If you have ever found yourself doubting your abilities in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, you are far from alone. Across the world, highly qualified scientists and professionals often feel like impostors, convinced that they will be found out as less capable than others believe. This experience is not limited to one gender, culture or career stage. It is a predictable psychological pattern that emerges in high achievement environments where people are highly visible, continually evaluated and sometimes underrepresented.
Understanding why it happens, what triggers it and how to manage it can transform both personal wellbeing and collective innovation in global STEM industries.
What the Research Shows
The idea of impostor syndrome, more accurately called the impostor phenomenon, was first identified by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978. You can read their original paper The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women, which describes how accomplished professionals often attribute success to luck rather than competence.
Since then, international reviews have confirmed that impostor feelings are common across populations. One systematic review including 62 studies and over 14,000 participants found prevalence rates varying between 9 % and 82 %, depending on measurement method and threshold.
These feelings have measurable effects. People with impostor tendencies report higher stress, burnout and reduced career progression. Many avoid promotions or leadership roles for fear of exposure, leading to lost innovation and avoidable emotional fatigue.
Why STEM Encourages Impostor Feelings
Scientific and technical environments contain several risk factors that make impostor thoughts more likely.
Constant Evaluation
Scientists, engineers and technologists are continually assessed through publications, patents and performance metrics. This pressure creates the belief that one error could erase years of success.
Competitive Environments
From graduate school to corporate research, competition can be intense. Limited funding and constant peer review can cause ordinary setbacks to feel like personal failure.
Lack of Representation
When you are one of few women, people of colour, or individuals from less represented backgrounds, visibility amplifies self-consciousness. Success feels conditional, as if it must be re-earned daily.
The Myth of the Genius
Popular culture still idolises the lone genius who succeeds effortlessly. In reality, science is collaborative. When effort is mistaken for inadequacy, those who work hardest often feel fraudulent instead of capable.
Transitions and New Roles
Career changes, international moves and promotions are common impostor triggers. Each new challenge introduces uncertainty, which fuels self-doubt.
Global Perspectives and Data
The impostor phenomenon is universal, but its expression varies by region.
In the United States, a large study of more than 4,000 academics across nine research universities found that early-career scholars, especially women and those in fields that emphasise raw intellectual talent, are significantly more likely to experience impostor feelings.
In Europe, studies link impostor thoughts to perfectionism and rigid evaluation systems. Even where equality frameworks exist, professionals still feel they must prove themselves twice.
In Asia, cultural norms around humility and high academic expectations can make confidence appear boastful, causing people to downplay their abilities.
In Africa, researchers in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa describe a double impostor effect, feeling both unrecognised locally and invisible globally due to structural inequities in research funding and visibility.
In Latin America, cultural expectations of modesty and family balance add another dimension to self-doubt, particularly among women in science and technology.
Regardless of geography, the pattern remains the same. When evaluation outweighs support, belonging feels fragile.
What Works to Reduce Impostor Feelings
Because impostor thoughts are predictable, they can be managed through deliberate strategies that combine personal awareness and cultural reform.
Acknowledge the Pattern
The first step in addressing impostor feelings is to recognise them for what they are. Acknowledging the pattern removes the secrecy and shame that allow these thoughts to persist. Many capable people spend years believing that they are alone in their self doubt, when in reality such feelings are common among high achievers. Simply understanding that impostor thoughts follow a familiar psychological pattern can turn confusion into clarity.
Acknowledging the pattern does not mean accepting it as permanent. It means identifying when it appears and understanding what triggers it. These moments often surface during transitions, new responsibilities or public recognition. By observing these patterns with honesty, people begin to see that self doubt tends to emerge not when they are failing but when they are growing. Recognising this connection reframes the experience as a sign of progress rather than weakness.
Open conversations about impostor feelings create a shared language that breaks isolation. When professionals speak honestly about the challenges of confidence, they help others see that expertise and uncertainty can coexist. These conversations make it easier to seek feedback, to ask for support and to see self doubt as part of learning rather than an obstacle to it.
Acknowledging impostor thoughts also helps to restore perspective. Instead of reacting to them with panic, individuals can pause and evaluate the evidence. They can remind themselves of their preparation, their contribution and their achievements. Over time, this awareness becomes a form of self regulation. The thoughts may still appear, but they lose their authority.
When people are encouraged to recognise and name these patterns without judgment, the experience of self doubt becomes less personal and more manageable. Acknowledging the pattern is not a sign of fragility but of self awareness, and self awareness is the foundation of genuine confidence.
Practise Self Compassion
.Self compassion is the ability to treat yourself with the same understanding that you would offer to someone you respect. It is not self pity or indulgence. It is a practical skill that helps to balance ambition with wellbeing. In high achieving environments, it can be easy to mistake relentless self criticism for motivation, yet research and experience show that constant pressure erodes confidence rather than builds it.
Research by Dr Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion demonstrates that treating oneself with kindness improves confidence, resilience and emotional stability.
Practising self compassion begins with awareness. It means noticing the inner voice that questions your ability or downplays your success and choosing to respond differently. Instead of accepting those thoughts as fact, self compassion invites you to see them as habits of the mind that can be changed. It is the act of replacing judgment with curiosity and recognising that mistakes are part of learning rather than proof of inadequacy.
Developing this skill takes intention. It can be as simple as pausing after a setback to acknowledge what was learned, or recognising the effort invested in a difficult task rather than focusing only on the outcome. Over time, this practice helps to separate identity from performance. You begin to see that your worth is not defined by a single project, grade or result but by your ongoing commitment to grow and contribute.
Self compassion also builds resilience. People who accept their imperfections recover from stress more quickly because they no longer view difficulty as a personal failure. They are able to maintain perspective and continue moving forward with clarity. In fast paced scientific and technical environments, this mindset is vital. It allows individuals to maintain motivation, creativity and confidence even under pressure.
When self compassion becomes part of professional culture, it changes how teams interact. People become more open to feedback, more willing to collaborate and less defensive when things go wrong. Encouraging self compassion does not lower standards. It sustains them, because people who feel supported are more capable of excellence.
Redefine Success
The way success is defined within an organisation has a profound impact on how people feel about their own abilities. When success is measured only by perfection, people begin to fear mistakes and hide uncertainty. When success is defined by growth, collaboration and learning, confidence has room to develop. In environments that reward curiosity as much as results, people feel encouraged to explore new ideas and take creative risks without fear of being judged.
True success in science and technology depends not on flawless execution but on continuous improvement. Every breakthrough is built on experiments that did not work as expected. When teams celebrate the learning that comes from these experiences, they build resilience and trust. This approach transforms failure from something to hide into something to understand.
Redefining success also requires leaders to model it differently. When leaders acknowledge effort, persistence and adaptability, they shift the focus from outcomes to progress. They show that success is not a single destination but an ongoing process of refinement. This perspective helps to reduce the unrealistic expectations that often feed impostor thoughts, replacing them with recognition of authentic effort and contribution.
Organisations that value learning and communication over competition tend to nurture greater creativity and commitment. People who feel safe to share ideas and admit uncertainty become more engaged and innovative. Over time, these behaviours shape a culture where confidence grows naturally because achievement is seen as collective progress rather than personal validation.
When success is redefined as a shared journey of learning, innovation becomes more sustainable and people begin to take pride in both their achievements and their growth. In such environments, confidence is not an act of performance but an expression of purpose.
Build Mentorship and Sponsorship
Mentorship guides growth while sponsorship opens doors. A mentor helps you clarify your direction, build your skills and reflect on your progress. A sponsor goes further by advocating for you when you are not present, recommending you for opportunities and using their influence to move your career forward. Both forms of support are essential to long term success, yet many people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics still navigate large parts of their career without structured guidance or visible champions.
In environments that prize high performance, isolation can quietly erode confidence. Mentorship counters that isolation by creating a space for honest reflection. It allows individuals to see that moments of self doubt are a natural part of professional growth rather than evidence of inadequacy. A thoughtful mentor offers context, helps interpret feedback and teaches how to build confidence through consistent action rather than constant reassurance.
Sponsorship adds another layer of support. It provides visible proof that others recognise and value your contribution. When someone with influence names you in a meeting, invites you into a project or publicly acknowledges your work, it validates achievement in a way that self reflection alone cannot. This external recognition helps to replace the internal story of not belonging with tangible evidence of competence and trust.
Both mentorship and sponsorship require intention. They do not emerge automatically in competitive cultures but can be cultivated through openness, mutual respect and shared accountability. When leaders commit to developing others rather than merely managing them, they create an environment where talent feels seen, supported and safe to grow.
Mentorship builds understanding, sponsorship builds opportunity, and together they create the confidence that transforms potential into achievement.
Create Peer Networks
Peer networks are one of the most effective ways to reduce impostor feelings because they replace isolation with understanding. Speaking to others who share similar challenges helps to normalise doubt and turn it into dialogue. When people realise that even accomplished colleagues experience moments of uncertainty, the weight of comparison begins to lift.
A strong peer network provides both perspective and accountability. It is a space where achievements can be acknowledged without discomfort and where setbacks can be discussed without judgment. Within this kind of group, learning becomes collective. Each member brings different strengths, experiences and viewpoints, allowing others to see their own progress more clearly.
Peer networks also encourage practical problem solving. Members share strategies for communication, workload management and career progression, offering advice grounded in real experience. These conversations often highlight skills or achievements that individuals may have overlooked in themselves. By reflecting one another’s competence, peers help to strengthen confidence from within the group.
Beyond emotional support, peer connections create professional momentum. Collaboration becomes easier when trust already exists, and opportunities often arise naturally through these relationships. Over time, informal circles of encouragement grow into communities of shared purpose, where success is celebrated as collective progress rather than individual competition.
Building a peer network takes intention but not hierarchy. It begins with openness, curiosity and respect for what others can teach. When people choose to support rather than compare, impostor thoughts lose their strength, and a sense of belonging takes their place.
Provide Coaching and Skills Training
Coaching and skills training help transform awareness into action. While reflection and discussion create understanding, structured guidance gives that understanding direction. A good coach helps individuals recognise unhelpful thinking patterns, challenge assumptions and build practical habits that strengthen confidence over time.
Coaching works because it is personal. It allows people to examine their internal dialogue in a private and supportive environment. Through thoughtful questioning and observation, a coach can help someone identify where self criticism becomes self sabotage and replace it with strategies that promote growth. Over time, this process builds a more balanced self perception, where achievement is recognised as earned rather than accidental.
Skills training complements this by giving people the tools to act on what they have learned. Workshops on communication, assertiveness, leadership or time management can make an immediate difference in how professionals present themselves and how they respond to challenges. Learning how to speak clearly in meetings, how to manage competing priorities or how to receive feedback without self-doubt turns theory into behaviour.
When coaching and skills development are offered together, they reinforce each other. Coaching supports the mindset for change, while training builds the practical ability to apply it. Both send an important message from the organisation: confidence and competence are not innate qualities but skills that can be developed.
Providing regular opportunities for coaching and professional growth creates a culture of learning rather than judgment. It reminds people that expertise evolves, that progress is continuous, and that the ability to grow is itself a sign of capability.
Encourage Leaders to Model Honesty
Leadership has a powerful influence on how people interpret success and failure. When leaders present themselves as flawless, they unintentionally create pressure for others to do the same. When they speak openly about their own challenges, learning curves or moments of uncertainty, they give permission for authenticity across the organisation. This kind of honesty builds trust and connection far more effectively than perfection ever could.
Modelling honesty does not mean exposing every doubt. It means communicating with sincerity and balance. A leader who admits that they are still learning, who describes how they overcame a mistake or how they sought advice before making a difficult decision, demonstrates that growth and competence can exist together. This approach shows that leadership is not about never being wrong but about taking responsibility and continuing to learn.
When people see leaders handle uncertainty with calm reflection rather than fear, they feel safer to speak up, ask questions and contribute new ideas. Teams led by honest and self aware managers tend to collaborate more effectively because psychological safety becomes part of everyday culture. Mistakes are treated as information rather than personal failures, and feedback becomes a tool for development instead of a source of anxiety.
Honest leadership also strengthens credibility. People trust leaders who are transparent about what they know, what they are learning and where they seek input. That trust encourages others to follow their example. Over time, this openness filters through the organisation, creating a shared understanding that vulnerability is not weakness but evidence of confidence and maturity.
Encouraging leaders to model honesty helps to replace a culture of fear with a culture of learning. It allows everyone, regardless of seniority, to see that success is not defined by perfection but by integrity, curiosity and continuous improvement.
Increase Representation
Representation shapes perception. When people see others who share their background, identity or life experience in positions of influence, it reinforces the belief that achievement is possible for them too. Visibility matters because it turns aspiration into evidence. It tells future scientists, engineers and innovators that excellence is not confined to a single type of person but can be found across every culture, gender and perspective.
Increasing representation is not only about fairness. It is also about accuracy. A diverse workforce reflects the reality of the world that science and technology aim to serve. When a variety of voices contribute to research, design and policy, solutions become more creative, more inclusive and more effective. Diversity in leadership therefore improves both morale and results.
Representation also helps to counter impostor feelings. When individuals work in spaces where few people look or think like them, they can unconsciously interpret that difference as a sign they do not belong. Seeing colleagues from varied backgrounds thriving in similar roles challenges that assumption. Each visible success becomes a quiet but powerful message that belonging is earned through contribution, not conformity.
Building representation requires intention. It begins with inclusive recruitment, fair evaluation and genuine recognition of potential. It continues through mentorship, sponsorship and equal access to opportunity. Representation flourishes when organisations value a wide range of communication styles, experiences and working methods rather than expecting everyone to fit the same mould.
When representation becomes part of everyday culture, it benefits everyone. Teams become more open, ideas are tested from multiple angles and individuals feel seen for their abilities rather than their differences. In these environments, impostor thoughts lose credibility because evidence of belonging is visible in every direction.
How Individuals Can Rewire Their Thinking
- Keep a Record of Achievements
Maintain a personal folder of positive feedback, completed projects and milestones. Reviewing concrete evidence counteracts feelings of fraudulence. - Treat Mistakes as Data
Every failure provides information for improvement. This mindset keeps growth and learning at the centre of professional identity. - Speak Clearly and Confidently
Avoid unnecessary qualifiers. Replace “I might be wrong” with “My data suggest.” Clear, factual speech builds self-belief. - Ask for Feedback, Not Validation
Constructive feedback develops skill. Seeking constant validation feeds insecurity. - Avoid Comparison
Social media amplifies selective success stories. Remember that others post their highlights, not their full reality. - Join a Supportive Community
Belonging creates confidence. Peer mentoring through Women in STEM Network connects professionals from over thirty countries who share insights and encouragement.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
When impostor feelings are ignored, they quietly shape behaviour and limit potential. People who constantly question their abilities tend to work harder than necessary, seeking reassurance through over preparation and perfectionism. They may avoid taking credit for success, hesitate to share ideas or decline opportunities that could advance their careers. Over time, this pattern can lead to exhaustion, reduced creativity and a persistent sense of disconnection from achievement.
For organisations, the consequences are equally serious. When talented individuals hold back, innovation slows and collaboration weakens. Teams lose the benefit of diverse perspectives because some voices remain silent. Productivity may remain high on paper, but emotional energy and morale decline. The result is a culture where people appear successful yet feel insecure, and where potential breakthroughs are lost to hesitation.
Ignoring impostor feelings also undermines retention. Skilled professionals who continually feel undeserving are more likely to leave their roles, often believing that a change of environment will solve the problem. Without cultural awareness and structural support, the same feelings follow them elsewhere. This cycle creates unnecessary turnover and deprives organisations of experienced staff who could have thrived with the right encouragement.
The cost extends beyond the workplace. Chronic self doubt affects mental wellbeing, relationships and personal fulfilment. It limits ambition not because ability is lacking but because confidence has been misplaced. When a person consistently discounts their own value, they stop seeing themselves as capable of leadership or innovation.
The cost of doing nothing is therefore both personal and collective. It diminishes individual growth and reduces the collective strength of the scientific and technical community. Addressing impostor thoughts is not a matter of comfort. It is an investment in sustainability, creativity and the full expression of human potential.
Towards a Culture of Genuine Confidence
True confidence in science and technology is not arrogance. It is clarity about what you contribute and acceptance that learning continues indefinitely. Environments that support this mindset generate better collaboration, healthier teams and greater creativity.
As the world faces immense scientific challenges from climate change to health crises, we cannot afford for capable minds to stay silent through self-doubt. Every researcher or engineer who questions their right to belong represents a potential breakthrough deferred.
Support, Books and Webinars Through TheWomen in Stem Network
We provide a global platform for professionals to build lasting confidence through evidence, learning and community. Members gain free access to the Success Toolkit Books for Women in STEM which explore topics such as impostor syndrome, confidence and professional presence.
Our members can also attend on demand workshops and webinars covering impostor syndrome and related subjects. These expert sessions teach practical methods to manage self-doubt and strengthen confidence in real career situations.
Joining us connects you with professionals across the world who combine ambition with empathy. Together, members learn to transform doubt into knowledge-based confidence.
Related Reading on the WiSN Platform
Confidence Gap Myths vs Reality for Women in STEM
Perfectionism Traps for Scientists and Engineers