I was scrolling through LinkedIn on Monday and came across this video by Steven Bartlett, a well known young entrepreneur who appears on the TV show Dragon’s Den. At this point I’m pretty much done with my project, I’m just writing up my report. But I wanted to share my thoughts about this video because I think it’s important and adds something to my research.
My response to the video on Linkedin
The phrase comfort zone was coined in 1991 by a Judith Bardwick, a management thinker in a book called Danger in the Comfort Zone.
“The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.”
Going by this definition of the comfort zone, it is reasonable to infer that being out of your comfort zone induces anxiety. However anxiety and imposter syndrome don’t necessarily go hand in hand. For example, a person might be trying horse riding for the first time. Something that they have never done before and is very out of their comfort zone. They might be very anxious about it – what if they fall off and break their neck? What if the horse isn’t strong enough to carry them?
But do they feel like an imposter in this situation? I doubt it.
Yerkes and Dodson conducted an experiment in 1907, establishing a link between anxiety and performance. The main idea of their study is that nervous systems have a perfect zone of arousal. Too little and you’re in your comfort zone, and you begin to get bored. But too much, and you panic. This panic goes on to stall your progress and decreases your performance. (See diagram below)
Going back to the original video that inspired this post, I don’t think we should all feel like imposters. For some people, feeling like an imposter drives them to work harder and to succeed no matter what. For other, feeling like an imposter makes them freeze and sees productivity plummet. In my opinion, it is slightly unfair to tell people how they should feel. Especially if you have a huge platform like Steven Bartlett does. There will be people who don’t feel like an imposter wondering if there’s something wrong with them. I don’t mean to imply that he had any bad intentions with this video, but I think that he could have phrased it a lot better. It is important for people to have role models and I imagine Steven is this for a lot of people. And his words have a lot of weight for people who look up to him.
Robbin Chapman, PhD who is the Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the Harvard Kennedy school, published a presentation about imposter syndrome. Whilst I would love to share every page of it here, I’ve screenshotted the slides that resonated the most with me and that I think are the most relevant to my research.
(Complete side note, I really like the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. It somehow sounds more friendly and welcoming than Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.)
Almost all of these describe the environment at arts based education institutions. And other places too, of course. From conversations I’ve had, art schools are some of the most competitive and exclusive places that people can choose to study. I have also heard that whilst there might not be ‘systems of oppression’, the environment itself can feel oppressive.
These might all be amazing and helpful tips, but I think they are easier said than done. I also think that normalising self doubt is a scale – there is a certain level of self doubt that isn’t normal, and can prevent people from functioning to the best of their abilities in an education environment and in the workplace.
I would add ‘create’ to this list for the group of students I am focusing on for my project. They are all creative students and making art is a valid way of expressing how you feel, or just a way to release any pent up frustration, anger or disappointment.
This self assessment tool was thought up by one of the women who first coined the term ‘imposter phenomenon’. I like the idea of self assessment but I do think it would be easy to cheat, and downplay how you are feeling. Sometimes when people fill in things like this, they still give the answers that they are expected to give, even if they are not showing the results to anyone. However, if this chart was filled in with 100% honesty, I can see it being a very helpful tool in the realisation of how much or how little you are experiencing imposter phenomenon.
Something about this that I find quite odd however, is that the self assessment tool at the end of the presentation has had its name changed. Originally it was called the Imposter Test or the IP (meaning imposter phenomenon) by Pauline Rose Clance when she wrote it – as seen here on her website. https://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/IPTestandscoring.pdf I think this is a great presentation and very helpful for students in higher education, but I do have to question why it was necessary to change the name of this self assessment tool. Was it just to create a more cohesive presentation? Or was it because imposter syndrome is the more commonly accepted name for this feeling? When I first saw this presentation about imposter phenomenon, I thought that maybe it is something that arts based universities should display on their websites, or around campus. But I am unconvinced about how many people would pay attention. I know that personally I ignore most posters that I see on the walls at CSM, simply because I don’t have the time to stand and read a long poster. (I’d also probably be in the way, based on where they are usually hung)
For my BA Photography dissertation, I wrote 2000 words on photography as a therapeutic tool. From an outside perspective, self portraiture can be seen as narcissistic and vain. Studies have shown that self portraits allow people to get in touch with aspects of themselves that are yet unexplored, and can aid in the process of healing from trauma. There is a reason that art therapy is used a lot by therapists and in prisons.
The practice of the self-portrait can be incredibly empowering. It means using photography to look inside ourselves. To work on our inner world as a way of opening or deepening our unique creative process, which can be developed with any form of artistic expression, or even life itself. To start a dialogue between our thinking mind and our ‘gut’ to draw from an inexhaustible source of meanings which must be expressed. (Nunez, 2009)
In the midst of struggling in my third year of my BA, I created a photo series documenting my journey through 30 days of a depressive episode (see images below).
Today I Left The House For an HourI Hate My BodyFelicity – 0 Brain – 1
I am not saying that every working class student who is struggling with imposter syndrome should take self portraits and then they’ll feel better. That would be a rather sweeping and naive statement. But I think that there is a way for universities who specialise in art, to use art to empower their students who come from less represented groups. Maybe that manifests itself in a monthly theme to create work to respond to, or maybe that’s just the invitation to start a personal 30 day challenge accompanied by daily thoughts that are written down.
Nuñez, C. (2009). The self portrait, a powerful tool for self-therapy. European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 11(1), pp.51–61. doi:10.1080/13642530902723157.
In my tutorial last week, David mentioned potentially including some male stakeholders. I had been conducting a few interviews with male working class students but it hadn’t really been my focus.
And then in class Zuleika gave us a refresher lesson on bias, and overcoming it. And I realised that although I had been conducting my research with the best of intentions, my bias had been showing. And it was holding me back, and potentially stunting my research. And whilst I doubt that many men will open up to me and admit to feeling any other way apart from confident, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t include them in my research. The majority of academic papers on imposter syndrome talk about women, however a study in Quartz says that actually men are experiencing imposter syndrome more than women.
“I first learned about this two years ago, when my editor at the time asked meto write on the subject. Instead of feeling understood or validated, I felt defensive. It had never occurred to me to look around my male dominated industry and worry that I didn’t belong; the notion that I should relate to imposter syndrome seemed to imply that I deserved to feel like a fraud. As I started to report the article, I worried that not suffering from imposter syndrome would be interpreted as a sign of arrogance. This concern, it turns out, is well-founded. Contrary to stereotypes, research suggests women are as confident as men—they are just penalized rather than rewarded for the same self-assured behavior.“
The article goes on to mention something called the Imposter Phenomenon Scale. I find it interesting that it is named after the original name for imposter syndrome and this supports the argument to stop pathologising it and calling it a ‘syndrome’.
“Overall, women self-reported more imposter syndrome according to the scale. But the researchers found that men experienced more stress both when getting negative feedback and when told their results would be shared with the professor. “Collectively, our findings suggest that male IPs [imposters] fair worse when confronted with performance cues than do female impostors,” the authors wrote. “Male IPs experienced greater anxiety after receiving negative feedback and under conditions of high accountability than did female IPs, and exhibited less effort and poorer performance on a task when held accountable to a higher authority.
Conversation around imposter syndrome has always been gendered. But its balance has been slowly shifting over the past few decades. The condition was first identified in 1978 by two clinical psychologists, whose study only focused on women. In the years since, gender-related data on the subject have been mixed. Some have found that women do experience more imposter syndrome, while others have found no correlation.“
I find this paragraph particularly interesting – in the course of my research I have searched for imposter syndrome numerous times, both on Google Scholar, in the library and just regular Google search. Every time, the top results mention women. Therefore I don’t think I agree with the statement about the discussion around imposter syndrome becoming less gendered. Hypothetically, if a male student was searching for information on imposter syndrome, and saw that the first 10 results were about women overcoming imposter syndrome, he might feel even more alienated or alone. However, that isn’t to say that men don’t feel like imposters in education or the workplace.
I also think there is a problem with women telling other women that they are suffering from imposter syndrome. But how do they actually know? In a room full of women, they are all going to have different feelings. And yes, there might be a big proportion of them who feel like imposters but you can’t assume. At a lot of conferences targeted at women, there generally is a class or a talk about overcoming imposter syndrome. I’ve not seen anything similar at conferences I’ve found that are aimed at men.
In the course of my research into imposter syndrome, I came across this article by the Harvard Business Review. The article by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey aims to persuade its readers that what we now call imposter syndrome doesn’t actually exist.
They write about how when this idea was first written about in 1978, it was referred to as ‘imposter phenomenon’ by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, the psychologists who conducted a study of high powered professional women and discovered this issue. The authors of this article go on to point out that this study left out a lot of women such as women of colour, and people of various income levels, genders and professional backgrounds. Further in the article they point out that white men who feel some level of not belonging in their workplace soon find a role model and overcome these feelings, through their work being validated. However the same can’t be said for women, and at most professional development conferences aimed at women, there is 9/10 times a talk on overcoming imposter syndrome.
The word syndrome, in the opinion of the authors, takes us back to when women were diagnosed with hysteria in the 19th Century. It is pointed out that women are said to ‘suffer’ with imposter syndrome, rather than just experiencing it.
“Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women to deal with the effects.” I think this quote is interesting because it goes back to what they were saying about workshops given to women about overcoming imposter syndrome, instead of talking to the institutions that are causing women to feel this way. However, I think this is a problematic stance to take – in my opinion it’s not an all or nothing situation. You can’t expect companies to change overnight and take away the things that are causing women to experience imposter syndrome, and you can’t expect women to just learn how to deal with these feelings. This is something I was struggling with in my own research project and reading this article has made me very happy that I changed my question and my viewpoint.
“In truth, we don’t belong because we were never supposed to belong. Our presence in most of these spaces is a result of decades of grassroots activism and begrudgingly developed legislation. Academic institutions and corporations are still mired in the cultural inertia of the good ol’ boys’ club and white supremacy. Biased practices across institutions routinely stymie the ability of individuals from underrepresented groups to truly thrive.” After reading this paragraph, I had to take a minute to think it over and form my opinion. This sounds dramatic, but I was honestly taken aback. I can’t speak for people of colour and I don’t want to. But this paragraph seems to imply, to me, that imposter syndrome is somewhat caused by white supremacy.
Overall I think this article was very interesting to read. But I disagree with a lot of what is written. A lot of the time it is women telling other women that they have imposter syndrome ; some women have made a career from doing this, talking at conferences and writing books. This article comes across as quite biased, in my opinion, and saying that imposter syndrome “is especially prevalent in biased, toxic cultures that value individualism and overwork” is unfair. I would say that this article is full of attribution bias and isn’t a particularly balanced article to read.
When I was last at my volunteering job, I got into conversation with a lady who works in the EDI department at Demontfort University in Leicester. I was telling her about my research and she suggested that I look at a scheme called Uni Connect that the other university in Leicester is part of.
There are currently 29 universities taking part in this scheme, spread all over England. None of the universities taking part specialise in the arts which I find interesting. Historically there has been a big push directing young people from underrepresented groups to STEM subjects and I have been unable to find any evidence of something similar for the arts. I am curious as to why there are no arts based universities on this list as diversity within the arts is something that is very topical.
I find it very interesting that there is targeted outreach as part of this scheme, as I have been told by multiple people that universities can’t target a specific group of people because it’s unethical. I suppose the difference is the context?
As you can see from this image, the funding amounts fluctuates. However the funding is dependent on how many learners are in each area so this difference in amounts of funding makes sense. I think it is important to note that in the majority of areas, the amount of funding being accessed has decreased in the last 2 years. Perhaps this is a knock on effect from Covid.
I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram and found myself flicking through the @ualmemes story where they had asked for the top three things people had learnt at UAL. Obviously all the submissions were anonymous but I found these two answers interesting in the context of my project.
It made me curious as to whether these two respondents would say the same things if they were asked this question face to face. There is an element of comfort in anonymity online, and according to a paper written by Kimberly M. Christopherson, “Individuals can use their anonymity to almost become a different person without fear of being identified and negatively evaluated by those they know. This factor may lead to an extreme sense of freedom for the individual and allow him or her to engage in behaviors typically disapproved of by others without fear of the consequences that may ensue as a result.”
Christopherson, K.M. (2007). The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions: ‘On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog’. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(6), pp.3038–3056. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.09.001.
I sent an email to a member of staff that Richard had pointed me in the direction of, and they suggested I look into how the cost of living crisis is going to affect working class students. I have to admit, I had not considered this as something that was relevant to my project, but after more research, I think that it is.
This article talks about a study conducted by Nationwide Building Society. The main bullet points of the article are:
2/3 of students are struggling to afford their rent or have fallen behind in paying it
22% of students know someone who has become homeless over the last year due to financial difficulties
3/4 of students have had to borrow money from friends or family to afford rent and essentials like food
4/10 students are reliant on their overdrafts
Whilst 4/5 A-Level students are applying to go to university, 15% of these are considering deferring their place because of the cost of living
Over 90% of A-Level students said that the cost of living crisis has affected how they feel about attending university this year
The cost of living has risen 9% this year and students are afraid it will rise even further
3/5 students are worried about how they will afford their accommodation and 50% are worried about how they will afford nights out
This article is very confusing to me. I don’t know if it just the way that I digest statistics, but having them in a multitude of formats hurts my brain – I’d rather they were all fractions, or all percentages. However, that isn’t the important takeaway here. I think that these numbers are worrying – there was no information about the demographics of the participants in this study. But if we assume that there is a range of backgrounds amongst the participants, it is not only working class students who are worried about how the cost of living crisis is going to change things. And if someone who comes from what is considered to be a ‘comfortable’ background is concerned about money, then working class students must be very concerned.
This is just one study though so I think it’s important to look for corroboration or rebuttals against this.
Unite Students have an episode of their podcast Accommodation Matters about this particular issue. I found the whole thing interesting but this quote especially stuck out to me
Not only does this make the case for female students needing more money than their male counterparts, it talks about how they are suffering a lot more when it comes to mental health, sleep and even relationships. I have sent an email to the PR mentioned at the bottom of the survey they reference, to see if I can get a copy of the full survey.
As referenced in my previous post, working class people are often on your tv screens. But is it in a positive or negative way?
Positive representation of the working classes
The Netflix show On My Block is a great example of showing how young people from a less privileged background cope with the chaos around them and are active members of their community within giving into addictions or violence. Whilst it is based in America, I think that it is still relevant as a reference because of its availability on a mainstream streaming platform. This show is also good because it shows how multicultural the working class is, which again, is very relevant to the UK.
In The Long Run is a show that is set in the 1980s, and documents life on a council estate in London. It is loosely based on Idris Elba’s childhood and I think paints a realistic picture of what life would have been like for him. I believe he co-wrote this series, and while there are probably some instances of dramatic licence, it rings very true to life.
The Simpsons are a working class family who go through some of the same struggles as real life working class families eg. Homer needing to get a second job to pay for Christmas when his main job doesn’t give Christmas bonuses to the semi skilled workers.
Bob’s Burgers features Bob Belcher buying his family’s clothes secondhand and being embarrassed when a bank manager shows him what a good savings account should look like instead of his. But despite this, his family are happy and functional.
Golden Girls is a series about four widowed and divorced women living together. When watching this show I’ve never thought about them being working class, and I’m not entirely sure they are but when Rose loses her husband’s pension she says this: “You know, every morning when I leave the house, I see this bag lady going through the baggage over on 135th Street. She has everything she owns piled up in one of those old shopping carts. But the other day, for the first time, I noticed, she’s about our age. Oh, you know, you always feel sorry for someone like that, but I wondered, ‘What did she do to get herself into a fix like that?’ I thought, well, she must be lazy, or she must be pretty stupid to let something like this happen to her. But, the truth is, she’s me! God! What am I going to do?” This quote was memorable because it showed a character changing their mind about social class and almost having an epiphany. I think this is rather powerful and shows self awareness that is often lacking in fictional characters.
Negative representation of the working classes
Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances. A woman who has married into a middle class family and who flaunts her rich sister to whoever is listening, telling everyone about her pony and her swimming pool. But on the flip side, she hides and avoids her working class sisters and brother in law, even going so far as to climb over walls to avoid them.
Shameless – The both the US and UK versions focus on poor dysfunctional, working class families where the father is addicted to drugs or alcohol, leaving the children to fend for themselves. The showrunner of the US series said “We have a comedic tradition of making fun of the people in those worlds… The reality is that these people aren’t ‘the other’—they’re people who live four blocks down from you and two blocks over.” However, Shameless is still classed as a comedy series so are they not still making fun of the working classes? And I would still argue that they are pushing stereotypes about working class people, having fathers who are addicts and kids taking care of themselves.
The Jeremy Kyle Show. A classic mainstay of British television for a long time. And a reason that so many people were wary of so called ‘chavs’ and thought that anyone who was on benefits was a deadbeat. Two people sitting across from each other, making wild accusations and Jeremy Kyle himself stirring up the drama. I would argue that in British society, this show is a huge reason that the working classes are demonised still. A similar show to this in America is Judge Judy, however I think that there are slightly more positive interactions to counteract the stories of working class criminals and morally wrong behaviour. Judge Judy while globally popular, has still attracted a lot of criticism for exploiting people who can’t afford to take their cases to an actual court of law or pay legal fees.
Benefits Street – a documentary about a street in Birmingham where apparently 90% of the residents claim benefits. The show documented the residents committing crimes, demonstrated how to shoplift and portrayed a situation where no one was committed to finding regular employment and instead depended on their benefits to survive. This show generated a lot of backlash, rightly so in my opinion. From personal experience, having grown up with a parent on benefits and who was desperate to find a job, Benefits Street painted an unrealistic picture. Again, I would say that it fed into a lot of stereotypes that are held about people on benefits. Channel 4 were accused of making ‘poverty porn’ and Ofcom received hundreds of complaints. Even the participants of the show claimed that they were misled about what the show was about and misrepresented on screen.
I am unsure where soap operas would fall – the things that happen to those people are very unrealistic but do they show working class people in a bad light? Not having watched any I don’t think I can speak to this. There are articles online arguing that they are bad for showing working class people but others disagree.
From looking at these tv shows, it is very clear to me that it’s so much easier for tv shows to portray the working class in a negative manner and that people will watch it. For example Benefits Street had record numbers of people watching it, and I highly doubt it was because they identified with the people who appeared on the show. The working class appear to be an easy target to make entertainment out of, and this just perpetuates the negative stereotypes about people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
In a conversation with someone who is considered an expert in the context of my project, I was told that there is no class problem in universities in general, let alone in arts universities. I found this interesting because this person comes from the same town as me and is very working class. Whereas another expert I spoke to who is middle class, admitted to noticing less obviously working class students.
On further reflection, I think this actually makes sense. People who have risen from the working classes to a more eminent position are often quick to distance themselves from their background. For example, Hyacinth Bucket in the tv show Keeping Up Appearances who was desperate to avoid her working class sister and brother in law, going so far as to ignore them in public and clamber over brick garden walls to hide from them.
And why wouldn’t you want to distance yourself from your working class roots when “Despite the occasional ‘rags to riches’ storyline, most media representations of working-class communities tend to focus on what these communities lack—not just financially, but also in knowledge, taste and morality. They are constantly depicted as uneducated, poorly dressed and more likely to become criminals.”
Stephanie Lawler, a British sociologist, said in 2005 that “at the heart of middle-class identity, is a feeling of disgust towards working class existence,” and I think that if one has been socially mobile and is now middle class rather than working class, there is an element of disgust towards your roots rather than pride about how far you’ve come.
Whilst there are a lot of tv shows that satirise the working classes eg Little Britain and Shameless, there are shows such as the long running Jeremy Kyle Show or Benefits Street that aim to humiliate or demonise the working classes. Instead of being actually entertaining, the public are expected to laugh at the so called misfortune of the millions of people who are working class. Jeremy Kyle in particular was a vicious show – a live studio audience laughing at families imploding and the guests being incited to violence against each other.
This is a far cry from the hardworking, working class men and women who work multiple jobs so they can feed their families and who do all the jobs that other people turn their noses up at.
But which portrayal of working class society is more memorable?
