Greg, you beat me to the punch ~ that was exactly my first reaction, too. I lean towards the latter: that making (or simply having)more money leads one to accept traditional attitudes as justificaiton for one's life of privilege.

Those guys making upwards of a grand a month more than everybody else need to convice themselves that they enjoy their status for good reason. Being male is probably just one facet of their "qualifications"; having been born into the "right" segment of society (as a male) must have helped as well.

Being well-educated, and having chosen a remunerative career path, are better explanations for having risen to the top of the economic ladder, and probably have less to do with the results of this study than other factors related to varous accident-of-birth factors.

I'm reminded of a witticism I read a couple of weeks ago, during the Republican convention. Someone repeated an old joke to the effect that Bush the Elder "was born on third base, and grew up believing that he hit a triple." The corollary, in regard to G.W. Bush: "He was born on third base and then stole second."