Industrial and Organizational Psychology Studies

Designing and Testing A Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Impostor

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

erfan ghorbani 1
Abdulzahra Naami 2

1 MA Student of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

2 2. Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22055/jiops.2024.45785.1395
Abstract
Introduction
Impostor syndrome describes high-achieving individuals who, despite their objective successes, fail to internalize their accomplishments and have persistent self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud or impostor. People with impostor syndrome struggle with accurately attributing their performance to their actual competence (i.e., they attribute successes to external factors such as luck or receiving help from others and attribute setbacks as evidence of their professional inadequacy). The purpose of the current research was designing and testing a model of the effects of growing mindset and fixed mindset on impostor syndrome through mastery goal orientation, performance-avoidance goal orientation and the effect on  job burnout, organizational citizenship behavior and  organizational creativity.
 
Method
The research design is descriptive. The sample consists of 251 employees of an organization that were selected by convenience sampling method. The tools were include imposter syndrome scale (Clance & Imce, 1978), fixed and growing questionnaire (Dweck, 2000), Mastery goal orientation questionnaire and performance-avoidance goal orientation questionnaire (Midgley et al., 1998), job burnout questionnaire (Maslach & Jackson, 1986), organizational citizenship behavior (organ and Kanovski, 1989), and organizational creativity questionnaire (Liao et al., 2018). The evaluation of the proposed model was done using the structural equation modeling method (SEM) and using SPSS version 24 and AMOS version 24 software. The bootstrap method was also used for testing the mediating effects in the proposed model.
 
Results
The results showed a good fit of the proposed model with the data. In addition the direct and indirect effects of growing mindset and fixed mindset through mastery goal orientation and performance-avoidance goal orientation on impostor was confirmed. Furthermore the effect of Impostor on organizational creativity, job burnout and organizational citizenship behavior was confirmed.
 
Discussion
According to the results of this research, It can be said that imposter syndrome, weakens the development of human resources and decrease organizational creativity and organizational citizenship behavior and leading to job burnout.
 

Keywords

Impostor syndrome
fixed mindset
growing mindset
mastery goal orientation
performance-avoidance goal orientation
job burnout
organizational citizenship behavior
organizational creativity
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Industrial and Organizational Psychology Studies
Volume 12, Issue 1
July 2025
Pages 19-34

  • Receive Date 10 July 2024
  • Revise Date 08 October 2024
  • Accept Date 07 November 2024

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