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jrm19941994 t1_j1qh9xf wrote

Cool chart, garbage headline:

"Women face greater Imposter Syndrome than Men, when starting Software Engineering Degrees, despite having similar high school averages"

they face imposter syndrome? Like this plague that comes down from the sky and befalls them?

They FEEL imposter syndrome.

Knowing that the school system is somewhat biased in favor of female students (higher avg GPAs with lower avg SAT scores), this chart looks spot on to me.

I bet if you replaced GPA with SAT score percentile you would see much less disparity between sexes, though you would still see a disparity, as women on average are higher in sensitivity to negative emotion (Neuroticism per Big 5 personality inventory), which is of course highly correlated with feeling self-conscious, imposter syndrome being a sub-type of feeling self-conscious.

Just as an aside, when I was in my doctoral program we presentations and round tables about imposter syndrome, I was like "lol what are you talking about, you know XYZ how are you not competent?" Well, turns out I am like <5th percentile in neuroticism.

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hamburger5003 t1_j1r5ecb wrote

Most stuff I agree with, but I think imposter syndrome may also be heavily attributed to being in a heavy male dominated field.

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jrm19941994 t1_j1r63el wrote

I am in a majority female field and the females still tend to have imposter syndrome more frequently.

Not saying its no factor but I think the core difference is temperamental.

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tryght t1_j1tq07h wrote

It makes sense to me, on average women are more sensitive to negative emotion (higher neuroticism) and are more sensitive to issues with coworkers when trying to fit into their role (higher agreeableness): meaning they’re more susceptible to imposter syndrome.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjojr wrote

Not discrimination?

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jrm19941994 t1_j1ruzth wrote

Not sure i understand your question, gonna need more context.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1x9g1t wrote

You say the core difference is temperment, as opposed to discrimination. It's very difficult to study temperment and isolate it from discrimination, whereas the opposite is easy and well-studied (think studies that present the same CVs with different names). So concluding that differences in gender temperment lead to higher rates of imposter syndrome is a radical conclusion, while concluding that these differences stem from lifelong discrimination is less radical (at least in the academic community, maybe not so much on this sub).

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jrm19941994 t1_j1yv5lk wrote

I fail to see how the hypothesis that feeling self-conscious is positively associated with trait neuroticism is at all radical, in fact its about as self-evident as the hypothesis that people high in trait extraversion will have on average more social interactions in a given week.

I am unaware of the studies that use male vs female resumes specifically but would be interested to read them. I have seen where the used white vs African American vs African names, which was incredibly interesting as IIRC the resumes with "white" and "African" names did equally well, but the resumes with "African American" names did poorly, leading me to think the raters were using cultural vs racial cues to discriminate.

With regard to male vs female resumes, I am confident female would get an advantage applying to certain fields (for example childcare) while men would have an advantage in other fields (construction).

We must remember that those making hiring decisions are rationale actors who are trying to make the best decisions for their firm.

Speaking of the academic community, this seems to be an area where we see discrimination against males, as I have seen good data showing female academics on average only need to publish a fraction of the research their male colleagues do to get tenure.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j20dtiq wrote

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2012/issue131a/

Your last paragraph is just untrue, sounds like you're basing it on the nonsense Strumia study that was never accepted into a journal. You also oversimplify: citation data and publication metrics are not fully objective, but bias informs them as well.

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jrm19941994 t1_j214vtx wrote

Fair enough, thank you for supplying me with some new info.

Care to address my first paragraph?

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j21kz4l wrote

Ehh idk how to address it because it's so subjective. You say it's obvious, I say more data is required. I'm personally pretty conservative/cautious when it comes to making links to predictive behavior from our cultural understanding of gender. I think it's easy to jump to conclusions based on broad stereotypes that don't hold up to scrutiny, but I don't know that I can really prove you're doing that.

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jrm19941994 t1_j21mghl wrote

I am not using stereotypes at all.

All the Big 5 literature indicates women are higher in both neuroticism and agreeable than men, on average, across cultures, with more significant gender differences noted in more egalitarian countries such as the Scandinavian nations.

Now if we did a study where we looked at SAT scores, GPA, imposter syndrome incidence, and Big 5 aspect scale, then maybe we could learn something about gender differences in imposter syndrome specifically.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1r8sys wrote

Thanks for the comment. Sorry about that, little mistake on the face vs feel in the title there.

What you said would be really nice to measure. Unfortunately (or fortunately but let's not get into that debate), we don't have widespread use of standardized tests in Canada which makes these comparisons more difficult. I took a psychology course last year, and I'm nowhere near competent in that field but it's interesting to hear about your point of view regarding the potential correlation with the Big 5.

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jrm19941994 t1_j1rco34 wrote

You are welcome!

For your specific research questions you could just use a GRE math section as a proxy for IQ (should be decent in the context of software engineering students).

With respect to the Big 5, its fascinating when you dig into it and particularly look at the sub-aspects (ie conscientious breaks down into industriousness and orderliness)

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tju9v wrote

Ironically enough, I'm neurotic as fuck but don't feel Imposter Syndrome. I have very average abilities and I don't pretend I'm any more skilled than that. Anyone that hires me is agreeing to take on a self-proclaimed mediocre worker, that's their fault!

Tbh I figure that a pre-requisite to Imposter Syndrome is some form of dishonesty, usually social posturing I'd guess. How else are people being fooled if you are not the one fooling them? It doesn't work if you say "Oh, no, it's just that they're wrong about me, making undue assumptions about my abilities etc." So, they're hedging their bets on you performing well, completely unfounded and detached from reality and any observable behaviors? Looks like we're all idiots, then, and you are no outlier.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1xa0wk wrote

I think this is a pretty poor understanding of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is the belief that your achievements were lucky, like "I scored an 800 on my SAT by random chance/because I'm a good test taker/etc, but this says nothing about my ability to do well in college." So then they believe they by luck got placed in the wrong class and don't deserve to be there. This is exacerbated by people treating them inconsistently, sometimes from direct discrimination, other times from unconscious bias. They feel a kind of survivor's guilt, that breeds shame, that breeds imposter syndrome.

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