The Psychology of Self-Doubt
13 Dec 2021 · 49 min
In this episode of Hidden Brain, host Shankar Vedantam explores the imposter phenomenon—what psychologists call the feeling that one is a fraud despite evident success. The conversation opens with Simone Biles’ withdrawal from the 2021 Olympics, using her high‑profile self‑doubt to illustrate that even world‑class performers can be shaken. Vedantam then interviews psychologist Kevin Coakley, who shares his own early career insecurities as a newly hired assistant professor, and defines the imposter phenomenon as the persistent belief that one’s achievements are undeserved. The discussion maps four dimensions of self‑doubt, illustrated with clips from Viola Davis, Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou, and Tom Hanks, showing how people worry about others’ inflated expectations, fear being exposed as a fraud, experience harsh internal criticism, and over‑prepare or procrastinate. Coakley reviews empirical work: the original 1978 Clance & Imes study on high‑achieving women, mixed gender findings across his own studies, and surprising racial patterns where Asian‑American students reported higher imposter feelings than African‑American or Latinx peers. He links imposter feelings to poorer GPA for women, higher anxiety and depression, and connects the phenomenon to stereotype threat. Practical remedies are offered: personal tactics such as daily “self‑monitoring” (googling one’s citations), keeping a work diary, and reframing setbacks; organizational actions like managers sharing their own vulnerabilities; and classroom interventions (e.g., Greg Walton’s Stanford program that normalizes setbacks for Black students). The episode also reflects on the paradox that self‑doubt can fuel achievement—citing Angelou, Einstein, and the “John Henryism” metaphor—while warning against over‑driving to the point of mental‑health collapse. The conversation ends with Coakley characterising self‑doubt as more a friend than an enemy when balanced, and emphasizes the need for humility in high‑stakes decisions, illustrated by a brief digression on the Iraq‑WMD misjudgment. Throughout, sponsor reads are interspersed but do not affect the core content.
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At the Olympic Games in 2021, one athlete arrived in Tokyo with a mountain of expectations on her 4-foot-8-inch frame. 5 medals in Rio, 4 of them gold, and could do even better than that this time around here in Tokyo. If you don't think that that's hard, then you really don't understand gymnastics. People didn't just expect her to win gold medals in gymnastics. They expected magic. I mean, she has just set herself so far apart from the rest of the field, and not just on the competition floor. Simone Biles representing the United States of America. And Biles' pursuit of history starts tonight. 4 days into the Games, Simone Biles pulled out of the competition. I've just never felt like this going into a competition before, and I tried to go out here and have fun and Warm-up in the back went a little bit better, but then once I came out here, I was like, no, mental's not there. The world was stunned. An athlete with seemingly otherworldly powers was struggling. From the outside looking in, it seemed hard to understand. And it raised a question: if a world champion can be toppled by these emotions, what does it mean for the rest of us? This week on Hidden Brain, the strange psychology of the voice inside our heads that says, the world may think you are amazing, but you are really just a fraud. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/hiddenbrain. Thanks for watching. Working as a dedicated Fidelity advisor, I always ask, what's important to you? I'll look at those priorities and goals alongside your full financial picture to build a comprehensive plan designed to help grow and protect your wealth. With proactive portfolio insights and an eye on taxes, I'm here to help you make the most of your money. I'm Laura Maxwell, and I'm a dedicated Fidelity advisor. Learn more at fidelity.com/wealth. Investment minimums apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. It's hard to see ourselves clearly. This is true in all manner of situations, but it can be especially true when we are confronting a challenge. At such moments, many of us start to doubt ourselves. We think we are unequal to the task. At the University of Texas at Austin, Kevin Coakley researches the psychology of self-doubt. He studies the corrosive effects these doubts can have on our well-being, but also how we might turn our internal misgivings into an ally. Kevin Coakley, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thank you for having me.
Kevin, you're a psychologist who studies the phenomenon of self-doubt, yet you yourself have not been immune to such doubts. I want to take you back to when you were 29 years old. You had just completed your PhD. You had begun teaching. Can you describe the fears that went through your mind as you prepared for class each day?
Yes. I was a young assistant professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. And I can recall very vividly the feeling that I had walking the hallways of the psychology department there and seeing on the walls these publications by my new colleagues. very accomplished colleagues. And I had come out of graduate school with having only one publication. I believe that I was hired on the basis that people saw potential in me, particularly in terms of my teaching.
Uh-huh.
But I knew that I had a lot to prove in terms of research. And so when I was walking those hallways, I had this sense of, wow, like, can I do this? And it was incredibly stressful. It sort of had me doubting whether in fact I belonged, whether I deserved to be there. And I was aware that I was one of only a few Black professors at the university.
Mm-hmm.
And so I did not want to do anything that would result in students seeing me or believing me to not be qualified to be the professor. So I made sure that I wore sports coats and wore ties. to class every day. I had a briefcase that I bought because in my mind, a professor carries a briefcase. And so I was really working hard to project an image of expertise and authority that I imagined professors needing to represent.
I understand that one way your self-doubt manifested was that you were worried about misspeaking in class, saying something wrong. And I'm wondering, when you imagine making a mistake like that, What was the worst-case scenario that ran through your head?
Speaking in front of a large introductory class, psychology class, I thought, man, I cannot stand here and misspeak. I need to make sure that I'm conjugating, you know, my verbs correctly. I need to make sure that I'm enunciating every word exactly correctly. And so for me, the worst-case scenario would have been to be lecturing and to say something incorrectly, and then to have my students questioning my authority and ability to be an effective professor. And so for me, that was a worst-case scenario.
You've been a professor for a while now. You clearly know what you're doing. You have a lengthy publication record. Have your self-doubts gone away?
You know, that's a good question. It depends on the day that you asked me the question. When I'm speaking to people and when people are introducing me and they're reading, you know, my accolades, you know, on the one hand, I feel, you know, pretty good about what I've been able to accomplish. But there are still some days when I find myself doubting whether I have the expertise to be able to speak in front of people.
Hmm.
And when I talk to my students about this, they find it amazing because they have Dr. Kevin Coakley on somewhat of an academic pedestal. And when I tell them that even Dr. Coakley sometimes still suffers, you know, and still wonders about, you know, my deservedness to be in the position that I'm in, they are surprised. So I do still have those experiences.
So, Kevin, it looks like you yourself are a walking example of this phenomenon that you have studied for many years. In popular culture, it's called the imposter syndrome. Now, you think that term is overly clinical, you prefer the term imposter phenomenon. Can you describe for me what the imposter phenomenon is?
The imposter phenomenon is basically the sentiment that one is being intellectually fraudulent. It's the idea that individuals who are very accomplished, very competent, very intelligent people nevertheless feel like they are fooling people. They believe that they are not nearly as smart and competent as their accomplishments would suggest.
So we're going to talk about the factors that produce these kinds of self-doubt and what we can do about these misgivings. But I want to start by looking at the different dimensions of self-doubt because when you start to peel this onion, it turns out to be a really complex phenomenon. I want to play you a clip of the actress Viola Davis talking to the CBS program 60 Minutes.
I don't know if it's healthy or not. I'm just saying that it's something that I recognize in all the artists I've worked with. It's in all of them. So I know the language of the artist. And the language of the artist is, someone's going to find me out. I may not be as great as people think I am.
I may not be as great as people think I am. So one dimension of self-doubt here is that you worry that others might have an inflated sense of how good you are, that you might not be able to live up to those expectations?
Yeah, that is one of the hallmark traits of imposter feelings. When you have friends and colleagues telling you how great you are and, and saying all of these nice and wonderful things about you, you find yourself just wondering, you know, can I live up to these lofty expectations? And you can't help but sort of feel that I can't live up to that.
Mm-hmm.
So when Viola Davis, you know, made those remarks, it really sort of represented Some of the classic hallmark signs of impostorism.
So I'm wondering if this might be especially acute for an actor, but I think all of us might experience some version of this. When you're shooting a movie, they don't show the audience all the takes when someone flubbed a line or made a mistake. So Viola Davis thinks that we, the audience, associate her with the perfection of the role she's playing on the screen, what we see on the screen. She, on the other hand, knows the whole picture, all the mistakes, the off days. And she worries that our picture of her and her picture of her might not match.
You are absolutely correct. What we see is the sort of perfected version of who she is as an actress. What we don't see are, as you said, the many outtakes, you know, that I'm sure she's had to go through in order to get finally the perfect scene. Again, I mean, it's the idea that, you know, one needs to try to be Perfect because you believe that people sometimes see you as being perfect when you know that to not be true about yourself.
So Viola Davis was asked to play the role of Michelle Obama in a Showtime series titled The First Lady, and she described Michelle Obama as a goddess. I want to look at the next dimension of self-doubt and play you a clip. Here is Michelle Obama talking about a question that goes through her own mind Am I good enough?
That's a question that has dogged me for a good part of my life. Am I good enough to have all of this? Am I good enough to be the First Lady of the United States? And I think that many women, and definitely many young girls of all backgrounds, walk around with that question. I still feel that at some level I have something to prove because of the color of my skin, because of the shape of my body because of who knows how people are judging me.
So I feel like Michelle Obama is speaking to another dimension of self-doubt, and perhaps this is similar to your own experience with self-doubt as a 29-year-old assistant professor. And this form of self-doubt is not that other people think too highly of you, but the fear that other people might think that you're a fraud.
Yeah. And I found myself smiling because that is the exact clip that I use in every imposter phenomenon talk that I give. I was actually saying the words I was singing along with her as she was saying it. But yeah, no, she, you know, you're right. In this instance, she's talking about the feelings of self-doubt that she has about herself, but that are really rooted in, I would argue, societal views about people who look like her, people whom she would represent.
Now, you might think that one form of self-defense against these feelings is to just simply prove You're very good. But it turns out that doesn't always work. The poet Maya Angelou won 3 Grammys for her spoken word albums. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. If she had never written another word in her life, her reputation would have been secure. But you've talked about how she was also plagued by self-doubt.
Yeah. She talks about, you know, having published 11 books and still finding herself wondering, Uh-oh, they're gonna find me out. And, you know, and when I talk about her, I say, look, she is Maya freaking Angelou. You know, she is one of the greatest poetesses that we've ever, you know, experienced. And yet even Maya Angelou has had these feelings of being, you know, found out that she is somehow fraudulent and fooling people. And so she is a beautiful example of someone who has achieved at the very highest level, nevertheless still feeling as though they are You know, I'm struck by the similarities between self-doubt and conspiracy theories.
Go along with me for just a second here. You know, on the surface, these are very different ideas, but one thing that unites them is that if you're plagued by self-doubt or you subscribe to a conspiracy theory, the evidence does not disabuse you of your belief. So in the case of a conspiracy theory, you find ways to discount the evidence that contradicts the theory. And in the case of self-doubt, as with Maya Angelou, no amount of past evidence that you're talented seems to convince you that your fears are not warranted.
No. I mean, that's absolutely right. In fact, it almost kind of reminds me of that social psychological concept of confirmation bias. You are more oriented toward finding evidence that supports the contrary, that would support the idea of you not being competent, even though Again, your accomplishments would suggest otherwise. So I can actually see the connection.
Yeah. There's one last dimension of self-doubt that I want to place on the table. The actor Tom Hanks has long been one of Hollywood's biggest stars. But like Viola Davis, he has said that he also worries that he is soon going to be found out. No matter who we are, no matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, how did I get here? And am I going to be able to continue this? When are they going to discover? That I am in fact a fraud and take everything away from me. It's a high-wire act that we all walk, and I do this in the work that I do because there are days when I know that 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, I am going to have to deliver some degree of emotional goods, and if I can't do it, that means I'm going to have to fake it. And if I fake it, that means they may catch me at faking it, and if they catch me at faking it, well, then it's just doomsday. What strikes me in this clip, Kevin, is another dimension of self-doubt, and we've discussed this elsewhere on Hidden Brain. Many of us subject ourselves to the kind of scrutiny and criticism we would never dream of aiming at other people. Can you talk a moment about the harshness of our inner critic? Are you yourself harder on you than you are on other people?
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I know that certainly I can see elements of that in myself. You know, when I've done something that is noteworthy and for which I should be proud of, and nevertheless, I can still find reasons to be critical of it, to find reasons to not be as happy about it or excited about it or to sort of embrace it as a worthy accomplishment. And so being our own harshest critics, that's something that I see, that I can hear in what Tom Hanks said, and certainly I can see elements of that in myself.
Yeah. There's a theme that runs through many of the examples of imposter phenomenon that we have discussed. Maya Angelou, who's sort of written 11 books, thinks that she's a fraud. The writer John Steinbeck is supposed to have once written something very similar. He wrote, I'm not a writer. I've been fooling myself and other people. Even the physicist Albert Einstein is supposed to have once called himself an involuntary swindler. Now, on the surface, all of this seems incomprehensible. If you've written amazing books, if you've reinvented the world of physics, how can you think of yourself as a cheat and a swindler? Why do you think it is that people who are plagued by self-doubt cannot see the brilliance that is plain for us to see when we look in from the outside?
I think that's the million-dollar question. I mean, that's something that we are still, in many ways, trying to figure out. But what I will say is, is that if you've come from environments where you were sort of complimented on things unrelated to your intelligence, let's say that you were someone who was very socially skilled, let's say you were someone who was very sort of athletic, and all you ever heard from people, family and friends, was about your prowess in those areas, but you never received feedback about your intelligence. then part of that can result in you internalizing this idea that, you know, maybe you're not that smart. You know, maybe, you know, your talents lie elsewhere. That's part of the origins of these feelings.
Even the most successful people among us doubt their abilities from time to time. Self-doubt can be so powerful that it makes us feel like frauds in our own lives. When we come back, the origins of self-doubt and what we can do about that negative voice in our heads. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new New customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. We all have those pieces in our closet that we can count on. The versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt. These are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials in designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on these everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable All season long. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Lots of smart, talented, accomplished people harbor self-doubt. They worry they are frauds and imposters, even when they have ample evidence there is no need for such fear. At the University of Texas at Austin, psychologist Kevin Coakley studies the psychology of self-doubt and the imposter phenomenon. Kevin, the psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first used the term imposter phenomenon in a 1978 study. They focused on high-achieving women. Can you describe that study for me and what they found?
These were women who came from very diverse backgrounds. Some of them came from the world of corporate America. Some of them were academics. Some of them were graduate students. But what they all had in common was they were all incredibly accomplished women. And it was interesting because when they worked with them, they kept repeatedly hearing these feelings of self-doubt in spite of the accomplishments that they had as individual women. And so it led them to theorize that this idea of the imposter phenomenon was something salient among women because, again, this was the population they were working with.
Now, the examples of people like Tom Hanks or Albert Einstein and you yourself, Kevin, might suggest the imposter phenomenon doesn't just affect women. Is there data to back up the anecdotes?
That's absolutely true. I mean, in my own work, I have published studies where in one study, imposter feelings were certainly more prevalent among women than men. But in another study that I published, there was no difference between men and women. And what we know from the accumulation of work that's been done in this area is that there has not been any consistent findings of women experiencing, you know, higher imposter feelings than men. Now, that being said, and I talk about this a lot, I do believe that with women, that the implications of imposter feelings are a bit different than among men. And I point to one of the studies that I published, where I was looking at factors that predict GPA. And what I found in that study was that Even though there were no differences between men and women in terms of their imposter feelings, imposter feelings had no link to GPA for men. It did not impact their grades at all. But for women, imposter feelings were in fact linked in very sort of clear ways to their GPA. So you can say on the one hand that there were no differences in the reporting of imposter feelings amongst both groups. But the implications of those imposter feelings were quite different for men and women.
What about racial differences here, Kevin? We've talked about several prominent Black people who experience self-doubt, but you've conducted studies looking at racial differences in self-doubt, and some of the results are both revealing and surprising. What do you find?
So in the initial study that I published, we had a very diverse sample of college students consisting of Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinx Americans. And we went into this study thinking that we would see evidence of higher imposter feelings among African Americans and Latinx Americans. And we believe that because of what we understand to be some of the ideas and beliefs surrounding African American students and Latinx students around intelligence and around their deservedness to be in some predominantly white educational spaces. But what we found, in fact, was quite the opposite. We found that Asian American students in our particular sample reported higher feelings of imposterism than both African American students and Latinx students. And this was counterintuitive to what we expected to find. And we tried to explain it, you know, somewhat speculatively on the idea that— Asian American students are, you know, have to sort of deal with that model minority myth in ways that sort of exacerbate those feelings.
I mean, it might be a little bit like what we discussed earlier about Viola Davis basically saying, you know, other people think that I'm perfect, but I know I'm not perfect, and that creates a kind of dissonance in my mind.
Yes, absolutely.
You hinted at something a moment ago, and I'm wondering if we can explore this a little bit more, which is there seems to be a connection between highly competitive environments and the internal generation of self-doubt. You talk, for example, about walking down the corridors at your first job and seeing the publications of other professors on the wall, and in some ways, having this be a reminder for you that you had not done as much. Can you talk about the link between Being in a competitive environment and the experience of self-doubt?
When you are in environments that are stressful and that are particularly competitive, these almost become incubators for these imposter feelings. Again, if I use myself as an example, you know, the story that you just shared about me being a 29-year-old professor straight out of graduate school, it was a competitive environment. Part of it, I think, may have been just my own internalization, because it wasn't like I had my colleagues coming to me and constantly reminding me, you know, you're in a competitive environment, you know, you have to do this. No, it wasn't anything so explicit.
Yeah.
But it was, it was, it was just the subtle reminders that you are now a professor in a very productive, competitive environment. And they didn't have to say anything to me. I was reminded by those publications that I saw on the walls.
You know, you've talked about another idea about, you know, how we communicate with young people, especially in educational settings. If you communicate to a young person, you know, I think you're a genius, I think you're a prodigy, I think you're special, in some ways we might think that we are communicating encouragement to the person, but we're also putting expectations on that person. So when that person doesn't do well in a study or doesn't do well in a test, I mean, they're now comparing their performance with what they believe you think of their performance, and they feel like they're falling short. Is there a risk in some ways in overinflating the student's sense of how good they might be or how good they ought to be?
I think there is a risk. I mean, and certainly there is nothing wrong with offering encouragement. I think all students need encouragement. But to your point, I do think that one could go overboard with the praise and set students up for struggling with these sort of feelings of self-doubt if the level of praise exceeds what they either believe about themselves or maybe even exceeds what they have actually accomplished. I mean, I think that the deliverance of praise should be appropriate to the level of accomplishment and not do so You know, in an exaggerated manner.
So some time ago, we had the psychologist Claude Steele on Hidden Brain. It was in an episode titled How They See Us. And he talked about the phenomenon of stereotype threat. When you believe you're the target of stereotypes, those fears can be a source of worry, and that worry can undermine your performance. There seems to be some overlap between your work on the imposter phenomenon and Claude's work on stereotype threat.
I was having this conversation 2 days ago, and I was asked this very same question, you know, so it's something that I thought about for a while. And the way that I describe it is this: when you think about Claude Steele's work around stereotype threat, you know, it's this idea that individuals are aware of stereotypes that exist about one's, you know, a particular social identity group, whether that's based on race or gender or whatever. And you don't— necessarily believe the stereotypes that exist about the group, but you are aware of them. And it's the awareness of that stereotype that ends up disrupting your performance. That's different from imposter feelings, because with imposter feelings, we're talking about individuals who have internalized these beliefs that sort of lead to self-doubt.
You found that self-doubt can be a predictor of stress, especially for minorities in educational settings. Can you talk about that work?
Yeah, so one of the most common types of studies that you see done with the imposter phenomenon is looking at outcomes related to mental health. And, you know, I tend to look at symptoms of depression and anxiety as my outcomes. And what we have consistently found is that individuals who experience imposter feelings have elevated symptoms of depression and have elevated symptoms of anxiety. they are certainly linked consistently.
And is it accurate to say that women and minorities in the workplace or in educational settings might be especially prone to this correlation?
I believe that to be the case, absolutely. And I approach my work with the belief that for women and for BIPOC individuals, that this sort of association between mental health And imposter feelings is especially prevalent.
Self-doubt can keep us from seeing ourselves clearly. It can prompt us to downplay our accomplishments and underestimate our skills. It can cost us in terms of mental health and in terms of our willingness to take on new challenges. But there is a deep paradox here. Even as lots of people suffer from needless self-doubt, Many also suffer from an absence of self-doubt. Many people who ought to doubt themselves seem filled with blithe self-confidence. When we come back, how to combat the imposter phenomenon, but also how to make room in our lives for the gift of self-doubt. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Stripe. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because as your business scales, so does the complexity of fraud— new customers, new markets, new AI-driven attack patterns. Stripe Radar protects your business as it scales with the scale of the Stripe network. The more payments Stripe sees, the smarter its AI gets at detecting these patterns as they emerge. Stripe's network is so vast, it has seen $1.9 trillion in payment volume across millions of global businesses. In fact, when a card is used, there's a 92% chance the Stripe network has seen it before. All of this means fraudulent patterns across payments, accounts, and customer abuse can be detected, flagged, or blocked more easily based on the rules you set up, of course. Blocking bad actors, welcoming good customers, keeping more of your revenue your revenue. Learn more about fighting fraud with Stripe at stripe.com/radar. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from U.S. Bank. With a U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Even the best of us can sometimes feel we don't know what we're doing. We worry that we will fall short of other people's expectations. We worry that we will be called out as frauds and charlatans. At the University of Texas at Austin, psychologist Kevin Coakley studies the imposter phenomenon and what we can do about it. Kevin, one technique you've suggested that people use to reduce self-doubt is to remind themselves of their accomplishments. You say that you sometimes stalk yourself. What do you mean by this?
Yeah. So one of the things that happens with people who experience imposter feelings is that we don't acknowledge accomplishments to the extent that they should be acknowledged. And so we sometimes just minimize them. And, you know, I somewhat half-jokingly said that I stalk myself, but, you know, what I mean is that and I hope people out there listening don't judge me too harshly. I go on Google almost every day and I Google myself. I look up, you know, my metrics surrounding my publications, you know, how many times I've been cited, you know, how many publications I have. I mean, those numbers don't change day to day, but I find myself looking at them every single day because I need to remind myself that people think that you're kind of a big deal for a reason. That that you actually have done something of note as a scholar. And so that's my way of just sort of reminding myself that you are deserving of the attention and the accolades that you have received. And if I didn't do that, then it would be easy to sort of forget that I have accomplished this as an academic.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose there's a way you can Google yourself every day, you know, in order to stroke your vanity. But I think what I'm hearing you say is actually something quite different. It's almost like a cognitive behavioral therapy intervention because your mind is not automatically remembering all the things that you've done well or your mind is coming up with self-doubts. By actually going and looking at the evidence every day, you're in some ways telling your mind, look, the belief that I have that I'm not worthy or that I'm not up to this task, this belief is untrue. So in some ways, it feels almost like a form of therapy that you've come up with on your own.
Well, it is. And I'm so glad that you mentioned the word vanity, because I fear that what I just said could come across as just someone obsessed, you know, with himself and seeing, you know, what he's accomplished. And it's really not that, although I can understand how it might sound that way. Because in my case, I really truly sometimes find it hard to accept the fact that I am somewhat of an authority on the imposter phenomenon. And so when I go and look up sort of what I've done, like, I sometimes actually forget how much work I've done in the area. And I hope that people don't sort of take that to be someone who's just unduly vain about his work and read me in that way, because I'd like to think that it is not that.
Yeah, I'm not hearing that at all, Kevin. You know, you said a second ago that you find it hard to accept sometimes that you're an authority on the imposter phenomenon. You do see the irony here, right, Kevin? Which is you are an expert on the imposter phenomenon who finds it difficult to accept that you are an expert on the imposter phenomenon.
I do see the irony in that statement, yes.
There's another idea that in some ways is a related idea, which is there are people whose accomplishments are not public. They don't have publication records. They don't have awards. But in some ways, these people can mine the same idea that you're talking about with something called a work diary. Can you explain that idea to me?
Yeah. So one of the other suggestions that I give to people is to keep a work diary where you essentially document those successes that you've had in the work environment. What ends up happening for people who experience imposter feelings is that It becomes very easy for us to just sort of either forget or to minimize or marginalize those things that we've done well during the course of a day, during the course of a week. And so sometimes we have to be intentional about documenting those little successes that in the aggregate are pretty impressive.
So Kevin, we've talked about ways that individuals can manage their self-doubt. Are there things that organizations can do that can also reduce self-doubt?
Yes, there certainly are things that organizations can do. And the example that I like to give involves individuals who are managers, you know, you know, or supervisors.
Mm-hmm.
And what you can do as a manager or supervisor to really sort of mitigate these sort of feelings of imposterism amongst your subordinates is being transparent in your own vulnerabilities and to be open in sharing this with their employees. It really helps individuals who are afraid to own up or to sort of say, I've made a mistake. It makes them feel like, you know what, if my manager or if my supervisor can talk openly about making a mistake, then it's okay for me to make a mistake, and I don't have to be perfect. And I think that goes a long way towards helping to assuage any feelings of imposterism that an individual might be experiencing.
Researchers have also looked at ways to dismantle the imposter phenomenon in schools. At Stanford University, Greg Walton looked at the problems that incoming freshmen were facing. He found that when they experienced setbacks, many of them drew global conclusions like, I don't belong here, or, I don't deserve to be here. He felt like Blacks were especially likely to feel like they were frauds. So he set up an intervention that helped Black students see setbacks in the proper perspective. So a bad test result or a bad interaction with a professor didn't mean that they were frauds. It didn't mean they were imposters. It just meant that they were having a bad day or a bad week. Here's a clip of Greg describing the effects of his intervention. What the intervention did was it prevented students from feeling that they didn't belong in general when they had negative experiences. You can then imagine how if you're feeling less vulnerable to threats, you are better able to connect with other people, to peers, to teachers, and build the kinds of relationships that actually sustain performance over a long period of time. Kevin, I'm wondering if you can weigh in on this. Is one solution to self-doubt in some ways not blowing things out of proportion, blowing setbacks out of proportion?
I love that. And thank you for sharing that study. As a counseling psychologist, I would sort of refer to that as almost like simply reframing it and not sort of internalizing it as being indicative of a trait about yourself.
Mm-hmm.
People aren't perfect, and we have to sort of get beyond this idea that making mistakes is somehow indicative of you being not smart, not competent, not belonging. The most accomplished people in the world have all experienced failure at some point. And so we need to sort of help students in particular understand that when you fail a test, and I could have benefited from this when I was a student, it would have been so helpful if I would have had a professor who would have pulled me to the side and to help me sort of manage the feelings that I was having around my initial sort of early poor performance.
It's okay.
Just don't let it be defining of who you are and who— and what your potentiality is. And I think we don't have enough of that taking place in schools.
You know, Kevin, we started this conversation talking about some of your own insecurities and self-doubts. When you are plagued by self-doubt, even today, you say that you have a go-to solution, and it involves Can you explain what you do, maybe with a specific example?
Yeah. Well, and I'll start off by going back to Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama says that what she does is essentially, she works hard. She works harder. So whenever I doubted myself, I just told myself, let me put my head down and do the work, and I would let my work speak for itself, and I still find that I do that. And I really identify with that because that has been the way that I try to address my feelings of imposterism. When I think about those early days of my being an assistant professor, I would work late in the evenings. I found myself working on the weekends because I needed to prove to people, and I think probably most importantly to myself, that I belonged. And so I just, I worked incessantly. Now, I will say that hard work without having a way to sort of balance that with play is not necessarily a good thing. But what I will say is that hard work oftentimes, you know, can result in achievement and accomplishments in ways that you would hope would help mitigate whatever feelings of imposterism you might be experiencing.
Do you still do that even today, Kevin? Is this your response when someone asks you to give a talk or you have to make a big presentation and you're plagued with self-doubt? Do you respond to that by doubling down on the amount of time you're spending in preparation?
You know, there are elements of that. When Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes— and I think it was really Pauline Clance— she talked about The Imposter Cycle. And she, she talked about these 2 pathways that people take, you know, the pathway of overpreparedness and the pathway of procrastination. And I'm the person who goes through the pathway of overpreparedness. And for me, what that means is, you know, when I am giving a talk on the imposter phenomenon, a talk that I have given more times than I can count, I still prepare as though I have never given the talk before. And it's because I want to make sure that when I give the talk, that people hear me and experience me as being an expert and leave no doubt in their mind that I know what I'm talking about. So yeah, there are still elements of that in me even today.
You know, I'm struck by what you just said, Kevin, because when I listened to that clip of Viola Davis' talk about, you know, feeling like an imposter, I didn't play the whole clip for you. She goes on to say something really interesting, which is, you know, she doesn't say, you know, woe is me, I have all these insecurities, feel sorry for me. She talks about how she uses her insecurities as a driver, as motivation.
Anybody who even wants to be great has that. Anybody, any filmmaker, any writer, any actor. But what it does on a healthy level It keeps you humble and it keeps you working.
I'm hearing almost exactly what you said to me a second ago, Kevin, which is that in some ways, not believing the good press about you turns out to actually be a powerful motivator for you to actually put your nose to the grindstone, if you will, and not take anything for granted.
Viola Davis is so insightful. I mean, and she is absolutely correct. And I would say that what she has said definitely applies to me. I think humility is very important, and if I ever got to the point where I lost my humility, I would be brought back to earth by my wife, who is also an academic. She would quickly remind me of, I knew you when. And I think that's necessary because I never want to get to the point where I have forgotten that I was that young assistant professor with one publication and full of self-doubts starting my career. I never want to forget that person because that person is still inside of me and it continues to fuel me and motivate me to being the best academic that I can be.
I'm wondering in some ways, Kevin, whether this might be at least a partial solution to the paradox we identified in the first part of our conversation. We looked at how many brilliant people like Maya Angelou or Albert Einstein have been plagued by self-doubt. From the outside, that looks bizarre. But is it possible that we actually have mixed up cause and effect? They are not plagued by self-doubt in spite of being great. Their greatness is being driven, at least in part, by the fuel of self-doubt. Hmm.
No, I think you're right. I think that that is very much a possibility, that their self-doubt in part fuels their greatness. I think there's an argument to be made for that.
I'm wondering if it might be helpful almost for a moment to think about what would happen if we lived in a world without self-doubt. I'm thinking back to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration said the invasion was necessary because Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. At one press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was told that the Iraqi government had denied possessing weapons of mass destruction. Let me play a clip of that press conference.
What do you make of the statement made by the Iraqi government yesterday that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and is not developing any? They're lying. No, they have them and they continue to develop them and they've weaponized chemical weapons.
We know that. They've had an active Program to develop nuclear weapons.
They— it's also clear that they are actively developing biological weapons.
So as we know, Kevin, Iraq did not possess those weapons. And I'm wondering if you can talk a moment about what seems like this paradox. How is it that some of us are plagued with self-doubt while others could use a little more self-doubt?
You know, that is a very good question. It immediately sort of reminded me of the saying, you know, pride falleth before the man. And I think about what happens when hubris gets in the way of our ability to make reasoned and reasonable sort of decisions. And I think that having a bit of self-doubt could save us from really bad situations such as unnecessary wars, among other things. And so it certainly would have been nice if Rumsfeld had exhibited a bit more humility than his response indicated. But no, I mean, I think I like the way that you sort of connected that to real-world implications. And to me, it does sort of go back to this idea of people Not feeling so overly confident in themselves in ways that are unhelpful and are unhealthy. I can't say enough about how in my own life the need to be humble, to even have feelings of self-doubt have been helpful. Because if I did not have those feelings of self-doubt, then I think that that would, one, make me probably an unbearable person and not very pleasant to be around. But it also has kept me, I think, hungry to continue to work hard to prove myself. And I think, you know, when you get to the point where you stop wanting to prove yourself and when you're no longer hungry and motivated, I don't think that's a very good place to be.
So I feel we're in very deep waters here, Kevin. I mean, on the one hand, we've seen how experiencing discrimination, being an outsider, this can increase the risk that you will experience the imposter phenomenon. And that's clearly unfair. Feelings of self-doubt can cause people to drop out of school, cause them to quit professions that they would be great at. On the other hand, lots of people also turn their insecurity into a superpower, like yourself, and they use it as fuel. And a lack of self-doubt, especially when you wield great power, can produce terrible harm. So I guess I'm left wondering, is self-doubt a bad thing or a good thing?
Self-doubt can be a good thing when it is used as a source of motivation to achieve, to excel. But it can come at great cost to one's mental health and to one's physical health. And so, you know, the challenge then is to sort of figure out how to use one's self-doubt in ways that don't result in there being any sort of compromises to your mental health or physical health. And so, you know, I— the example that I, you know, sometimes share with people, you know, comes from African American psychology where we talk about The John Henryism hypothesis. And this comes from a story, folklore story, of an individual named John Henry who was a steel driver who was essentially put in a situation where he was competing against, you know, a machine to perform. John Henry said to his captain, that man ain't nothing but a man. Before I let your steel drill beat me down, I will die with that hammer in my hand.
Yes, I'll die with that hammer in my hand.
And the short version of the story is, is that he wanted to prove that he could outperform this machine. Well, he worked and he worked and he worked, and he eventually did beat the machine. And so his achievement was quite high because he won. But it came at the cost of his life because he ended up dying from the exertion of effort that he gave.
The last word that I heard that poor boy say, give me a cool drink of water before I— give me a cool drink of water before I die. Give me a cool drink of water.
So we want to be careful that we don't achieve such incredible feats of accomplishment that ultimately result in harming our mental health and our physical health.
I'm gonna be a steel-driving man. In your own life, Kevin, have you come to think of self-doubt as a friend or as an enemy?
Oh my goodness. That's a— you ask really difficult questions. Self-doubt, I think for me, I would say probably has been more of a friend friend than an enemy for me. I do try to take care of myself. I work out. I try to be, you know, healthy. But I have certainly used self-doubt in ways as a constant source of motivation to make sure that I am not complacent. So I am aware of the things that I need to do to provide this sort of balance and that I continue to strive to be the best academic that I can be. So I think in my case, it has probably been more of a friend Kevin Coakley is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin.
He's the author of The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism: A True Psychology of African American Students. Kevin, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Thank you for having me.
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