ترس فریبکار: پیوند با نگرانی های خود نمایشگرانه و رفتارهای خود ناتوان سازی

Abstract Two studies examined impostor fears, self-handicapping and self-presentational concerns. In Study 1 (113 women, 52 men), impostor fears were significantly related to social desirability (low self-deception over impression management), perfectionistic cognitions, and non-display of imperfection to others. In Study 2, 72 women were exposed either to face-saving failure (failure that was did not indicate low ability, thereby assuaging self-presentational concerns), humiliating failure (where no mitigating excuse for poor performance was available), or success. Following humiliating failure, participants high compared to low in impostor fears claimed more handicaps. However, when provided with a face-saving excuse, these participant groups did not differ in their propensity to claim handicaps. Together, these studies suggest that impostor fears are associated with self-presentational concerns in situations that involve threat to self-worth. However the link is with claimed, not with behavioural self-handicapping.

Introduction The impostor phenomenon refers to intense and often paralysing feelings of intellectual phoniness experienced by many high achieving individuals ( Clance & Imes, 1978). Despite objective evidence to the contrary, these individuals harbour resilient doubts about their abilities they consider are overestimated by others and a sense that it will be revealed by others that they are not intelligent; instead, they are “impostors” ( Clance, 1985). Clance (1985) observed that repeated successes fail to weaken impostors’ feelings of fraudulence or to strengthen a belief in their ability. She argues that this is due to a pattern of behaviour that begins after an achievement-related task is assigned, involving worry, self-doubt and anxiety. Impostors react to these emotions by either extreme over preparation, or by initial procrastination followed by frenzied preparation ( Chrisman, Pieper, Clance, Holland, & Glickauf-Hughes, 1995). If the task ends in success, a sense of accomplishment and relief is experienced. Nevertheless, once a new achievement task is encountered, feelings of anxiety and self-doubt recur and self-doubt continues ( Thompson, Davis, & Davidson, 1998). Studies relating impostor tendencies with comprehensive models of personality find positive relations with Neuroticism and negative relations with Extraversion and Conscientiousness for Korean ( Chae, Piedmont, Estadt, & Wicks, 1995) and American ( Ross, Stewart, Mugge, & Fultz, 2001) samples. 1.1. Impostor fears and perfectionism Leary, Patton, Orlando, and Wagoner Funk (2000) observed a paradox with central elements of the impostor phenomenon. While impostors fear that others will detect their inadequacies, they openly derogate themselves, externalise successes, dismiss positive affirmations of others, and report feeling fraudulent. Leary et al. reasoned that these behaviours may be a self-presentational strategy to secure positive impressions from others. As such, self-deprecation may be an intention to manipulate positive impressions from others by achieving at a high level despite claims of fluke performance, lucky situations, or favourable odds. In other words, claims of fraudulence and rejection of personal agency for success by impostors may reflect a desire to elicit favourable impressions from others when performing well despite claimed incapacity. Consistent with this possibility, Leary et al. (2000, Study 2) found persons high compared to low in impostor fears expressed lower performance expectations on a bogus intelligence test when scores were known to another person. However when participants believed their responses would remain confidential, performance expectations were similar for participants high and low in impostor fears. Impostor fears were said to involve a significant self-presentational component. Thompson, Foreman, and Martin (2000) found that impostor fears were related to an exaggerated, perfectionistic concern over making mistakes, as well as lower perceptions of control and greater anxiety. Flett and Hewitt (2002) stated that a perfectionistic concern over one’s performance involved a strong self-presentational component, independent of trait perfectionism, but associated with rumination over performance outcomes, depression, anxiety, and high levels of stress ( Flett, Madorsky, Hewitt, & Heisel, 2002). Hewitt, Flett, and Ediger (1995) reported perfectionistic self-presentational concerns were related to eating disorder symptoms, poor body image perceptions and low self-esteem. While Leary et al. (2000) found that impostor fears were related to general self-presentation concerns, no published study included perfectionistic self-presentation in addition to perfectionistic cognitions. On this basis, our Study 1 examined the relationship between impostor fears with perfectionistic self-presentations and cognitions as social facets of one’s personality. Study 1 also included a measure of social approval (i.e., social desirability), to examine more closely the relationship between impostor fears and their self-presentational concerns in social domains. 1.2. A link between impostor fears and self-handicapping? It is also possible that the impostor-self-presentation link reflects strategic self-handicapping behaviour ( Snyder, 1990) adopting or claiming a handicap when future outcomes are uncertain or when no external account for poor performance is available. Behavioural self-handicapping refers to situations where people actively construct impediments that are likely to lower their chances of success (e.g., not practicing prior to an upcoming task, or strategically reducing effort: Ferrari, 1991a, Ferrari, 1991b and Ferrari and Tice, 2000). Claimed self-handicapping refers to situations where a person claims debilitating factors, such as emotional distress, illness, fatigue, or test anxiety ( Hirt, McCrea, & Kimble, 2000). Ross, Canada, and Rausch (2002) found that self-handicapping was related to Neuroticism and low Conscientiousness. Given that procrastination and avoidance are central ingredients in the impostor cycle, it is not surprising that links between impostor fears and self-handicapping have been noted (Leary et al., 2000 and Ross et al., 2001). Cowman and Ferrari (2002) found that shame-proneness and claimed self-handicapping best predicted impostor fears. Chrisman et al. (1995) found impostor scores correlated positively with a fear of negative evaluation and with concerns about receiving social approval and recognition, variables predicting the use of strategic self-presentation in order to avoid negative evaluations. Consequently, in our Study 2 we examined experimentally how impostor fears related with claimed and behavioural self-handicapping strategies. Each strategy is motivated by self-presentational concerns to enhance or maintain a positive self-presentation in the eyes of other people. While claimed handicaps may reduce evaluative threat, securing a self-presentational benefit in the event of good performance, it may be that behavioural self-handicapping runs contrary to impostors’ desire to present a social image of perfection.

7. Results 7.1. Manipulation checks Following the simultaneous discrimination task, participants completed the performance manipulation checks. There was a main effect for performance feedback, F(2, 66) = 9.15, MSE = 63.39, p = .0003, such that after humiliating failure participants reported more negative assessments of their performance than following either face-saving failure or success (see Table 2). There was no significant difference in assessments following face-saving failure relative to following success. Thus, it appears the face-saving manipulation was effective. As expected, scores on the STAI-1 were not significantly different before performance feedback conditions (see Table 2), F(2, 69) = 0.17, MSE = 0.02, ns. However, at the second occasion of anxiety assessment, state anxiety scores were higher for participants exposed to humiliating failure than for participants exposed to either face-saving failure or success, F(2, 66) = 13.19, MSE = 394.60, p < .0001. Participants reported greater anxiety following humiliating failure than following either face-saving failure (p < .0001) or following success (p < .0001). Also, state anxiety levels at the second measurement session did not differ significantly between face-saving failure and success conditions. In sum, evidence from the performance manipulation items and the second assessment of state anxiety (STAI-2) support the effectiveness of the performance feedback manipulations. More importantly, while the face-saving failure and success conditions did not differ significantly on any of the above measures, each of these performance feedback conditions differed significantly relative to the humiliating condition. Table 2. Means values for manipulation checks and state anxiety measures across experimental conditions in Study 2 Success (n = 24) Face-saving failure (n = 24) Humiliating failure (n = 24) F-values for experimental condition Manipulation checks 18.04 (2.88) 17.63 (2.67) 20.63 (2.32) 9.15⁎⁎⁎ State anxiety: STAI-1 31.83 (4.60) 31.63 (4.11) 31.63 (4.91) 0.07 STAI-2 33.17 (4.59) 32.96 (4.38) 26.04 (7.10) 13.06⁎⁎⁎ Note. Value in parentheses is standard deviation. ⁎⁎⁎ p < .001. Table options 7.2. Claimed and behavioral self-handicapping Following experimental instructions, but prior to the simultaneous discrimination task, participants reported the extent to which each item on a list of 16 handicaps was likely to impair their performance on the proceeding cognitive tasks. As noted from Table 3, participants with high or low impostor tendencies did not differ following either success, F(1, 22) = 1.75, MSE = 360.38, ns, or face-saving failure, F(1, 22) = 1.33, MSE = 234.38, ns. However, as expected, in the humiliating failure condition, participants high in impostor fears claimed more handicaps than participants low in impostor fears, F(1, 22) = 4.47, MSE = 322.67, p = .04, was determined by the total number of tasks solved. Participants high compared to low in impostor fears, however, did not differ significantly on any of the dependent behavioural measures (i.e., practice effort on the unicursal tasks) following humiliating failure across all three experimental conditions. Table 3. Means number of claimed and behavioural handicaps for high and low impostors across experimental conditions in Study 2 Participants high in impostor fears Participants low in impostor fears Success (n = 12) Face-saving failure (n = 12) Humiliating failure (n = 12) Success (n = 12) Face-saving failure (n = 12) Humiliating failure (n = 12) Claimed handicaps 26.17 (20.33) 27.00 (17.08) 21.67 (11.16) 18.42 (12.49) 18.58 (10.52) 14.33 (4.48) Behavioural self-handicapping Number of solved unicursal tasks 2.75 (1.22) 2.92 (1.38) 3.58 (1.08) 2.92 (1.17) 3.00 (1.41) 3.50 (2.02) Note. Value in parentheses is standard deviation.