Experiments find higher social class more likely to have inflated sense of skill
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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!"
I'm having a hard time finding a paper about the US/Canada difference now though, so maybe I'm wrong.
Interesting...
I'm an American, but apparently more Canadian in attitude about this. I've always taken overconfidence (or, worse, braggadocio) as a sign of incompetence.
So why mention the type of car?
On Youtube, Daily Driven Exotics is one of the largest automotive channels and I would suppose you would consider all the antics you see on that channel to be quite obnoxious. Plenty of Americans consider everything they see of that channel as "wow what a cool guy/car".
Its not hard to see why though. In industrializing countries with a lot of income inequality, wealth is rare, and anyone who has that is seen as either getting it through hard work, or getting it via their parents' hard work.
BTW, Americans are hardly better, see all the yatches and private jets that corporate executives own.
He was lying to you to make you feel better so that you tip more.
No, he wasn't lying.
I see it more that in these societies, the difference in quality of life between being rich or poor can literally make the difference between living or dying. In those conditions, the first thing you probably care about when assessing a potential partner or friend is whether they have clean shelter and know where their next meal is coming from, so the signaling value of money is extremely high. Whether they have excellent taste in music is a long way down the list.
In most developed societies, the difference between being lower middle class or upper middle class is relatively minor, and gives people the luxury to consider conspicuous displays of wealth to be crass, and to choose partners based on more subtle characteristics, like their ability to write funny comments.
On a similar vein, wealth often also brings protection against the State which often abuses its own citizens (e.g. corrupt Government and police officers). This does happen in the US as well (e.g. violence against African Americans) but not to the same extent.
In a world where most people are infected by a zombie virus, it might become very important to be able to signal that you're not infected. In this world, the fact that I'm not infected by a zombie virus is literally one of the least interesting things about me and will rarely warrant even a passing mention.
Likewise, to me, your t-shirt that just says the word GUCCI in massive letters tells me that you have rich parents and no aesthetic sense. In other circumstances, to other people, it might signal that their quality of life could be improved many times over by being with this person.
The irony becomes that these signals of disposable wealth can be so coveted that in certain places, people's priorities will shift such that they'll sacrifice all areas of their lives, eat nothing but the cheapest instant noodles, and spend a year's savings on, say, a Louis Vuitton wallet which, sadly, they'll no longer have any money to put in.
I’d think they were an asshole. BMW drivers are assholes, I know I used to drive one.
https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/the-rich-drive-d...
3. Rich man in the car paradox.
When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.” Instead, you think, “Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.” Subconscious or not, this is how people think.
The paradox of wealth is that people tend to want it to signal to others that they should be liked and admired. But in reality those other people bypass admiring you, not because they don’t think wealth is admirable, but because they use your wealth solely as a benchmark for their own desire to be liked and admired.
http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-mone...
My original comment was pointing out the disparity between a nice car and a nice laptop. Even a 20k car is at least 5x the cost of a top of the line laptop.
Gentoo would have been an even better analogy.
You can also get a similar era V10 M5 or M6 for about the same cash and those will go like crazy. Again, to my eyes, good looking cars.
If you're patient and haggle well you can probably pick up a viper SRT-10, although you might be waiting a while; I see some around $24k but no lower without salvage titles.
I could go on, but you get my point. There are a ton of cars out there that really are pretty incredible for not a lot of money.
Huh, you're right. Actually, more than right. If I don't mind travelling across the country, I can get a 2005 SL55 AMG for $7,500. That car was 6 figures at release, though. That's a LOT of value to lose!
> They're also, to my eyes, pretty good looking
I will disagree there. I think they look boring as all hell. Obviously, this is entirely subjective.
> There are a ton of cars out there that really are pretty incredible for not a lot of money.
I might dispute "incredible" here, for two reasons. First, surprisingly cheap high-performance cars are so frequently from luxury brands that don't consider long-term reliability to be luxury features. Also, despite the SL55 AMG being able to hit 200 MPH, it weighs more than most SUVs, and so has a pitiful 0-60 time of 4.5 seconds. I admit I'm moving the goal posts a bit here, but quick acceleration is more important to me than top speed. I can't use 200 mph on my daily commute, but I can use a 0-60 speed on the on-ramp, or whenever I need to accelerate quickly to pass someone.
my hot hatch can do it in six seconds, and even that is a bit too much to use unless the road is wide open with no traffic.
But if 0-60 is most important, I'd look at things like that SRT-10 (which makes it in 3.7s stock) or maybe even soup up a CTS-V, which can hit it in 3.3 with some work. Granted both of those, with modifications, will probably wind up closer to $25k than $20-- but who knows, you might get lucky.
Despite that, I maintain my original position: these are far, far beyond just being "nice" cars, and unless you can get a nice computer system for less than negative $80,000 there is no way to get such a system for even one hundred thousand dollars less than these cars, let alone several hundred thousand.
I know I wrote my comment in a "haha gotcha" style but my main point is that most people with disposable income have areas where they splurge, and areas where they save. maybe it's not the car or the computer, but I bet you own at least one item that your peers would think you spent too much money on.
instead of shitting on people who spend money on stuff we don't personally value, or imply they only did it to show off how rich they are, why not just assume they bought it because they enjoy it?
Indeed if it weren't for people pursuing the new shiny, I'd have to pay at least 10x for the same utility. But as it is I'm glad to re-purpose/reuse. I have no delusions that I'm not a scavenger in this economic realm. Though I do appreciate a solid "grandpa" car that seats 6 and can tow a few thousand pounds and can still get 30mpg on the highway.
Work is a totally different story, but not bought by me, and also spec'd to utility, not extravagance.
However, 99.9% of luxury cars are not exotics. You will rarely see them on the road as they depreciate too much if you drive them daily.
I would think "if I had that car, people may think I'm a bragging asshole, not sure I want that kind of attention".
I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I'd rather buy such an overpriced car then helping those in need.
Up until the early 2000's, this was the case in the US.
And people love to correct others about their bags or shoes when others misidentify them as a more affordable imitation of an exclusion designer, and then get to tell them who and how much it cost and how it is so worth it for the "quality".
This results in significant more of German luxury cars, especially BMW, Mercedes and Audi, being quite common, as well as being the most jammed up country on the planet.
So while it looks like fancy flaunting, the BMW 5, Audi 6 or Mercedes E is very common will not turn many eyes here.
Maybe this is true in Belgium, but how much is it true elsewhere?
It's a Sunday, it's lunch time, and it's packed. After going up and down a couple rows, I get lucky and see the reverse lights on a minivan light up just as I'm approaching the end of a crowded row. So I stop and wait.
While I'm waiting, I look in my rear-view mirror and notice this very new (no plates) white BMW aggressively weaving around other other cars stopped in the lane waiting for something to open up. Just as the spot clears, the white BMW races around me to take the spot. I'm stunned. I'm not a violent person nor even a particular strong person and haven't been in a fistfight since elementary school. But I'm ready for bloodshed. I lay on the horn.
A young handsome fashionably dressed Chinese guy wearing sunglasses exits the car on the driver's side. His attractive young fashionably dressed wife, also wearing sunglasses, gets out on the passenger side. She pulls out their young son, also well dressed and wearing sunglasses. Obliviously, they start walking toward the dumping joint where we're planning to eat.
I turn to my wife, incredulous: "Can you believe this? Did you see that asshole?" I'm not Chinese. My wife is.
"Asshole?" she replied. "In China, that guy would be a hero."
She didn't seem particularly upset by the turn of events. So I just laughed, put my vendetta in the hands of karma, and went in search of another parking spot.
Is "good for him he's enjoying what his nice car has to offer" not an option?
The line between 'cool' and 'asshole' is very slim and depends on your assumptions about the individual in question, their character and motivations.
They have this myth of the ultra rich everyday man, who despite their immense wealth and power, are just as relatable and humble as the rest of us. They wear blue jeans and you see them joking with the cashier, even though they could buy the supermarket chain.
In many other cultures that would be the epitome of hypocrisy. It's perceived as cheap and an outright lie. Being rich actually obligates you to look rich. It's expected. You can be kind, you can be generous, you can be helpful, but don't hide that you're rich.
Although it might be more pronounced in Asia, even in Europe the rich don't try as hard to be relatable as in America. Somehow Americans find displays of wealth almost offensive.
Again, it's just my experience.
either person could be a valuable member of the team, but how do you say which one is more competent in a quick glance?
Which is precisely what the rich people want them to think.
In one case, I watched a high executive tank a company into the ground (provably, with numbers to back it up that it was as a direct result of their own decisions) and got promoted 3 times for it. Eventually left their job and took an even higher position at another, bigger company.
No one seems to notice this. Its insane.
Here's Bernie Madoff, after he was a crook but before he was caught.[1]
Here's Shai Agassi, before Better Place went bust spending about half a billion on their battery swap system and putting about 30 cars on the road.[2]
What can you see there?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auSfaavHDXQ
[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars/trans...
I would love to videos of non famous people telling lies about themselves and try to see if I could spot the liars at greater than average percentages.
Maybe that's an idea for a fun website....
Of course event this course wouldn't help you when the liars actually believe their own bullshit, which seems to be fairly common among the most successful fraudsters.
This thing: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...
Even industrial battery swapping, for forklifts, straddle carriers, AGVs, and such, which was once popular, seems to be on the way out. The machines can get through a workday on one charge now, then charge up while parked. Five years ago there were videos of clever battery swap machines.[1] Not so much now.
But psychologically, most people have their perception anchored to the average behavior, so things that are actually rational (meeting strangers) appears as "overconfidence" and things that are actually quite reckless (driving, not exercising, eating sugar, drinking alcohol) we think of as "normal".
The interviewer asked me why I was so confident. And why I had the nerve to want to dig into the terms of the job (salary, growth opportunities and the like - I was a late stage candidate).
Full disclosure - I can't think of a time where I have been perceived as arrogant at all. I am generally well-liked and personable.
The interviewer seemed to have some sort of implicit bias - I think she really didn't think that black people should be confident in a professional environment. I can't imagine that she would have taken similar offense to a white guy asking those sorts of questions.
In one case, one interviewer basically told me that I lied about how much I made in an internship. (I didn't lie.)
Now that I'm on the other side of the table, I can tell you that the hardest interviews to run are for recent college graduates. It requires a lot of "would I know this back then" thinking.
Well that's your bias though right. I mean maybe she was just intimidated, stupid, and/or human...
I just came out of a situation where a guy on the train was looking at me with the most disgusted look possible. To the point where I was checking myself in the reflection to see if I had a booger or something. Being white I have to assume he was just a weird dude.
I honestly can't imagine what life is like in the shoes of a minority, but I wonder how often false positives show up. I mean you are assuming the other person is a racist, which is a heavy accusation.
Who is "we?" Maybe overconfident behavior is adaptive in a world where risk-taking works out enough of the time. Not all overconfidence takes the form of "I rationally know I can't do it but I'll try anyway," it is often closer to, "I rationally don't know whether or not I can do it, but I'll assume that I can and press on."
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
~ George Bernard Shaw ~
Wealth does not create overconfidence; it only reveals it.
My argument is the flip side of (and generalization of) the usual claim that poor people are discouraged to try anything entrepeneurial.
Another competing claim could be that rich people are honestly less competent than poor people. I could easily argue against that one; IQ and conscientiousness are highly positively correlated with income, based on numerous sociological studies. People who dispute this fact have an agenda.
I believe it remains to be shown that "competence" is also correlated with income.
They are? Do you have studies indicating this?
I was mainly getting that point out of the way so the poster I was replying to wouldn't get hung up on my evil liberal agenda.
>Being too afraid to generalize the wealthy as competent causes yourself to miss an personal actionable moral lesson about goal-oriented behavior. It is entirely possible to make this judgement, and learn from it, without demonizing the poor as incometent or subhuman.
I wouldn't call your viewpoint evil, but I'd like you to characterize where I'm arguing from in your own words. Seems like you think I've jumped into the looney bin.
Putting too much emphasis on IQ is a bit distasteful, because people can't change their IQ very much. But conscientiousness is worth advocating for. To me, it seems like the left-leaning opinion is so afraid to make judgements between people's measurable differences that they want to immediately shame people for recognizing those differences.
I wouldn't say "distasteful". I'd say "inaccurate". It's not clear what, exactly, IQ actually measures and it's up for debate if it measures intelligence in any meaningful way.
The scatter plots show a correlations strong enough that they startled me when I saw them. The higher the IQ, the lower the correlation though.
IQ measures the ability to perform abstract reasoning tasks successfully. Conscientiousness measures the willingness and desire to perform one's duties well. Additionally, among people that earned their wealth, the fact that they are wealthy demonstrates that they achieved their goal of becoming wealthy. These all indicate competence to me. Wealth, in general, can also be imagined as a state where one's needs are met, which is (for people that earned their wealth) almost always closely related to having achieved certain goals.
I would have a hard time imagining an argument that rejects these claims and also demonstrates that wealth and competence do not correlate positively.
Bear in mind that this is talking about populations as a whole- correlations are something we can tease out via sociological studies, and experiments are few and far between. There are facts about human nature that we will never prove conclusively, but to be an effective agent in the world, you should try to learn things about people that cannot be proven. Being too afraid to generalize the wealthy as competent causes yourself to miss an personal actionable moral lesson about goal-oriented behavior. It is entirely possible to make this judgement, and learn from it, without demonizing the poor as incometent or subhuman.
The line of reasoning makes sense. My only doubt comes from my own personal observations: I've never personally noticed a correlation between income and IQ.
It's hard to say -- I'm basing this on my lifetime experience. Across that time span, the bulk of the people I knew have ranged (at various times) from "dirt poor" to "the 1%".
Memory can be a tricky thing, of course, and I'm naturally speaking subjectively (and therefore not with statistical significance), but I never noticed a smaller percentage of high IQ people in the dirt poor group, nor a greater percentage in the wealthy group.
The breakdown has always seems pretty constant across socioeconomic levels to me.
But it also depends on what you count as "intelligence". I have noticed that the higher you get on the socioeconomic ladder, the more "socially intelligent" people tend to be. But specifying IQ as a measuring stick excludes most of the other forms of intelligence, including social intelligence.
Being poor is what made me an entrepreneur! When you have nothing to lose, then there's little risk in rolling those dice.
I wouldn't say I was ever discouraged from entrepreneurship, even at my lowest. But it did make the math a hell of a lot harder. When you're poor, there's always something more you can lose. Choosing between investing in your business or what you eat that week is a difficult decision.
What I would say is that those circumstances give you the motivation to find the clever, efficient solutions, and to make wiser, less risk-adverse decisions. I never wanted a startup that burned money just to get acquired. I wanted one that could make me real money from the very beginning.
Being poor raises the bar on the quality of the business you intend to create, because failure is worse for you than anyone else.
I agree!
Although many years back my preferred business model became developing a business so that I can sell it whole-hog to somebody else, that has never meant that I was OK with burning money (or even using other people's money in the first place).
Coming from a place of poverty is probably why I am extremely reluctant to actually go into debt for a business. My preferred method is to live lean and bootstrap up.
Before I consider selling a business, I want it to be a real, profitable business that is standing on its own. If it's not that, then I don't have anything to sell.
For example, I and many of my colleagues are battling large amounts of student loan debt; if we were truly starting from 0 and had absolutely nothing, pursuing entrepreneurship would be at worst 0 gain and wasted time, but at best a successful endeavor.
Realistically, however, many of the young and poor are starting from a disadvantaged state where in reality, taking a large risk is dissuaded by the risk of defaulting on student loan payments or shredded credit scores.
What I'm getting at is, many people would love to be truly poor rather than in the pit, and being in the pit brings a lot more risk to the average person (who otherwise might have the drive or skills to really make something worthwhile)
I'm not sure that I understand the distinction you're making here. Yes, one path to being poor is losing what you have. But in the end, such people are just as poor as those who never had anything in the first place. They both have nothing (more) to lose.
> many of the young and poor are starting from a disadvantaged state where in reality, taking a large risk is dissuaded by the risk of defaulting on student loan payments or shredded credit scores.
Most poor people are living in a trap of debt -- that tends to go hand-in-hand with being poor, as is having shredded credit scores.
It's very hard to find a poor person who isn't saddled with debt, whether they have student loans or not. Being poor is very expensive, after all.
That said, I don't think a person's monetary wealth can be measured by their income alone. It has to be measured in net terms: assets (including income) minus overhead and debts owed. A lot of people who consider themselves wealthy are actually poor and living on borrowed (i.e., somebody else's) wealth.
- the less competent you need to be. You have more capital to do the work for you.
- the less you are affected from random problems, as you can spread your risk.
If you are in the lower echelon, one miss-step or random event outside of your control can bring you in a position where it is much harder to recover from.
(Edited formatting)
The inverse is also true. People with low charisma can say incredibly wise, rational, and insightful things and they're often ignored.
IMHO a lot of what is wrong with our world can be explained by this. At the same time it also creates a contrarian opportunity to benefit by calling bullshit on charismatic charlatans and paying attention to quieter people who know what they're talking about.
So if they were expressing confidence, and still around, it would likely be pretty directly correlated with actual ability.
It's a bit of a just-so story but it has some resonance to it.
What is the definition of overconfidence. I'd argue being less competent than your confidence warrants. Where as if you're competent then being confident is "correct". The difference is whether someone is competent or not. Not if they are confident or not.
The problem is not confidence. It's peoples in ability to gauge competence / using confidence as an indicator of competence. Which is what the OA says, but many comments here are diverging from that and going off on tangents about confidence.
One workaround is to clear storage in devtools (Application tab) whenever visiting NYTimes and smile that you're messing with their analytics and tracking data.
1 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/04/no-mercy
2 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/the-hitchhikers-gu...
In particular the journal this was published in was found to have an overall replication rate of 23%. Another way of putting this is that if you assumed anything you read in this journal was not true, you'd be vastly more accurately informed (nearly a 4:1 rate!) than somebody who genuinely believed what was published in the journal.
Anyhow, back to your regularly scheduled series of anecdotal accounts validating confirmation bias.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Psychology_...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omne%20ignotum%20...
https://study.com/academy/answer/what-does-sherlock-holmes-p...
Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. “If you’re confident, you’re wealthy,” he says. “I’ve seen guys who work on a ship channel and they get to a certain point and they’re confident. You can look in their faces, they’re longshoremen, and they have this confidence about them...I’ve seen a lot of guys with millions and they don’t have any confidence,” he says. “So they’re not wealthy.”
"Wealth" is one of those terms (like "success") that is pretty squishy, though. People can, and do, disagree about what they mean.
Bill Gates could dump a billion dollars into a world class Japanese course and still struggle to attain fluency if he doesn't work at it with his own sweat and mental energy.
In other words, true wealth in my opinion is the ability to generate value if your brain/soul were dropped in a random homeless person's body in a random era. Something tells me Paris Hilton wouldn't fare as well as Leonardo DaVinci.
A lot of people (myself included) believe that there is life after death and that you can't bring your money and possessions with you. But you can bring your knowledge with you. That's why I believe it's pointless to amass too much money in this life; it's better to amass knowledge, which you can take with you.
Maybe you only get to bring your kindness
I agree with your conclusion, although I arrive there by a different route. I happen to believe that there is no afterlife (well, "believe" is too strong -- I just see no reason to suspect that an afterlife exists).
However, I do believe that gaining and processing knowledge is better than amassing money, because increasing the body of knowledge is what tends to make the world better for future generations.
If that random era is in the _past_, that's far from being true. Knowledge doesn't mean much if that random homeless person's body belongs to an identifiable group that is discriminated against by that era's society.
If you always receive a lot of praise for anything you do, no matter the actual significance of it, then naturally your own perception of your skills inflates unproportionally to reality.
Unfortunately, the article doesn't expand on this idea. How or why doing so would produce better results?
Specifically, it was never addressed if individuals had an inflated view of their own skills or their ability to complete a given task.
Regardless of an individuals skill in reference to a given task (listed as average among high-class individuals post testing), due to their wealth, high-class individuals absolutely have a greater ability to accomplish any given task as they have demonstrably greater social access and a larger pool of resources to throw at any given problem.
Confidence is not a flat gauge of raw ability but also availability of resources to accomplish a given task.
Using the "Parks and Rec" example, Bobby Newport utilizes his wealth to hire Jennifer Barkley, an elite political campaign manager.
Overconfidence != Incompetence
The rose-tinted mourning of the loss of empire and former superpower status (see this week's universally negative reviews of Rees-Mogg's jingoistic "history" book) amongst some in Britain is a good part of why many have such a negative view of Europe. Many don't feel part of it, but merely next to it, looking down. It's this that the Daily Heil keep talking up. A mindset which is really hard to understand, but it seems like they think that exiting will put us back as global superpower, trading with the world, and... err.
This from a Britain that sells off everything significant and worthy of pride we've ever done, or simply ruins it, and only just remains a blue-water navy. I'm not quite sure how this magic is ever meant to happen. :)
Staying a part of Europe makes far more sense to me, but after Brexit it will be really hard for those euroskeptics to continue to believe we count for much. The reality of our being a post-imperial insignificant little island might start to sink in, especially if the city decides to bugger off. Ironically, in the long run, we might end up better for that.
Oh God, it’s a disaster to watch. The Tories are repeatedly kicking themselves in the balls publicly and Labour is run by someone who has almost no support from MPs and who comes third after “Don’t know” in the rankings of potential prime ministers.
I'm very curious what poll you're referring to there that has him after "don't know".
I used to like him. I wish he was all that you call him.
What did I 'call him' that you disagree with?
Unrelated: while YouGov is indeed online, it chooses which people to send the surveys to and has long-term profiles on each of them, so unlike a silly Twitter poll it has decent statistical relevance and the biases seem to be persistent, well quantified, and generally accounted for — you shouldn’t dismiss it just because you don’t like what it’s saying.
Now, I support Sanders and quite like Corbyn minus the Brexit and the antisemitism issues, but they both face a similar challenge: their core support bases aren't actually ideologically coherent, let alone aligned entirely behind the candidates' programs. Lots of leftists basically treat Sanders or Corbyn as beloved old conservative uncles, while insisting that nobody with Sanders' or Corbyn's actual (social democratic to democratic socialist) politics should encouraged within Left politics.
Well if he'd stop trying to have it both ways on the biggest issue of the day against the will of most of his voters and party members...
On the other side, I see time after time competent people giving up at the very first (and often trivial) obstacle.
> We may also need to punish overconfident behavior more than we do
This smacks more of a desire to tear down people one is envious of than a recipe for improving society.
I don't think this way at all. I tend to lean toward "high class" being an essentially meaningless term.
I'm not sure your point, as stated, makes sense.
Mainly because the word means less-and-less wealth over time, due to inflation. The millionaires of 1959 were easily 6 times wealthier than the millionaires of 2019.