The research, led by Ana Karla Silva Soares of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, together with Eduardo França do Nascimento, Renata Tereza dos Passos Costa, Alessandro Teixeira Rezende, and Kátia Regina Bazzano da Silva Rosi, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: to what extent, and in which direction, is the imposter phenomenon related to human values and parenting styles among children? While interest in the origins of imposter feelings has grown steadily in recent decades, few studies have explored the possibility that the seeds of this phenomenon are planted in childhood, long before university examinations, doctoral defenses, or workplace promotions provide the achievements that adults feel unworthy of.

To investigate the question, the team recruited 201 elementary school students between the ages of nine and twelve, with an average age of ten and a standard deviation of 1.06. The sample was mostly female, at 54.5 percent, and overwhelmingly drawn from public schools, which accounted for 97.5 percent of participants. The largest single group, 35 percent of the children, was in the fifth year of schooling. Each participant completed a battery of instruments: the Child Impostor Phenomenon Scale, designed to capture imposter feelings in age-appropriate language; the Reduced Parental Perception Questionnaire, which measures how children perceive the emotional and demanding dimensions of their parents’ behavior; the Questionnaire of Basic Values for Children, grounded in the functionalist theory of human values developed by the Brazilian psychologist Valdiney Gouveia; and a set of sociodemographic questions.

The results, published on 23 October 2025, reveal a consistent pattern of negative associations. The imposter phenomenon was significantly and negatively correlated with a demanding parental style, with a correlation coefficient of r = −.14. In other words, children who perceived their parents as more demanding, in the sense of setting expectations, supervising behavior, and requiring accountability, reported fewer imposter feelings, not more. This finding runs counter to a popular intuition that strict, high-expectation parenting breeds self-doubt. Instead, the data suggest that parental demandingness, a core component of the authoritative parenting style first described by developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s, may provide children with the structure and feedback they need to accurately calibrate their sense of their own abilities.

The value measurements added a second layer of insight. Using the functionalist framework, which organizes human values into distinct orientations that guide behavior, the researchers found that imposter feelings were negatively correlated with both interactive values, at r = −.15, and normative values, at r = −.18. Interactive values, in this theoretical tradition, emphasize relationships, affection, and social connection, while normative values emphasize rules, obligations, and respect for established norms. Children who scored higher on these value orientations tended to report fewer feelings of being an intellectual fraud. The interpretation offered by the functionalist perspective is that children who internalize the importance of norms and interpersonal bonds may develop a more stable and socially anchored sense of self, one less vulnerable to the gap between external achievement and internal self-worth that defines the imposter experience.

Perhaps the most technically interesting result concerned moderation. The researchers found that the demanding style of fathers, specifically paternal requirement, moderated the relationship between normative human values and the imposter syndrome in children. Moderation analysis, a statistical technique popularized in psychology by Andrew Hayes, tests whether the strength or direction of an association between two variables depends on the level of a third variable. In this case, the link between a child’s endorsement of normative values and their imposter feelings was not uniform across all levels of paternal demandingness. The father’s behavioral profile, in effect, changed the terrain on which the child’s values operated. This suggests that values and parenting do not act as independent levers on a child’s psychology but interact in ways that researchers are only beginning to map.

The study’s theoretical grounding is worth unpacking. The concept of the imposter phenomenon originated in 1978, when psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes described it among high-achieving women in clinical settings. Subsequent work extended the construct to university students, doctoral candidates, and professionals across many fields, and systematic reviews of measurement scales have catalogued a proliferation of instruments designed to quantify it. Research has linked imposter feelings to perfectionism, low self-esteem, social anxiety, self-handicapping, and psychological distress, and studies have repeatedly implicated family background, including parental rearing styles and parental bonding, as formative influences. What has remained scarce is direct evidence from children themselves, rather than adult recollections of childhood, which are vulnerable to memory distortion and retrospective bias.

By measuring imposter feelings in nine- to twelve-year-olds directly, the Brazilian team provides some of the clearest evidence yet that the phenomenon is not confined to adulthood. The use of a dedicated child-scale instrument, whose factor structure was examined with modern exploratory factor analysis techniques, including methods for selecting the number of common factors, reflects a growing methodological sophistication in this literature. The correlations reported, while modest in magnitude, as is typical for single-variable associations in developmental psychology, are statistically meaningful and point in theoretically coherent directions. A demanding parental style and the internalization of interactive and normative values both appear to act as protective factors against the conviction that one’s successes are undeserved.

The findings carry practical implications for parents, educators, and clinicians. If demandingness, understood as consistent expectations and accountability rather than hostility or control, is associated with fewer imposter feelings, then parenting advice that equates warmth with permissiveness may be missing part of the picture. Baumrind’s classic framework distinguished authoritative parenting, which combines demandingness with responsiveness, from both authoritarian and permissive styles, and decades of research have associated the authoritative profile with better emotional and academic outcomes in children. The present study adds a new outcome to that list: a reduced tendency to discount one’s own accomplishments. Similarly, the protective role of normative and interactive values suggests that children who grow up in environments where rules, obligations, and caring relationships are salient may be better insulated against the self-doubt that undermines performance and well-being.

The authors are careful about the limits of their data. The study is correlational, so it cannot establish whether demanding parenting causes lower imposter feelings, whether children who feel less like imposters simply perceive their parents as more demanding, or whether some third factor, such as temperament or socioeconomic conditions, shapes both. The sample, drawn almost entirely from public schools in Brazil, may not generalize to other cultural contexts, and the modest sample size of 201 constrains the precision of the estimates. Data collected from minors are protected by ethical restrictions and are not publicly available, though the authors note they can be shared upon reasonable request with permission from the research ethics committee. The work was funded by Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, and the authors declare no competing interests. Even with these caveats, the study opens a striking window onto the early life of a psychological pattern that has cost countless adults their confidence, and it suggests that the fight against imposter feelings may begin not in the therapist’s office but at the kitchen table, in the daily interplay of expectations, values, and love that shapes who children believe themselves to be.

Subject of Research: The relationship between human values, parenting styles, and the imposter phenomenon in children

Article Title: Evaluating the Role of Human Values and Parenting Styles in the Imposter Syndrome Among Children

Article References: Soares, A. K. S., do Nascimento, E. F., dos Passos Costa, R. T., Rezende, A. T., & da Silva Rosi, K. R. B. (2025). Evaluating the Role of Human Values and Parenting Styles in the Imposter Syndrome Among Children. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-025-00459-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-025-00459-7

Keywords: imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon, parenting styles, human values, child development, developmental psychology, self-esteem, parental demandingness, Brazil, Trends in Psychology, childhood mental health, academic psychology

The policy landscape the authors describe has transformed rapidly. In 2016, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council issued its Statement on Consumer and Community Involvement in Health and Medical Research, formally endorsing the participation of patients and community members in shaping research. Seven years later, the World Health Organization published its Framework on the Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience, extending that logic to a global stage. Taken together, these documents represent an exponential growth in recognition that people who have lived through illness possess knowledge that clinical training alone cannot provide. Yet, as Sansom-Daly and Schilstra point out, even funding bodies can unwittingly entrench the divide, with grant guidelines requiring applicants to apply as either a researcher or a lived experience expert—but never both. The authors describe the resulting predicament in almost existential terms: for researchers whose lived experience is simultaneously a layer in their track record of expertise and a deeply personal endeavour, there is simply no guidance on whether, or how, to weave their survivor identities into their research contributions.

The two authors arrived at this in-between territory by strikingly different routes. Sansom-Daly was diagnosed with an ependymoma, a type of brain tumour, at age 21. Just weeks after finishing cranial radiotherapy, she began her psychology Honours year. During a laboratory lunch, she shared her story—a moment she recalls as both cathartic and uncomfortable. Her professor’s response, however well-intentioned, made her shrink inward: he called her a hero, an inspiration. She remembers wondering whether her diagnosis was bad enough to warrant such admiration, noting she had not even received chemotherapy. Across her research career, she describes feeling like a survivor-by-stealth. Asked repeatedly how she came to study adolescent and young adult cancer, she would pause, deciding how far back to peel the onion. For years she offered a part-truth, attributing her career direction to her experience as a research assistant on projects concerning onco-fertility and young people’s healthcare experiences, keeping her own patient history out of the account.

Her comfort with disclosure evolved only gradually. As a student, she feared that colleagues would misread her focus on young cancer patients’ psychological needs as a personal agenda rather than a scientific one. Looking back with what she calls 2025 eyes, she can see how her story might have added power to her projects—but she is candid about the confounds. She has since completed a PhD and clinical training, published extensively, and been promoted to Associate Professor, and she acknowledges she cannot be certain how much of her recent ease in sharing stems from the privilege and protection of academic status, and how much reflects a genuine cultural shift toward respecting lived experience in 2025. A telling moment arrived recently after a research workshop, when a young adult approached her and asked whether it was true that she was a survivor. She paused, and something clicked into place. Yes, she said, it was.

Schilstra’s trajectory could hardly have been more different. Born in the United States, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at two and a half years old and relapsed at thirteen. Treatment as a teenager shaped much of her career path. Afterward, she became a patient ambassador for the paediatric oncology department where she was treated, supporting its fundraising efforts, and discovered that sharing her story in written and spoken form exponentially increased her confidence in disclosure—she saw firsthand how her experience could produce positive outcomes for the hospital and the patients she cared about. She initially believed becoming a physician was the only way to help other young people with cancer, but treatment-related cognitive effects, including slowed processing speed and memory difficulties, caused her to fail most of her first-year mathematics and science classes. Her academic advisor told her she had little chance of passing the pre-medicine program, so she switched to psychology and found a new mentor: a clinical psychology professor specialising in childhood chronic illness who guided her through a thesis on social support and quality of life in adolescents with chronic illness, and who explicitly encouraged her to leverage her lived experiences in her research.

That mentorship changed the course of her career. In 2017, after moving to Sydney, she joined Professor Claire Wakefield’s team, where her lived experience was welcomed in her job application and actively sought as a source of insight in her research assistant role. Her PhD supervisor, Dr Joanna Fardell, and her co-supervisor, Sansom-Daly, helped her build a meaningful program of work on that foundation. She has since been invited to serve as a lived experience advisor on multiple national and international research projects, steadily building her capacity as a survivor-scientist. Where Sansom-Daly’s early experiences taught her that disclosure carried professional risk, Schilstra’s taught her the opposite: that lived experience, when actively valued by mentors, could be a gateway to research engagement and leadership rather than a liability to be concealed.

The contrast between these two narratives is not merely anecdotal. The authors situate their reflections within an established psycho-oncology literature showing that adolescent and young adult cancer survivors routinely struggle to decide if and how to disclose their survivor identities to peers, colleagues, romantic partners, and new acquaintances. Despite rising survival rates, young survivors continue to face stigma, social anxiety, negative reactions, and uncomfortable responses like the hero framing Sansom-Daly encountered. What the commentary adds is the observation that these identity negotiations are intensified within academic and healthcare settings, where questions of motivation and bias layer new complexity onto the imposter syndrome already common among early-career researchers. Would the influence of lived experience on one’s research be seen as too strong? Might it overshadow professional expertise, introduce perceived bias, and detract from scientific credibility? Without policy guidance, the authors found, the extent to which each of them disclosed was shaped less by principle than by the specific people and opportunities they happened to encounter along the way.

An intriguing generational thread runs through their analysis. With nearly a decade between them in age, the two authors bracketed a major shift in how the research community treats experiential knowledge. Sansom-Daly’s career began before most of that shift, in an era when lived experience seemed relevant only to advocacy and fundraising—she recalls observing a passionate, outspoken young survivor at a workshop and noting the visible discomfort and distancing of the researchers in the room. The lesson she drew was that identifying as a survivor in professional settings would reduce perceived credibility, and that it was safer, and more professionally advantageous, to simply identify as a researcher. Schilstra’s career, by contrast, developed largely alongside the shift, as policies and funders began calling for lived experience engagement in the design, conduct, and even leadership of research. Her advocacy experience translated directly into research opportunities, allowing her to be respected as both survivor and scientist simultaneously.

The authors see a model for change in a neighbouring field. Mental health researchers have begun generating evidence on the value of lived experience research leadership, in which complementary research and experiential expertise are equally valued. That scholarship has prompted difficult self-reflection about the fact that mental health researchers frequently lead projects about lived experience without having any direct experience themselves, and it frames lived experience leadership as a way of rebalancing epistemic disparities stemming from historical failures to fully and equitably include those with lived experience. Cancer research, the authors argue, would benefit from a similar reckoning. But one key ingredient is missing: training and guidance. They call for practical instruction in how to train individuals with lived experience to effectively, ethically, and safely leverage their experience alongside their research expertise—a need they emphasise is especially acute for early-career survivor-scientists who lack the protective shield of a PhD or professorial title.

Beyond culture change, the authors point to methodological tools already available. Embodied research methods, which involve intersectional reflexivity and explicitly acknowledge how social identities shape research interactions, have been shown to enhance research quality and inclusivity, enabling a holistic understanding of complex health phenomena for marginalised and minoritised patients. The deeper demand, however, is conceptual: policy documents and funding structures must move from a binary of researcher versus lived experience expert toward a continuum of expertise, recognising the varied ways that survivors, researchers, and dual survivor-scientists can contribute along that spectrum. The authors’ message is ultimately one of reframing. Lived experience of cancer, they argue, should never undermine the credibility of an academic cancer researcher. With better guidance and genuine cultural change, the secret can become the superpower—enriching the inclusivity, relevance, and quality of cancer research for the next generation of patients and the scientists who once were among them.

Subject of Research: Dual identity navigation among cancer survivor-scientists and the integration of lived experience expertise into cancer research

Article Title: Secret or superpower? A narrative reflection on navigating dual identities as cancer survivors and cancer scientists

Article References: Sansom-Daly, U. M., & Schilstra, C. E. (2026). Secret or superpower? A narrative reflection on navigating dual identities as cancer survivors and cancer scientists. Journal of Cancer Survivorship. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-026-02110-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11764-026-02110-5

Keywords: cancer survivors, lived experience, psycho-oncology, survivor-scientists, identity disclosure, adolescent and young adult cancer, research policy, mentorship, epistemic expertise, imposter syndrome, research culture, Journal of Cancer Survivorship