Abstract: The imposter phenomenon refers to an intense, persistent feeling of inferiority and undeserved success by often high-achieving individuals and is associated with negative psychological consequences. Previous research has shown that the imposter phenomenon is closely related to perfectionism. However, some recent findings suggest that this relationship is not consistent across different dimensions of perfectionism, specifically perfectionistic strivings (PS) and perfectionistic concerns (PC). We conducted a meta-analysis of studies reporting these correlations to provide mean estimates of the disparate relationships. Twenty-six records providing 91 unique effect sizes were included. The mean reliability-adjusted correlation with the imposter phenomenon was significantly smaller for PS ( z = .159, 95% CI .051, .268) than for PC ( z = .747, 95% CI .632, .863). Partial correlations revealed that PS showed no unique relationship with the imposter phenomenon ( z = −.069, 95% CI −.179, .041), whereas the unique relationship for PC was strong ( z = .783, 95% CI .547, 1.020).
Breit et al. (Thu,) studied this question.