We tend to assume that classy people come from money or privilege, but psychology points to something quieter: households where manners were taught not as performance, but as genuine regard for other people.
When someone strikes us as classy, the first explanation that arrives is usually money. Good schools, a certain ease, the right clothes, parents who could afford all three. Class, in the everyday sense, gets treated as something you either inherit or buy. The psychology says othe…