Speaker
Description
Impostor phenomenon (IP) is when high-achieving individuals falsely attribute their success to luck or having deceived those around them, and it is prevalent in academic populations. The UMD Physics Mental Health Task Force administered a survey studying IP to the UMD physics graduate population. Nearly 70% of our respondents reported “frequent” or “intense” feelings of impostorism, with reported mean scores higher than other graduate populations. Regression analysis showed two statistically significant correlations among respondents. First, female-identifying students reported higher levels of IP than male-identifying students. Second, students who reported experiencing higher quality advising from their primary research advisors reported lower IP. We believe these results can be used to ameliorate feelings of impostor phenomenon for physicists in graduate school and other educational settings.
