Another SYMBOLIC downfall of wearing the mask besides the delay in falling off of the ego and breathing your own CO2…

There is a reason all of this has felt so bad even after cleaning house. You have seen the videos of how your different communities act it can not be denied.

In the field of social psychology, illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits.

The term illusory superiority was first used by the researchers Van Yperen and Buunk, in 1991. The phenomenon is also known as the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, the sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect,[1] and the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the fictional town where all the children are above average.[2]

A vast majority of the literature on illusory superiority originates from studies on participants in the United States. However, research that only investigates the effects in one specific population is severely limited as this may not be a true representation of human psychology. More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture.[3] Some studies indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in order to improve themselves and get along with others.[4][5]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Superiority and self-deceit

Think of people who bully others. They’re not as strong as they seem, because they need to harm others to instill fear and command respect. But inside, they’re not as brave as they seem. They have serious problems that they hide and project onto the people around them.

The same thing happens with people who have airs of superiority. Behind all of the contempt they show towards their own friends, there’s a much deeper problem that they try to cover up. This situation leads them to put on a mask of self-sufficiency, but this need will never be satisfied.

Human beings have a great capacity for denying the problems that surround them. And sometimes, even when they see reality right in front of their eyes, they still have the audacity to deny it. Sometimes it’s out of fear, sometimes it’s out of embarrassment. In the case of people with airs of superiority, their biggest problem is the insecurity that haunts them.

Of course, self-esteem plays a fundamental role here. In this situation, you can either feel superior or feel inferior. People with airs of superiority mask their insecurity by acting superior to others and humiliating them so they can feel better about themselves.

They’ll look down on you

One of the factors that can lead a person to act superior to others is being bullied as a child. It’s possible that when they got to university, they drastically changed how they acted to protect themselves against future attacks and harassment.

For this reason, they think that from the first day on, they have to step on others and demonstrate confidence so that they don’t get stepped on again, presenting themselves as someone they really aren’t. They’ll never acknowledge a mistake they’ve made, they’ll just blame others. They may also act pedantic and arrogant, with such a positive opinion of themselves that they’ll be a role model to the people around them.

https://exploringyourmind.com/superiority-characteristic-insecure-people/

A central question about narcissism, then, is whether this tendency to enhance one's opinion of oneself applies to every trait. A paper by Emily Grijalva and Luyao Zhang in the January 2016 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin explored this issue.

The researchers did a meta-analysis of a number of studies relating people’s degree of narcissism to their tendency to enhance their view of themselves. (A meta-analysis examines the data from many different studies to capture broad trends in research that may only be evident when looking across a large number of studies.) In the studies within the meta-analysis, participants filled out an inventory that measured their degree of narcissism, and then rated themselves along a number of personality traits. In these studies, other people who knew the participants also rated them along those traits. The key question for the team was whether one's degree of narcissism predicts the difference in ratings one gives to oneself compared to the ratings other people give him or her.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201512/why-narcissists-are-so-sure-theyre-better-you