Larp it till you make it: when acting the part helps, and when it is a lie

What the studies on clothes, posture and confidence actually found, a seven-question test for when acting the part turns into deception, and three court records where it did.

Published: 20 October 2026

What "larp until you make it" means

"Larp until you make it", or "larp it till you make it", is the old advice "fake it till you make it" with the costume named. Larp comes from live-action role-play, and online it means performing a status you do not have (our larp meaning explainer traces the shift). The advice: act like the trader, the founder or the creator you want to be, and the reality will catch up.

Two different things hide in that sentence, and most arguments about it mix them up:

• Rehearsal: acting the role to build the skill, in private or in front of people who know it is practice.
• Display: showing other people a status you have not reached, so they treat you as if you had.

The psychology research is mostly about the first. The court records are about the second. This page takes them in that order, then gives a test for telling them apart.

Where "fake it till you make it" comes from

The idea is older than the phrase. Wikipedia's entry on the aphorism quotes William James, in 1922, advising people to act as if cheerfulness were already there, and notes that Alfred Adler used an "acting as if" technique with his clients in the 1920s.

The phrase itself has a less flattering birth certificate. The oldest attestation Wikipedia cites is a federal appeals court opinion of 1 February 1973, SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises, about Dare To Be Great, Inc., which the court called a "get-rich-quick scheme". Describing the training its recruits received, the Ninth Circuit wrote:

• the recruit "is told to 'fake it 'till you make it,' or to give the impression of wealth even if it has not been attained";
• he is urged to go into debt if necessary for a new, expensive car and flashy clothes;
• he is told to carry large sums of money, borrowed if necessary, to display them.

The court called the scheme "a gigantic and successful fraud". So the earliest documented use of the phrase is not self-help. It is a description of larping wealth to recruit buyers, written by judges.

Does fake it till you make it work? What the research found

Four lines of research get cited in its defense. Here is what each claimed, and what happened when other researchers checked.

Enclothed cognition: the lab coat

In 2012, Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky coined "enclothed cognition": the idea that clothes affect the wearer through what they symbolize. In their first experiment, 58 undergraduates either wore a white lab coat or did not, then took a Stroop test. Those in the coat made around half as many errors on the incongruent trials. In two more experiments, the same coat described as a doctor's coat improved sustained attention, while the coat described as a painter's coat did not.

The famous result did not hold. In 2019, Burns and colleagues ran a preregistered direct replication of that first experiment and found no effect of the lab coat; they argued that any real effect is too small for the original design to have detected. A 2025 meta-analysis of 105 effects from 40 studies (3,789 participants) raised concerns about the replicability of the early studies but found evidential value in those published after 2015. It was written by the original authors, with a third colleague.

For the larper, the lesson is narrow. A costume does something only when it means something to you, and the size of that something is in dispute.

Power posing: the replication that changed a mind

In 2010, Dana Carney and two colleagues (Carney, Cuddy and Yap) reported that holding high-power poses changed testosterone and cortisol levels, financial risk-taking and self-reported feelings of power, in a sample of 42 people.

In 2015, Eva Ranehill and colleagues repeated the design with 200 people and an experimenter who did not know which pose each person held. Self-reported feelings of power rose. There was no significant effect on hormone levels, or on any of the three behavioral tasks.

In 2016, Carney published a statement on her faculty page: "I do not believe that 'power pose' effects are real." She listed the original study's problems herself, among them its tiny sample and self-report questions chosen from many that were asked.

The debate continued. A 2021 review in the British Psychological Society's magazine concluded that the hormone and behavior claims could not be supported but that felt power had some support, and cited a 2020 meta-analysis suggesting the effect comes more from avoiding slumped postures than from adopting expansive ones. Standing tall may help you feel ready. It does not change your track record, or anyone else's assessment of it.

Self-efficacy: why practice beats pretending

Albert Bandura's 1977 theory of self-efficacy names four sources of people's belief that they can do something: their own past performance, watching others succeed, persuasion, and their physical state. He describes the first, mastery experience, as especially influential, and expectations built on persuasion as weaker, because they lack an authentic base in experience.

That is the useful core of "act as if". The acting part works when it is real doing: small, repeatable attempts that succeed. Telling yourself, or an audience, that you are already there is the weakest source on Bandura's list.

Impostor feelings: the reverse problem

In 1978, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes described what they called the impostor phenomenon in over 150 highly successful women: despite degrees and honors, they believed they were not bright and had fooled everyone who thought otherwise. One habit kept the feeling going. Many of these women gave professors and supervisors the opinions they wanted to hear and kept their own views to themselves, so they never learned whether their real views would have been judged sensible.

That is the hidden cost of a long performance. Approval earned by an act goes to the act, and the person behind it is left feeling like a fraud.

The version that works: rehearsal, not display

Put together, the evidence supports a modest, practical reading of the advice:

• rehearse where failure is cheap: a mock interview, a pitch to a friend, a demo or paper trading account;
• dress for the part if it means something to you, without expecting the outfit to do the work;
• count real attempts and real wins, since mastery is the strongest source of confidence;
• keep the act private, or label it, so the approval you get goes to the work.

Is fake it till you make it bad? A seven-question honesty test

Acting the part is practice until someone else acts on it. Seven questions locate the line:

1. Who sees it? You, a coach, or an audience that knows it is a performance: rehearsal. A buyer, investor, employer, client or follower deciding whether to trust you: keep going.
2. Is anyone deciding something because of it? Money, a hire, a signup, a subscription to your calls.
3. Is it a manner or a fact? Confidence, posture, clothes and tone are manners. Revenue, users, balances, credentials and a track record are facts. Faking a fact is a false statement, however confident the delivery.
4. Would it survive a label? If "practice", "role-play" or "mockup" costs you nothing, you are rehearsing. If the label destroys the point, the point was the deception. It is the same test the larp wallet guide applies to wallet screens.
5. Can it be checked? If the only evidence is something you made, a screen, a card or a chart, you are asking for trust instead of offering evidence.
6. Would you show how it was made? If the person later saw the process, would they feel informed or cheated?
7. Who loses if it is false? If the answer is someone other than you, it is no longer your rehearsal.

When faking it ended in court: three public records

These cases are summarized from court opinions and from the U.S. Justice Department's own announcements.

None of the three records punishes ambition, confidence or a costume. Each describes a specific false fact put in front of someone making a decision: a display of wealth to a recruit, a pharmaceutical logo on a report to an investor, a row count to an acquirer. That is where "larp until you make it" stops being advice.

Rehearsal props versus misrepresentation

The Frank case shows the line most cleanly, because the tool itself is ordinary. Synthetic data is a normal part of building and demonstrating software (fake data in a product demo covers how to label it). What the trial record describes is handing such a data set to a third-party vendor, so that the bank would take it as confirmation of 4.25 million real users.

Screens work the same way. A wallet mockup in a skit, an explainer or a film is a prop; this tutorial shows how to shoot one with a Mockup label on screen from the first frame to the last. Sent to someone as proof of funds, the same image is the 1973 case with a phone.

We make that kind of prop: My Larp Wallet is a crypto wallet app simulator. It holds no funds and connects to no blockchain, and our terms of use prohibit presenting its screens as a real balance, a statement or proof of funds. The label on screen is what keeps a clip on the rehearsal side once it travels without its caption.

Sources

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises, 474 F.2d 476, 1973
• U.S. Attorney's Office, N.D. California, Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to more than 11 years for defrauding Theranos investors of hundreds of millions, 2022
• U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D. New York, Startup CEO Charlie Javice sentenced to 85 months in prison for $175 million fraud, 2025
• Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Adam and Galinsky, Enclothed cognition, 2012
• Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Burns et al., An old task in new clothes: a preregistered direct replication attempt of enclothed cognition effects on Stroop performance, 2019
• Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Horton, Adam and Galinsky, Evaluating the evidence for enclothed cognition: z-curve and meta-analyses, 2025
• Psychological Science, Ranehill et al., Assessing the robustness of power posing: no effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women, 2015
• Dana Carney, My position on "power poses", 2016
• The Psychologist (British Psychological Society), A decade of power posing: where do we stand?, 2021
• Psychological Review, Bandura, Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change, 1977
• Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, Clance and Imes, The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women, 1978
• Wikipedia, Fake it till you make it, 2026

Questions

What does "larp until you make it" mean?

It is a remix of "fake it till you make it". Larp comes from live-action role-play and, online, means performing a status you do not have. The phrase means acting like the trader, founder or creator you want to be until you become one. It is harmless as rehearsal and becomes deception when others are asked to treat the act as fact.

What is the origin of "fake it till you make it"?

The oldest attestation cited by Wikipedia is a 1973 federal appeals court opinion, SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises. The court described recruits of what it called a get-rich-quick scheme being told to fake it till they made it, by borrowing to buy expensive cars and clothes and carrying cash to display. It called the scheme a gigantic and successful fraud.

Does fake it till you make it work?

Partly. Practicing a skill builds confidence, which is the strongest source of self-belief in Albert Bandura's 1977 theory of self-efficacy. Power poses can make people feel more powerful, but a 200-person study found no effect on hormones or risk-taking, and the famous lab coat result did not replicate. Acting the part helps when it is practice, not when it is display.

Is fake it till you make it bad?

Not as private rehearsal: practicing a pitch, dressing for a role or trading on a demo account harms no one. It becomes a problem when someone makes a decision based on the act, such as an investor, a buyer or a follower paying for a course. Faking a manner is rehearsal; faking a checkable fact, such as users, revenue or a balance, is misrepresentation.

Is power posing real?

The original 2010 claims about hormones and risk-taking did not hold up: a 2015 replication with 200 participants found no such effects, and the study's first author said in 2016 that she does not believe the effects are real. What survives is smaller: people report feeling somewhat more powerful, and reviews suggest that comes mostly from not slumping.