burey argued. They are responding accurately to environments that consistently communicate that they do not fully belong.
This argument opened a debate that has since become one of the most significant in psychological research on imposter syndrome. On one side are researchers who maintain that imposter syndrome is a genuine psychological phenomenon characterised by cognitive distortion, regardless of the environment in which it occurs. On the other are those who argue that framing it as a cognitive distortion in all contexts misattributes systemic problems to individual psychology and makes individuals responsible for symptoms produced by unjust structures.
This article presents both positions fairly, examines the research evidence for each, and considers what the debate means practically for people experiencing imposter syndrome in various contexts.
The Original Framework and Its Assumptions
When Clance and Imes published their 1978 paper on the imposter phenomenon, they were studying a specific population: high-achieving White, middle-class women in academic and professional contexts in the United States. The paper’s central observation was that these women’s self-doubt was incongruent with their objective achievements. The word incongruent is doing significant work here: it assumes that the gap between internal self-assessment and external evidence is a distortion rather than an accurate perception.
Subsequent research, as documented by Kevin Cokley, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan and one of the most prominent researchers on imposter syndrome in marginalised populations, found that this incongruence assumption does not hold uniformly across groups. For people who face genuine discrimination, structural barriers, and double standards in their professional environments, the sense of not fully belonging may reflect an accurate perception of how the environment treats them rather than a distorted perception of their own competence.
Cokley’s own research found that for Black college students, the relationship between imposter syndrome and mental health outcomes was moderated by the degree of racial discrimination they reported experiencing. Students who experienced more discrimination showed imposter syndrome that was more closely linked to external conditions rather than to internal cognitive patterns. This finding is important: it suggests that for some populations, imposter feelings may be tracking a real environmental signal rather than distorting a benign one.
RESEARCH NOTE: The Racial Imposter Syndrome Research
Cokley et al. (2017) found that impostor feelings moderated and mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health outcomes among racial and ethnic minority college students. Students who experienced more discrimination showed stronger imposter feelings, consistent with the hypothesis that some imposter feelings in minority populations reflect responses to real environmental signals rather than pure cognitive distortion. This finding challenges the universal incongruence assumption of the original imposter syndrome framework.
The Case for Reconceptualisation
Tulshyan and Burey’s argument, and the broader case for reconceptualising imposter syndrome in structural terms, rests on several related claims. First, the individual-focused framing lets organisational systems and leaders off the hook for creating environments in which certain groups consistently feel unwelcome or undervalued. Telling a Black woman that she has imposter syndrome redirects attention from the microaggressions, exclusions, and double standards she is navigating toward a psychological condition she should individually address.
Second, the concept of impostorisation, introduced by critical scholars to describe institutional practices that make people feel like impostors, shifts the source of the experience away from individual psychology to institutional behaviour. Research on workplace culture and belonging consistently finds that environments with low psychological safety, unclear inclusion signals, and inconsistent application of standards across demographic groups reliably produce the kinds of self-doubt that imposter syndrome describes, without requiring any individual cognitive vulnerability.
Third, the treatment implications differ significantly. If imposter syndrome is primarily a cognitive distortion, individual psychological intervention is appropriate. If it is partly or primarily a response to a hostile or inequitable environment, the appropriate response includes environmental change rather than only individual treatment. Treating the individual while leaving the environment unchanged is treating symptoms rather than causes.
EXPERIENCE NOTE
Psychologists working in diversity and inclusion contexts describe a specific challenge: clients from marginalised groups often accept the imposter syndrome framing readily because it validates their experience while locating it within a treatable individual condition. The risk is that this framing can inadvertently reduce the person’s recognition of the environmental factors contributing to their experience and their entitlement to name those factors as problematic. Good practice in this area involves validating both the psychological experience and the structural context without reducing either to the other.
The Case for Maintaining the Psychological Framework
Defenders of the original imposter syndrome framework make several counterarguments. First, the psychological reality of the experience is not negated by acknowledging its environmental contributors. A person who has accurate evidence of discrimination and responds with global self-doubt about their competence is experiencing both a genuine environmental problem and a genuine psychological one, and treating only the environmental problem leaves the psychological dimension unaddressed.
Second, research on imposter syndrome across diverse populations finds it in groups without obvious structural disadvantage, including White men in majority-White, majority-male environments. The universality of the experience across groups without structural barriers to belonging suggests that cognitive vulnerability factors operate independently of structural context, even if structural factors can amplify them.
Third, the clinical reality is that people arrive in therapy and coaching seeking help with a specific internal experience. Whatever the structural contributors, the internal experience of persistent self-doubt, fear of exposure, and inability to internalise success causes genuine suffering and responds to psychological intervention. The debate about structural versus individual causation does not resolve the question of how to help someone who is currently suffering from the experience.
What the Debate Means Practically
The most clinically and practically useful position is that both levels of analysis are true and necessary simultaneously. Imposter syndrome involves genuine psychological patterns that cause genuine suffering and respond to genuine psychological intervention. It also frequently occurs in contexts where environmental factors are contributing to and maintaining the experience. Effective treatment and effective organisational practice require attending to both.
For individuals, this means the psychological work on attribution, self-compassion, and imposter belief patterns is valuable and necessary. It does not require denying or minimising the environmental factors that are also real. Both can be true. You can work on your own psychological relationship with your competence and simultaneously advocate for structural changes in environments that produce imposter feelings through double standards, exclusion, and inequitable treatment.
For organisations, the debate has a clear implication: imposter syndrome education and intervention programs that focus exclusively on individual psychological change while leaving workplace culture unaddressed are addressing only half the problem and may inadvertently communicate that the problem is individual rather than structural. Research-informed organisational approaches include both psychological support for individuals and structural changes to create environments where the belonging signal is genuinely consistent and equitable.
KEY TAKEAWAY
The debate about whether imposter syndrome is personal or systemic is not an either/or question. Both levels of causation operate simultaneously. Genuine psychological patterns of attribution distortion and conditional self-worth cause genuine suffering and respond to psychological treatment. Environmental factors, including discrimination, inequitable standards, and exclusionary cultures, amplify and sometimes generate imposter feelings that are not purely cognitive distortions. Comprehensive treatment and organisational practice must address both levels rather than choosing between them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible that someone’s imposter syndrome is just an accurate response to their environment?
Yes, this is precisely the point Cokley and others make about populations facing discrimination. For people in environments that consistently communicate that they do not belong, the sense of not fully belonging may be accurate rather than distorted. The clinical judgment about what constitutes accurate perception versus cognitive distortion requires contextual awareness of the environment, not only the individual.
Does the systemic argument mean imposter syndrome should not be treated individually?
No, the systemic argument means that individual treatment should not be the only response, and that structural change is also necessary. Individual treatment for the psychological dimension remains appropriate even when structural factors are present. Both levels of intervention are needed, not one instead of the other.
Why is there controversy about whether imposter syndrome affects minorities more?
Cokley’s research review found significant methodological problems in many studies claiming to show higher rates in minority populations. Some studies did not include comparison groups, others conflated imposter syndrome with responses to discrimination, and several attribution errors in secondary literature created a narrative that the primary research did not fully support. The evidence suggests imposter syndrome is present across all demographic groups, with different contextual factors shaping its expression.
Should organisations run imposter syndrome workshops?
Research on organisational imposter syndrome interventions suggests that workshops focused only on individual psychology have limited effectiveness and potentially problematic implications if they implicitly frame what is partly a structural problem as solely individual. More effective approaches combine psychological education with structural changes to improve belonging, reduce double standards, and provide equitable access to sponsorship and development.
Does acknowledging systemic factors reduce the effectiveness of psychological treatment?
Not if done carefully. Validating both the psychological experience and its environmental contributors, without reducing one to the other, is possible and is good clinical practice. Acknowledging that the environment is contributing to imposter feelings does not prevent working on the individual’s attributional patterns and self-worth. Both are real. Both can be addressed.
