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Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
Understanding and reducing these biases can improve our mental health and our social relationships.
By Dr T J Jordan
Knowing ourselves is probably one of our most important challenges.
To truly know ourselves, we need the courage to look at ourselves in all our imperfect glory. Learning our strengths and weaknesses helps us figure out our best life trajectories and enables us to decide how to target our energies.
But knowing ourselves is scary and hard. We can be tempted to doubt our strong points— as well as to see ourselves in a more glowingly positive light than is accurate.
These two kinds of self perception bias cloud our reasoning and interfere with our relationships. Both are a mismatch between our self perceptions and our realities.
Identifying and correcting these errors can reduce psychological distress and improve our chances for success in our work lives and our relationships.
Negative Bias: Imposter Syndrome
This might look like under-confidence.
Imposter syndrome is a label for having difficulty assimilating our successes in ways that contribute to an accurate sense of self. This means that regardless of performing well in terms of external standards, we don’t feel the joys of success. Instead, we feel anxious that our fraud will be discovered.
We are told, “fake it until you make it.” But faking it can contribute to feelings of anxiety, stress, and guilt that arise when we try to act as someone we believe we’re not.
Imposter syndrome is not normal humility. It is a cognitive bias that speaks of problems with our sense of self worth — and it can result in self…
