[Cavernio]

Arrogance is believing you are better than others on some level and having that come across in your interactions with others. The crux and issue with it is that belief that you are better at someone else will make you less open-minded. If you go into a conversation believing that you are more intelligent or knowledgeable about something, you are setting yourself up to fall into fallacies. If I go into a conversation and believe, however, that the other person is neither more intelligent or less intelligent than me, then I can weigh their discussion based on what they say. If I get into a discussion believing that they are smarter or stupider than I am, then that will actually alter my perception of what they say. To be as objective as possible, I must remain as neutral as possible regarding how I perceive myself compared to someone else.

The biggest problem with arrogance from your perspective, is that people are notoriously bad judges of their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to comparing it to others. Like, not all arrogant people actually can back themselves up to the level of their boastfulness. But they still, of course, think that they do or else they wouldn't BE arrogant. For the most part, actions or events that these individuals think proves their superiority, don't. They likely downplay when they're found to be inferior, and up-play when they're found to be superior.
Arrogance itself is a psychological phenomenon, regardless of actual skill or ability of the arrogant individual. And someone who can fully back-up their arrogance are still going to be passing down smugness to people around them. It causes tension and dislike for the arrogant person.

There's no delusion to humbleness. There's a HUGE difference between knowing you're not particularly good at something, and having that fact constantly on your mind because the person you're spending time with constantly is letting you know. The same goes for someone who is smarter than someone else...you can know it, but why is it always there at the forefront of your mind such that other people are viewing it as arrogance? There is no delusion to not thinking about a fact that you know all the time; we are not omniscient.

Furthermore, to always be focussed on what you're not good at is going to result in some sort of psychological and emotional damage. That's why, for instance, so many girls and women have body image issues. They are constantly bombarded and made to look at women who are prettier than them, they are always being reminded that they don't look as good as that person does. The problem is not actually that they're not very pretty or even hideous, it's the constant reminder of it making them feel badly. And just like how arrogance works, some downright beautiful people will think they're ugly, because of self-delusion, poor self-perception of how you fit in compared to others.

Arrogance is a psychological phenomenon, and it's a problem due to the psychological nature of it.


"I had to do this once when I argued with my friend's dad, a lawyer who used to be on admissions for Penn IIRC. He knew a lot about how to discredit sources, but he didn't know how to evaluate statistics; when I mentioned ".5 correlation" about SAT data he thought this was equivalent to a coin flip in causality"
*sigh* Just what I need, reminders that people less competent than me are gainfully employed in positions I'd like to have.

Psychologically and emotionally speaking, people who view themselves slightly above their actual competence tend to be the most stable, or something along those lines. It's a study I remembered reading/learning about a decade or so ago.