This is anecdotal, but I've seen it in my own life. People treat you completely differently if they think you come from a privileged background (or a disadvanta

This is anecdotal, but I've seen it in my own life. People treat you completely differently if they think you come from a privileged background (or a disadvantaged one), and one of those differences is their willingness to grant you opportunities, and how much they're willing to pay you. The fact that I come from a broken abusive home and a really messed up difficult childhood is a secret I guard pretty closely. The day I started wearing nice collared shirts and very subtly encouraging/allowing people to assume I come from privilege like they do (like almost everyone reading this does), I experienced an incredible reversal in career momentum. It completely turned my life around. Not only that, but it totally changes the calculus of what people are willing to pay you. If someone has nothing and is desperate, that means they'll be willing to work for less, and anything higher would be charity. Your expectation is that they will be happier with less, and that they will be thankful for it. If you think someone's parents own a nice lakefront house and a yacht, and they're young and white and wear nice shirts like you do and live in the bay, well clearly that person wouldn't accept less than $140k base. Your expectation is that not only will they demand fair and competitive pay, but also that dollar figures all seem low to them because they've been around money their whole life, so you better offer them more. I don't know if it's as simple as "rank-reversal aversion." I think it's much bigger and more complicated than that. In the broadest possible terms: People as a whole profile and categorize each other, and those categorizations are reflected in nearly every aspect of how people interact with each other. Part of the outcome of that is a tendency to reinforce success in the already-successful, and a tendency to reinforce failure in the already-failing.