A little bit of pushback on the more technical or capable people and they will start dropping the facade, whereas the less capable will just hold it up higher, because it's the only thing they know. They have no conscience accusing them of misrepresentation, no sense of guilt or concern that they may be drifting afield from an acceptable core. They only learn that they need to wear the tokens more convincingly next time.
So yes, you can have people who wear the tokens for expedience and out of a recognition that its important to fulfill the heuristics, but they're no competition for those blissfully unaware that there is anything else involved.
In my experience (I sort of enjoy fashion) most people cannot tell the minute differences between "tailored outfit & basic color coordination" and "total fashionista who keeps up with everything." I can walk around with a fake Coach bag, get compliments all day, most people just do not know.
There's exceptions of course, certain offices/fields of work. But it's not common.
The third category, of whom I’ve known several, is “capacity/competence, with an attention to the superficialities because they know how much those matter.”
That is, I haven’t found it to be an inverse relationship. I find it to be a 2x2, and if you happen to be someone with less capability and more ability to BS, then yes, you lean on your strength to obfuscate your weakness. But you can also be strong in both, or weak in both.
I also think there are a lot of jobs where deep mastery doesn’t generally exist (eg, mopping), and so those people just have no idea what deep competency discussions are like. It’s like flatland, only the third dimension is expertise and complexity.