This tendency is clear in you — here is what it reveals, to understand and move forward.

A tendency to question your skills and your legitimacy despite your successes.

Your high score describes a persistent doubt about your skills and your legitimacy, one that resists the evidence of success. This is the core of the impostor phenomenon described by Clance and Imes: a gap between objective achievement and a subjective feeling of illegitimacy. One way of reading it, to weigh against your own experience, is that this doubt works like a perception filter: successes are attributed to external causes (luck, help, circumstances) while difficulties are attributed to yourself, so that no success ever truly 'counts' toward building confidence. This mechanism explains the central paradox of the syndrome: the more you succeed, the more you fear being 'unmasked', because each success widens the perceived gap between the image you project and your inner feeling. Recognising that this doubt is a bias in interpretation, and not the reflection of your real skills, is the first lever for change.

This tendency is clear in you — here is what it reveals, to understand and move forward.

A fear that others will discover you are not as competent as they think.

This high score describes the fear of being 'unmasked', of others discovering that you are not as competent as they believe. This fear is the hallmark of impostor syndrome. One reading, to weigh against your own experience, is that it sustains costly behaviours: either over-investment (working far more than necessary so as not to be 'caught out', at the risk of burnout), or avoidance (turning down opportunities, declining to speak up, for fear of exposure). These two strategies, although opposite, share a common effect: they prevent you from living the very experience that would defuse the fear (succeeding WITHOUT over-investing, or being exposed WITHOUT being 'unmasked'). Understanding that this fear rests on a belief (and not on a real risk of being a fraud) opens the way to corrective experiences.

This tendency is clear in you — here is what it reveals, to understand and move forward.

A tendency to attribute your successes to luck, timing or others' help rather than to your own skills.

Your high score describes a tendency to attribute your successes to external causes (luck, others' help, the ease of the task, circumstances) rather than to your own skills. This is a central mechanism of impostor syndrome, and it explains why successes never consolidate confidence: if it was 'not thanks to me', then my success proves nothing about my worth. One avenue, to weigh against your own experience, is that this attribution style is asymmetrical: successes are externalised, but failures or difficulties are readily internalised ('it's my fault'). This bias mechanically sustains the doubt. Rebalancing your attributions — honestly recognising your part in your successes, just as you recognise your part in your difficulties — is a powerful and concrete lever for rebuilding a confidence grounded in facts.

This tendency is present in you — here is what it sheds light on.

A tendency to compare yourself unfavourably to others and to minimise your own achievements.

Your moderate score describes a tendency to compare yourself unfavourably to others, to perceive their skills as superior to your own. This comparison feeds impostor syndrome: by measuring your 'inside' (your doubts, your behind-the-scenes) against the confident 'outside' of others (their façade), you start out at a loss. One avenue, to weigh against your own experience, is that this comparison is biased at its source — you do not see others' doubts, which they often have just as much. The moderate level of the score suggests that comparison plays a real but secondary role compared with doubt and attribution in your profile. Becoming aware that many of the people you judge to be confident live with the same doubts — impostor syndrome being extremely widespread, including among the most accomplished — is a particularly freeing reframing.