Workplace impostor thoughts—defined as the belief that others overestimate one's competence at work—are widespread in organizations. Prior research has primarily portrayed such thoughts as an intrapersonal psychological burden, emphasizing their associations with stress, anxiety, and impaired well-being. However, this perspective offers an incomplete account of how employees actively respond to perceived evaluative discrepancies in everyday work interactions. Drawing on the impression management two-component model, we conceptualize workplace impostor thoughts as a socially embedded signal of evaluative discrepancy that heightens concerns about social image, thereby motivating strategic behavioral regulation.
Using a three-wave, multilevel field study of 297 employees nested within 64 work teams in China, we examine how, why, and when workplace impostor thoughts shape distinct forms of help-seeking behavior. Results show that workplace impostor thoughts increase perceived image risk, which in turn promotes autonomous help-seeking (i.e., seeking guidance to solve problems independently) while discouraging dependent help-seeking (i.e., requesting others to provide complete solutions). Moreover, team task interdependence moderates these relationships: when task interdependence is high, the positive effect of workplace impostor thoughts on image risk is stronger, and the indirect effects on both forms of help-seeking via image risk are amplified.
By shifting attention from the psychological costs of impostor thoughts to employees' active behavioral responses, this research advances a more agentic and socially embedded account of the impostor experience. In addition, by distinguishing between autonomous and dependent help-seeking, we integrate learning-oriented and image-regulatory perspectives on help-seeking behavior, highlighting how employees regulate not whether they seek help, but how they do so in evaluative contexts. Finally, our findings underscore the importance of task structure in shaping when impostor-related evaluative discrepancies become socially consequential, offering a more context-sensitive understanding of workplace impostor thoughts and their behavioral implications.