پدیده فریبکار در دانشجویان دانشگاه های انگلستان: روابط بین عزت نفس، سلامت روان، شیوه های فرزندپروری والدین و وضعیت اقتصادی- اجتماعی

The role of perceived parental rearing style, parental background, self-esteem, mental health and demographic variables upon impostor phenomenon [IP; Psychotherapy: Theory Research and Practice, 15, (1978) 241–247] intensity was investigated using a cross-sectional survey design, with 107 subjects (78 females, 29 males). A regression analysis revealed that both greater degree of perceived parental control and lower levels of self-esteem emerged as significant predictors of impostor fears, together accounting for 50% of the variation in impostor scores. Parental care score, parental educational and occupational level and subject's mental health and demographic information did not show a significant relationship to impostor scores. A post-hoc regression analysis indicated, however, that in addition to parental protection, lower care and poorer mental health was significantly related to increasing levels of impostor scores and with subjects having attended private school reporting lower levels of impostor feelings. In addition, subjects classified as impostors were found to report significantly higher GHQ scores (poorer mental health) than non-impostors. These findings, which are interpreted in terms of parenting styles, indicate that the role of parental overprotection may be especially implicated in impostor fears.

The nature of attributions within educational settings has been the focus of a substantial amount of research within the attribution literature (Houston, 1994) and an attributional achievement-related construct that has received much attention in recent years is the impostor phenomenon (IP; Clance & Imes, 1978). This term refers to the internal experience of intellectual fraudulence in individuals who, despite objective evidence of success in the form of outstanding academic or professional achievements, have a persistent, secret belief that they do not deserve their status or position. It is argued that these individuals attribute their feats not to their own ability but to external sources such as luck, fate, personal charm or attractiveness, secretly being convinced that they are less intelligent than other people believe them to be (Clance, 1985). In contrast to non-impostors, impostors fail to internalise their successes, believing that praise or approval is merely an indication that they have managed to deceive others into believing that they are successful. Despite studies having found an association between trait anxiety and the IP (e.g. Topping, 1983 and Topping and Kimmel, 1985), few studies have investigated whether impostors actually report poorer mental health. Chrisman, Pieper, Clance, Holland and Glickauf-Hughes (1995) found correlations between various measures of depression with Clance's IP Scale (CIPS). However, given that the correlations between the depression instruments were significantly stronger than that with each of these measures and CIPS, it was suggested that although CIPS overlaps with negative affectivity, it is essentially a separate construct. Studies have linked CIPS scores with neuroticism (Chae, Piedmont, Estadt & Wicks, 1995) and manic depressive tendencies (Lester & Moderski, 1995). Exploring which factors would predict psychological distress in medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students, Henning, Ey and Shaw (1998) found that the CIPS score emerged as the variable that accounted for the largest proportion of unique variance in psychological distress score (as measured on the Brief Symptom Inventory). With respect to the relationship between self-esteem and impostor fears, findings have been contradictory. Harvey (1981) found low correlations between IP scores, self-esteem and self-monitoring. However, several other studies have indicated that the IP is related to low global self-esteem (Chae et al., 1995, Chrisman et al., 1995, Imes, 1979, Topping and Kimmel, 1985 and Thompson et al., 1998) with Cozzarelli and Major (1990) suggesting that the IP may even be better seen as an extension of general poor self-esteem than as an independent construct. A family structural variable that has received some attention concerns subjects' social mobility. Harvey (1981) found that IP feelings were linked with subjects' perceptions of being ‘out of place' in relation to their familial status. Similarly, Hirschfield (1982) found that the most significant predictor of IP scores was the discrepancy between descriptions of ideal self and actual self on the Jackson Personality Inventory. Dingman (1987) found that (upward) social mobility was a significant predictor of IP scores in females only. However, Lawler (1984) found no statistically significant differences for impostors compared with non-impostors when investigating atypicality within the family of origin in terms of educational attainment. Furthermore, college womens' self-perceived similarity to others in their field with regards to sex, race, age, personal appearance and socio-economic status (SES) has been found to be unrelated to the IP (Grays, 1985). A review of the literature suggests that only two studies have looked at family dynamics in relation to the IP construct. Exploring family functioning using the Family Environment Scale, Bussotti (1990) found that IP scores were inversely related to degree of support, positively related to expressiveness and communication and with expressed anger and conflict and with the degree to which family behaviours are informed by rules and set procedures (Langford & Clance, 1993). However, these variables together accounted for only 12% of the variance in IP. Using the same measure, but concentrating on the family achievement subscale, King and Cooley (1995) found that higher levels of the IP were correlated with greater family achievement orientation and that there were statistically significant differences in scores reported between normal and disordered families. They further found a positive association between high-school Grade Point Average (GPA) and levels of IP in females only. The exclusion of parental demographic information may explain the low predictive validity of the model suggested by Bussotti, as these family structural variables have also been implicated in the IP (e.g. Dingman, 1987, Harvey, 1981 and Topping, 1983). In recent years, there has been a growing conceptual and empirical interest in the the role of child rearing practices and their effects on children's and adolescents' development has received particular attention (Baharudin & Luster, 1998). The possible relationship between IP and parental rearing style, has not yet been investigated. It appears that, in general, many bonding-related behaviours of the parent can be assigned to one of two broad dimensions, namely one of care/involvement versus indifference/rejection and one of control/overprotection versus autonomy encouragement (Parker, Tupling & Brown, 1979). In terms of achievement related behaviours, it is thought that the development of an individual's academic achievement attributions is assumed to benefit from “good” parenting styles, that is when parents avoid creating an overly protective atmosphere in favour of providing a warm and loving home milieu. Grolnick and Ryan have proposed that parents thus contribute to the “inner resources of achievement” of their children (Grolnick and Ryan, 1988 and Grolnmick et al., 1991). According to their model, parents who are high in autonomy support (in other words, low on control/overprotectiveness) would allow their children to develop a sense of being instigators of their own behaviours and action (therefore promoting more perceived autonomy, greater perception of competence and greater control understanding). Furthermore, children of highly involved parents (thus parents high on care/involvement) would feel more competent, display greater control and understanding and more autonomous motivational orientations than would those of less involved parents. A number of studies have found a link between parental rearing style and personality variables such as self-confidence (Bartholomew, 1990), depressive feelings (Sperling & Berman, 1991) and competency (Kenny, 1987), all of which are characteristics associated with the IP. In a prospective study investigating development of and stability of self criticism, a dimension identified within the IP construct, higher levels of self-criticism were found to be associated with parental styles that exhibit excessive restriction and rejection (e.g. Koestner et al., 1991 and Blatt and Zuroff, 1992) and with perceptions of parents lacking in warmth, nurturance and affection (Blatt et al., 1979 and McCranie and Bass, 1984). Similarly, Greenberger and McLaughlin (1998) found that perceived secure attachments between subjects and parents were positively associated with a tendency to attribute hypothetical successes and failures in a positive, self-enhancing way, although this only held true for females. Many of the attributional factors that have been associated with parental rearing style and, in particular, the negative consequences of excessive parental control and low care, are consistent with the conceptualisation of an impostor, who has a tendency of attributing success to external rather than internal sources, suffering from both low self-esteem and depression and with a general disposition for self-criticism. In the present study, we investigated whether (1) IP scores will be predicted by a model incorporating variables such as parental rearing styles, parental occupational and educational status, subjects' demographics, mental health and self-esteem; (2) IP scores will be positively related to level of parental protection and inversely associated with level of parental care; and (3) when subjects are classified into a dichotomy of impostors versus non-impostors, impostors will report poorer mental health than non-impostors.

Out of the 117 returned questionnaires, 10 were excluded from the study due to large incomplete data sections. As outlined in Section 2, only subjects defined as high-achievers (i.e. with a self-reported average grade of B/upper second or above) were included in the analyses (cf. Cozzare4lli and Major, 1990 and Holmes et al., 1993) reducing the total sample size from 107 to 74. Based on a recommended cut-off score of 62 (Holmes et al.), 43% of this sample were classified as impostors, with a mean IP Scale score of 70.59 (S.D.=6.16). A multiple regression was used to predict IP scores based on the eight variables presented in Table 1. Although the recommended ratio of 10:1 between the number of cases and the number of predictor variables was not met in the present analysis (8.75:1), others have suggested that with the assumptions of regression being fulfilled, a ratio of 5:1 is sufficient to produce a stable regression model (Allison, 1999). Using unrelated t-tests, no significant differences in impostor scores were observed in terms of subject demographics such as sex, living arrangements, type of course or academic year (all Ps>0.10, two-tailed). Similarly, no significant relationships were observed between impostor scores with age (r=0.136; P=0.252) or pre-university achievement (r=−0.18; P=0.881). These variables were therefore excluded from further analyses. Analysis further revealed that there were no significant gender differences on any of the variables (all Ps>0.05, two-tailed). Table 1. Matrix of product moment correlation coefficients for the eight variables used in the multiple regression where impostor phenomenon score was the criterion variable together with means and standard deviationsa Variable M SD 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 CIPS 70.59 6.16 −0.405*** 0.266* −0.115 0.010 −0.310** 0.332** −0.671*** 2. Care 46.54 17.94 −0.314** 0.400*** 0.271* 0.192 −0.203* 0.332** 3. Prot 25.07 15.18 −0.152 −0.210* −0.045 −0.112 −0.017 4. Occ – – 0.378*** 0.296** 0.026 0.074 5. Edu – – 0.099 0.161 0.095 6. Sch – – −0.038 0.280** 7.GHQ 18.14 8.31 −0.438*** 8. RES 32.07 5.61 a n, 70; CARE, parental care; PROT, parental protection; OCC, parental occupation (1, manual., 2, non-manual); EDU, parental education (1, non-higher education, 2, higher education); SCH, type of school (1, non-private; 2, private); GHQ, General Health Questionnaire; RES, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. ∗ P<0.05. ∗∗ P<0.01. ∗∗∗ P<0.001. Table options CIPS score was found to be positively related with protectiveness score (P=0.013) and negatively associated with care score (r=−0.405; P<0.0001), suggesting that higher impostor scores are related with perceived higher parental overprotection but less parental care, respectively. Furthermore, impostor intensity was found to be negatively related to RES (r=−0.671; P<0.0001 ) and positively related to GHQ score (r=0.332; P=0.003), indicating that higher IP intensity is associated both with lower self-esteem and with poorer mental health. Finally, a negative correlation was found between type of school and the IP score (P=0.004), with subjects having attended private school prior to university reporting lower IP scores. In addition, parental care scores were found to be positively related to both parental socio-economic status (P<0.0001) and parental education (P=0.012), with subjects from non-manual and higher education backgrounds reporting higher parental care. Protectiveness score, on the other hand, was not found to be significantly related to parental SES, although parental education was negatively related to parental protectiveness score (P=0.040), with less protection or more autonomy encouragement associated with parents with a higher education background. No relationships between GHQ score and parent SES, education or type of school attended were observed although those having attended private school reported higher self-esteem. The results of the multiple regression, which are shown in Table 2, indicate that only parental protectiveness score (P=0.015) and RES (P<0.0001) were significant predictors of IP score, indicating that participants with higher IP scores report higher perceived parental overprotectiveness and lower self-esteem. Examining the standardised regression coefficients, it can be seen that self-esteem emerged as the strongest predictor, followed by parental overprotectiveness, with the overall explained variance of the model being high (Adj R2=0.496; F7,62= 10.72; P<0.0001). Table 2. Multiple regression of Clance's IP Scale (CIPS) scores on parental style scores, parental occupational status and education, GHQ, RES and type of schoola Variable β Beta P Care −9.111 −0.131 0.222 Prot 0.189 0.230 0.015 Occ 1.210 0.041 0.689 Edu 0.664 0.027 0.784 Sch −3.923 −0.132 0.162 GHQ 0.118 −0.079 0.426 RES −1.260 −0.553 0.000 Adj R2 0.496 a n, 70, CARE, parental care; PROT, parental protection; OCC, parental occupation (1, manual, 2, non-manual); EDU, parental education (1, non-higher education, 2, higher education); SCH, type of school (1, non-private, 2, private); GHQ, General Health Questionnaire; RES, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. Table options Although there was no evidence of collinearity between the variables, with tolerance statistics for neither of the variables falling below 0.40 (Allison, 1999), there appeared to be a considerable overlap between the predictor variable self-esteem and the criterion variable IP scores. A post-hoc multiple regression analysis was therefore computed where self-esteem was excluded (Table 3). Table 3. Multiple regression of Clance's IP Scale (CIPS) scores on parental style scores, parental occupational status and education, GHQ and type of schoola Variable β Beta P Care −0.194 −0.279 0.027 Prot 0.186 0.226 0.045 Occ 2.045 0.069 0.572 Edu 2.234 0.089 0.439 Sch −7.895 −0.266 0.016 GHQ 0.410 0.274 0.015 Adj R2 0.276 a n, 70; CARE, parental care; PROT, parental protection; OCC, parental occupation (1, manual, 2, non-manual); EDU, parental education (1, non-higher education, 2, higher education); SCH, type of school (1, non-private; 2, private); GHQ, General Health Questionnaire. Table options The second model also emerged as significant (Adj R2=0.276; F6,63=5.390; P<0.0001), accounting for a moderate 28% of the variance in IP scores. Parental care was found to be inversely related to IP score (P=−0.027) while GHQ was positively related to IP score (P=0.015). Impostor scores were again positively related with type of school (P=0.016) and paternal protectiveness score was positively related to IP score (P=0.045). Inspecting the standardised regression coefficients, the strongest predictor was parental care, followed by GHQ score, type of school and paternal protectiveness. When impostors were classified by using the recommended cut-off score, a t-test revealed that impostors reported significantly poorer mental health (M=21.50; S.D.=9.03) than non-impostors (M=15.57, S.D.=9.03) (t=3.23; d.f.=72; P=0.001, one-tailed).