Too stupid to know they're stupid.

[piercehawkeye45]

I like the part where he tells students to find out who the smartest professors are and see what smart really looks like. There is nothing more grounding than thinking you are a genius, or elite at anything, than have someone just blow you right out of the water.

One reasons for such inflated scores could be that mediocre people usually associate with mediocre people. Dumb people usually associate with dumb people. Smart people usually associate with smart people. If you are smartest out of a mediocre group, you will have much higher confidence than being the dumbest out of the smart group, even though the latter may be much smarter than the former. We tend to forget that there are much smarter and dumber people than the small groups we associate with.