Found Out or Psyched Up: How and When Workplace Impostor Thoughts Breed Mastery at Work

Abstract

Mastering one’s work responsibilities is integral for professional success. Although a consequence of job mastery is that employees may come to embrace their new identities as masters of their work, we have little understanding of how identity is involved in the development of mastery. Accordingly, I seek to account for an overlooked identity-based influence: workplace impostor thoughts. Workplace impostor thoughts capture an employee’s belief that others see her as more competent than she sees herself. Building on the core ideas underlying cognitive dissonance theory, I articulate a model that outlines how, why, when, and for whom workplace impostor thoughts encourage job mastery. I test my model in a two-time-period field study of 196 Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets and a three-time-period study of 161 employees of an investment solutions company. I find that workplace impostor thoughts are related to job mastery through the competing mechanisms of introjected motivation and a fear of being found out. Whether one responds with fear or motivation depends on one’s helping behaviors at work and one’s growth mindset. Taken together, my results suggest that having workplace impostor thoughts may be both a boon and a bane for mastery at work.