”They will discover I’m a fraud!” The Impostor Syndrome Among Psychology Students

Abstract

This research’s primary purpose was to explore the prevalence of the impostor syndrome and its associated factors among 130 Romanian psychology students (M = 21.77 years, SD = 3.51, 84.6% females). Our results indicate that 56.15% of the study participants experienced high and intense impostor syndrome aspects. More specifically, students who perceived themselves as impostors presented high levels of psychological distress and procrastination. We also explored the link between moral identity and the impostor syndrome and found that students who experienced the syndrome ascribe higher importance to moral values than non-impostors. We tested a prediction model for the impostor syndrome, using depression, anxiety, procrastination, moral self, moral integrity, and several demographic variables as predictors (i.e., age, gender, study year, and living area). Our prediction model explained 33.9% of the impostor syndrome’s variance. Finally, we tested two moderation models concerning the relationship between the impostor syndrome, procrastination, anxiety, and depression. The results suggest that the relationship between procrastination and anxiety was moderated by impostor syndrome. We discuss the importance of these findings in designing effective intervention strategies to fight students’ impostor syndrome.