Am I a fraud? The gendered experiences of imposter feelings in sport.

Despite ongoing efforts to close the gender gap in daily and professional lives, gendered stereotypes continue to impact women. These effects and their long-term impact have been better established in education and traditional workplaces than in sport, possibly perpetuating the gender gap in the sport workforce. Combining stereotype threat with self-determination theory, we suggested that vulnerability to gender-based stereotypes affects motivation through the experience of imposter feelings. We examined this possibility for the first time in two online samples from competitive sport, one in the Australian community (N=301, 55% women), and one in elite international coaches (N=182, 28.6% women). Consistent with our expectations, increased gender-based stereotype threat vulnerability in women was linked to lower need satisfaction through the experience of stronger imposter feelings. These effects were not conditional on gender, suggesting that the relationships we observed generalised among all people reporting strong negative gendered experiences. We also found that increased identification with sport and decreased negative affectivity had protective effects on satisfaction for men and women alike. These results highlight the pressing need to develop better strategies to enhance people's emotional and psychological experiences in sport to ensure the long-term sustainability of sport as a workplace.