Experiments find higher social class more likely to have inflated sense of skill
When I took a social psychology class long ago, they mentioned that the most significant cultural difference between Canadians and Americans was that Americans take overconfidence as a sign of competence whereas Canadians perceive it as an attempt to intimidate or take advantage of someone.<p>Seems to apply to this article as well.  Maybe 'high-class' overconfident people become more convincing as wealth disparity widens due to the magic sauce they must obviously possess to be so rich in the first place.  It's like Gob's bragging from Arrested Development: "The guy in the $4,000 suit is holding the elevator for a guy who doesn’t make that in three months. Come on!"<p>I'm having a hard time finding a paper about the US/Canada difference now though, so maybe I'm wrong.