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Episode Summary
What does it mean to feel like a fraud even when the evidence says otherwise? In this episode, Dr. Jen Blanchette sits down with Dr. Kevin Cokley — a leading scholar of the imposter phenomenon and African American psychology — to unpack why imposter feelings are so common, who experiences them most acutely, and why they can't be understood apart from the environments that produce them.
Dr. Cokley shares how he first discovered the imposter phenomenon during a literature review and recognized his own experience as a Black undergraduate at a predominantly white institution. From there, the conversation moves through the research: prevalence rates that climb as high as 80–90%, the gender and cultural patterns the data reveal, and Cokley's own work introducing a “racialized imposter phenomenon” and a scale to measure it.
The discussion turns personal and political as Jen and Dr. Cokley connect imposterism to therapist burnout, maladaptive perfectionism, and self-compassion — then confront the current climate around DEI, including the APA's decision to disband its longstanding ethnic-minority training commission and relax diversity standards for accreditation. Dr. Cokley closes with practical guidance for clinicians: clients rarely name imposter feelings directly, so therapists need to listen for them.
Dr. Kevin Cokley is the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he serves as Associate Chair for Diversity Initiatives and principal investigator of the Research on Race, Achievement, Culture and Education (RACE) Lab in the Department of Psychology.
His research and teaching center on African American psychology, with a focus on racial identity and the psychological and environmental factors that shape African American students' academic achievement. He is currently exploring the imposter phenomenon and its relationship to mental health and academic outcomes.
Dr. Cokley is editor of the 2024 book The Imposter Phenomenon: Psychological Research, Theory, and Interventions (American Psychological Association). He is a past president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race, and has written widely read op-eds in major outlets on DEI, critical race theory, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
