WHAT IS THE IMPOSTER SYNDROME?

First things first; if you're a nerd like me who wants to look this up in the scientific journals, they don't call it "Imposter Syndrome," they actually call it the "Imposter Phenomenon" (which led to my initial struggle in finding relevant papers on this topic in the scientific literature, despite it being soooo popular in general media.) But it has also been called the "fraud syndrome," "perceived fraudulence," and "imposter experience.")

One surprising thing that came from my high-level review of the psychological literature on this topic is that currently, researchers DO NOT AGREE on what this concept means.

This was surprising to me because it seems to be all over the internet and mentioned a lot in the vernacular, so I thought the state of the science was further along!

The main issue is whether it's ONE core thing (unidimensional) or MULTIPLE-THINGS (multidimensional) bundled together. So, I don't find it possible to give you a one-sentence definition of this, but more productive to outline what the researchers have been listing as part of this phenomenon.