Have you ever listened to someone talk who is both clever and confident in their own knowledge? Politicians, top business people, successful actors, authors, comedians, sports people? People who aren’t trying to prove anything, who are happy in their skin? Almost always they come across as approachable, easy to talk to, easy to understand. That’s because they have no need for any of the barriers some people inadvertently put up, in order to prove something to the rest of the world.

Any time you see someone trying to impress you in any way, it’s a pretty good sign they feel insecure and are trying to compensate. They think you’ll judge them if they show what they believe to be their true colours, so they try extra hard to cover them up. For example, people with a chip on their shoulder about coming from an impoverished background often flaunt money when they have it, to make a point about not being poor.

The key things here are that they are uncomfortable about their background, and they are expecting you to judge them for it. In fact you might not care about their background, but it’s all about their perception. Others might be proud to have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, but this person is a teensy bit ashamed of where they come from.

Another good example of this is people who use long words and sentences to make themselves look well educated and erudite. They think (wrongly I hope) that you’ll look down on them if you know their education wasn’t great. But they reckon they can fool you into thinking they’re clever by using convoluted sentences and complicated words. Or rather, into thinking they’re cleverer than they think they are. See, it’s all about their perception again. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you actually think.

In fact, if we judge people’s use of language at all, it’s by their clarity, not their ability to overcomplicate. That’s why people with nothing to prove don’t try to impress – they don’t need to. People who use big words might think they’re impressing us, but they only impress themselves.

It’s a shame, because if someone really does come from a background of poverty, or has been unlucky enough to be poorly educated, they deserve our support. But the people I’m talking about here expect us to judge them harshly, even though you and I would do no such thing. So it’s worth being tolerant of the symptom, and recognising the underlying cause, next time you encounter someone who is trying a bit too hard to impress.