A new study of German-speaking adults found that recalling parents as overprotective and controlling correlates with stronger impostor feelings and higher vulnerable narcissism. Both traits also linked to higher attachment anxiety and lower trust in others, though statistical analyses suggest the impostor self-concept and vulnerable narcissism are distinct constructs. The work appears in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The impostor phenomenon, also known as the impostor self-concept, refers to persistent feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt despite objective evidence of one’s competence and achievements. People experiencing this phenomenon tend to attribute their successes to luck, excessive effort, or external circumstances rather than their own abilities, and they fear that others will eventually uncover their supposed incompetence.
Although the impostor phenomenon may initially appear to be the opposite of narcissism, both involve difficulties regulating self-worth and maintaining a stable self-image. Researchers distinguish between grandiose narcissism, with inflated self-importance and a craving for admiration, and vulnerable narcissism, marked by insecurity, emotional sensitivity and defensiveness. Vulnerable narcissism shares several features with the impostor phenomenon, including fragile self-esteem, anxiety and reliance on external validation.
However, entitlement and antagonistic tendencies, often associated with narcissism, are not defining features of the impostor phenomenon. Childhood experiences — particularly controlling, overprotective, critical or emotionally invalidating parenting — have been linked to impostor feelings and vulnerable narcissistic traits, while supportive parenting is generally linked to fewer such feelings. Both the impostor phenomenon and vulnerable narcissism have also been linked to insecure attachment in adulthood, especially attachment anxiety.
Study author Kristina Klug of Goethe University Frankfurt and colleagues examined the relationships between the impostor self-concept and two forms of narcissism — grandiose and vulnerable — testing whether they would show similar links to parenting experiences and adult attachment.
They hypothesised that the impostor self-concept and vulnerable narcissism would be positively associated with recalled parental rejection and punishment, and with control and overprotection, while negatively associated with emotional warmth. They also tested whether the impostor self-concept could be statistically distinguished from narcissism.
Participants numbered 339 individuals aged between 16 and 80, with a mean age of 33. About 71% were women, 46% were employed and 41% were students. Data were collected via an online survey between February and April 2023.
Respondents completed measures of the impostor self-concept (the Impostor-Selbstkonzept-Fragebogen), narcissism (the German Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory Brief Form), recalled parental rearing styles (a short German version of the EMBU questionnaire), and adult attachment tendencies (the Revised Adult Attachment Scale). The parenting instrument assessed rejection and punishment, emotional warmth and control and overprotection; the attachment tool gauged comfort with closeness, trust in others and attachment anxiety.
The results showed the impostor self-concept was strongly associated with vulnerable narcissism, with a weaker link to grandiose narcissism. Those with stronger impostor feelings tended to trust others less, feel less comfortable with closeness, and experience greater attachment anxiety, while recalling their parents as more rejecting and punishing and more controlling and overprotective.
Vulnerable narcissism displayed a similar pattern of associations. Yet when the three parenting dimensions were considered together, only control and overprotection remained uniquely linked to both the impostor self-concept and vulnerable narcissism. Emotional warmth did not show a unique association with either trait.
Grandiose narcissism followed a distinct pattern: it correlated with recalled control and overprotection and, when other parenting dimensions were accounted for, with greater emotional warmth, but it was not uniquely linked to attachment tendencies.
Further statistical analyses indicated that the impostor self-concept, vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism are best treated as three distinct characteristics, despite their overlap. Treating the impostor self-concept and vulnerable narcissism as a single trait produced a poorer fit to the data.
“The present study identified the potentially causal influences of parenting behavior on the impostor self-concept and narcissism, and their consequences for adult attachment tendencies. These influences, in turn, can significantly impact an individual’s quality of life and mental health,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to understanding how the impostor self-concept relates to narcissism. However, all data came from self-reports, and information about parental rearing practices was based on participants’ recall of childhood, leaving room for reporting and recall biases to have affected the results.
Moreover, the study was cross-sectional. As the authors acknowledge, their models do not establish whether parenting shaped these traits or whether these traits shape attachment, and reverse directions are plausible. Recalled parenting explained only about 11% of the variation in impostor feelings and vulnerable narcissism; the sample was predominantly female and recruited online, and the researchers’ hypotheses were not preregistered.
The paper, “Me, My Self (Concept), and I – Disentangling the Link Between Narcissism and the Impostor Self-Concept,” was authored by Kristina Klug, Mona Leonhardt, Sophie Oprée, Sinem Rhein and Sonja Rohrmann.
