High Impostors Are More Hesitant to Ask for Help

Abstract

Help-seeking behavior requires both components of metacognition—monitoring (being aware of the need for help) and control (initiating the help-seeking action). Difficulties in initiating help-seeking, therefore, can be indicative of a metacognitive breakdown, for instance, when a student believes that a gap in knowledge is something to hide. To explore the relationship between knowing that one needs help and actually seeking it, we examined the potential influences of impostorism, which refers to the feeling of being a “fraud”, despite one’s objective accomplishments. Participants were asked to solve math reasoning and verbal reasoning insight problems, while also being given a “help” button that could be pressed at any time in order to get the solution. Results showed that, overall, students were more likely to ask for help with math than verbal reasoning problems—help also correlated with boosted performance. There was also a slight indication that individuals who scored relatively high on impostorism were numerically less likely to seek help and waited longer to do so for the math problems. Our findings suggest that a fear of being exposed as an impostor may hinder one’s help-seeking behaviors, especially in more challenging subjects, such as math.