Relationship between Attachment Styles and Students' Impostorism with the mediation of Self-Esteem and Moderating of Self-compassion

The aim of current study was to investigate the relationship between insecure attachment styles and students' impostorism with the mediation of self-esteem and moderating of self-compassion.

The statistical population of this study included all male and female high school students from Farsan city in year 2020-2021. 396 students were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling. In this study, Clance's Impostor Phenomenon Scale (1985), Hazen and Shaver Attachment Styles Scale (1987), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965) and the short form of Raes, Pommier et al. (2011) Self-Compassion Scale were used. The evaluation of the proposed model was performed using structural equation modeling and bootstrap method.

The results showed that self-esteem mediates the relationship between avoidant attachment and impostorism (p <0/001, β = 0/13) and the relationship between anxiety attachment and impostorism (p <0/001, β = 0/19). In addition, the results showed that self- compassion does not moderate the relationship between insecure attachment styles and impostorism and it only moderates the relationship between anxiety attachment style and self-esteem.

Self-esteem mediates the relationship between avoidant and anxious attachment and impostorism, and self-compassion moderates the relationship between anxious attachment and self-esteem