You got the role, and someone gave you the oldest advice there is: fake it till you make it. So you try. You use the confident voice in the meeting. You tell yourself you belong. And it feels exactly like lying, because in a way it is.
The advice is not wrong about everything. But it bundles three different things together, and the research treats them very differently.
Faking it by saying it
The first version is the affirmation: tell yourself the thing until it is true. “I am confident. I belong here.”
In 2009 Joanne Wood, Elaine Perunovic and John Lee tested this directly. Among people with low self-esteem, those who repeated the statement “I’m a lovable person” felt worse than those who did not. People with high self-esteem felt slightly better, but only to a limited degree. The authors concluded that positive self-statements may help some people but backfire for the very people who need them most.
The likely reason is simple. When a statement clashes with what you already believe about yourself, repeating it draws attention to the gap. We go further into this in why generic affirmations backfire.
Faking it with your body
The second version became famous through the idea of the “power pose”: stand expansively for two minutes and your body chemistry will make you bolder.
In 2015 Eva Ranehill and colleagues tested that claim with a large sample of men and women. As the title of their paper reports, they found no effect of power posing on hormones or on willingness to take risks. The bold claim about the body did not hold up when it was checked carefully.
Faking it by trying it
The third version has the best support behind it, and it is quite different from the other two.
In 1999 Herminia Ibarra followed professionals stepping up into senior roles. She found that people did not become the new person by deciding to. They built the new identity by experiment. They watched people already in the role, borrowed specific behaviours — a way of opening a meeting, a way of disagreeing — tried them in real situations, and kept what fitted. She called these trial versions provisional selves. Most were meant to be thrown away.
The full account is in career change and the identity crisis.
The difference that matters
Saying it and posing it both try to convince you of something in advance. Trying it does the opposite. It does not ask you to believe anything yet. It asks you to act, and then look at what happened.
That is why the third version feels less like lying. An affirmation claims a conclusion. An experiment only asks a question: what happens if I handle this meeting the way she does? You are not pretending to be finished. You are openly unfinished, and testing.
It also explains why the fraud feeling does not mean you are doing it wrong. During the experiment you really are acting ahead of your sense of who you are. The behaviour comes first and the self-image catches up later. That gap has a name, identity lag, and it is a stage, not a verdict.
How to fake it the way that works
Borrow one specific behaviour, not a whole personality. Not “be like her”. The thing she does in the first minute of a hard conversation.
Try it somewhere real. Planning the moment helps, but the information is in what happens when you actually do it.
Judge the result on your own terms. Did it fit? Did it get the outcome you wanted? Keep it or drop it. Dropping it is part of the method, not a failure of it.
Do not wait to feel ready. Ibarra’s professionals did not wait to feel like the new version. The feeling tended to follow the experiments.
The honest limits
Each of these findings has edges. Wood’s result applied mainly to people with low self-esteem, and it measured mood in two experiments. The power-posing debate continued after 2015, and some researchers still argue for smaller effects on how people feel. Ibarra’s study was based on close observation and interviews with a particular group of professionals. It describes a pattern well, but it is not a controlled trial and cannot prove cause. Taken together, they still point the same way: claiming a self is a weak tool, and testing one is the better-supported path.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does fake it till you make it actually work?
It depends which version. Repeating positive statements about yourself backfired for people with low self-esteem in one well-known study. Power posing did not change hormones or risk-taking in a large replication. Trying new behaviours in real situations, and keeping what fits, is the version research supports.
Why do affirmations make some people feel worse?
In a 2009 study, people with low self-esteem who repeated the statement I am a lovable person felt worse than those who did not. A statement that clashes with what you already believe about yourself can highlight the gap rather than close it.
Does power posing work?
The strong version of the claim did not hold up. A 2015 study with a large sample of men and women found no effect of power posing on hormones or on willingness to take risks. Debate continued about smaller effects on how people feel.
What should I do instead of faking confidence?
Treat the new version of yourself as an experiment. Borrow one specific behaviour from someone you admire, try it in a real situation, judge the result for yourself, and keep or drop it. Do not wait to feel ready first.
The gold was always there
The practice this writing comes from: short daily reflections to read or hear with your phone’s speech voice, plus a private journal.
- I · MORNING
- II · MIDDAY
- III · EVENING
Prime
A short Ritual written for the person you are becoming.
Act
One aligned action, logged while it is still true.
Release
The Shadow Log — say what the day asked of you.
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Short films from this research — follow on TikTok.
References
- Ibarra, H. (1999) ‘Provisional selves: experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), pp. 764–791. doi:10.2307/2667055
- Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S. and Weber, R.A. (2015) ‘Assessing the robustness of power posing: no effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women’, Psychological Science, 26(5), pp. 653–656. doi:10.1177/0956797614553946
- Wood, J.V., Perunovic, W.Q.E. and Lee, J.W. (2009) ‘Positive self-statements: power for some, peril for others’, Psychological Science, 20(7), pp. 860–866. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02370.x