Incompetent Rich People Often Get Ahead
New studies show that having the right background is more of an advantage than actually being smart and capable
We have a myth in America that those with wealth and power have always earned them through their hard work and diligence. In a social hierarchy, we tend to look up towards those at the top of the pyramid, believing that it is largely merit that has landed them there. But several new studies show that this is far from the truth.
People who come from wealth and privilege tend to have a high degree of confidence, and indeed, are often over-confident about their skills and abilities. They may have learned at an early age how to navigate social settings that include other people of high rank and position. If you rubbed elbows at the country club as a child with judges, CEOs, and generals, and then went on to a prominent school, chances are that you have internalized a sense of belonging in the upper echelons of power and prestige. This, in turn, leads to a more likely chance that you’ll be given the opportunity to stay there, which keeps the social hierarchy in place.
Our culture in the US, as in many developed nations, is built around a social hierarchy that is pyramid-shaped. A few elites hold the spots at the apex and everyone else jousts for spots on the rungs beneath them. This is the full meaning of the term patriarchy — a social system that is based in stratification, not just around gender, but also around race, class, wealth, education, etc.
In the course of her career and research into workplace behavior, Nicole Jones Young has noticed that some managers recognize the work of the loudest, most confident and, sometimes, the most well-heeled person in the room. That includes people who are well-known to have gone to a good school and, well, come from a wealthy background. (1)
I’ve written quite a bit about how this dominance hierarchy called patriarchy plays out in relation to the binary gender roles that women and men are expected to adhere to, and how that limits and harms everyone. And it’s not too difficult to understand how more than 350 years of overt racial stratification would still be impacting our society today, but the maintenance of the social hierarchy as it relates to wealth and class was perhaps not always as obvious until now.
Advantages beget advantages. Those who are born in the upperclass echelons are likely to remain in the upper class (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). The majority of individuals who work at elite and prestigious firms tend to come from elite educational institutions (Rivera, 2016). And high-earning entrepreneurs disproportionately originate from highly educated and well-to-do families (Levine & Rubinstein, 2013). These are some examples of how advantage tends to be self-perpetuating, belying the American ideal of social mobility (e.g., Hochschild, 1996). (2)
The research demonstrates that having a more honed ability to manage the impression you give, often referred to as “an executive presence” does confer advantages over intelligence and actual competence alone. Co-workers from a working-class background may simply come off as less polished, or less elite — because, in a social hierarchy, part of the currency is elite status. Most people are looking to climb the rungs of the pyramid, and if someone is already “dressed for the part” then it’s easier for managers and others to imagine them there.
In terms of access, we find a distinction between traditional professions, such as law, medicine, and finance, which are dominated by the children of higher managers and professionals, and more technical occupations, such as engineering and IT, that recruit more widely. Moreover, even when people who are from working-class backgrounds are successful in entering high-status occupations, they earn 17 percent less, on average, than individuals from privileged backgrounds. (3)
Opportunities and expectations for higher education also help to perpetuate this disparity, but even when children from poorer backgrounds do go to college, they still typically end up earning significantly less than their peers who came from privileged backgrounds.
In the United States, for instance, out of a hundred children whose parents are among the bottom 10% of income earners, only twenty to thirty go to college. However, that figure reaches ninety when parents are within the top 10% earners. (4)
These elements make it difficult for people at lower parts of the social hierarchy to be able to improve their standing. Social inequalities tend to lead to structural inequalities and this makes it easier for those nearer to the top of the pyramid to maintain their historic power and privilege.
One need not have a conscious desire to keep somebody else “in their place” in order to be contributing to the maintenance of a stratified system that is not based in merit. And the same may be said for racism, misogyny, and other largely subconsciously held forms of dominance hierarchy perpetuation. The bulk of all of these social ills stem primarily not from overt, conscious, desire to discriminate but from unconscious biases that are deeply woven into the fabric of our society. The more we recognize and discuss unconscious biases of all stripes, the better equipped we are as a society to counter-act them.
(1) Market Watch, Incompetent, rich people are more likely to get ahead than smart people with no money
(2) Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, The Social Advantage of Miscalibrated Individuals: The Relationship Between Social Class and Overconfidence and Its Implications for Class-Based Inequality
(3) American Sociological Review, The Class Pay Gap in Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations