I. Introduction: Have you ever met a person who behaves as if he is the greatest person on earth ever? Have you ever worked with a person who pretends that you are only an error-prone “mere mortal” whereas he is the most sublime creation of the divinity? Have you ever seen someone who never wants to move away from his own area of expertise & keeps perfecting those expertise secretly so that they can “perform” them in front of public? If you have managed to experience at least one of the situations as mentioned above most likely you already had the opportunity of coming across an “Arrogant” person.
In the entire discussion to follow our focus would be on the word “Arrogant”. This is important to discuss because generally arrogant people have a negative impact on the social fabric. We shall try to detect & understand arrogant people. II. Conceptual Framework: We start with the definition : “Making or implying unwarrantable claims to dignity, authority & knowledge; aggressively conceited or haughty, presumptuous, overbearing” ( The Oxford Concise Dictionary of English) The word ‘unwarrantable’ is very important here.
It means that their high ideas about themselves are not justifiable. So, basically we should call people arrogant when their claim to pride is false. But often this world has given us extremely talented people or groups who in spite of their rightful claims to glory were considered arrogant. And that is why the second part of the definition is added. So, as it gives a comprehensive picture of an arrogant person we would consider the definition above as our working definition as well. Components of arrogant behaviour are mostly divided in 2 parts: attitude owards self & attitude towards others & this nicely came out during the interviews as described later. Here one important point to note is that the word arrogant can be attributed to a person or a group. Interestingly, a particular member of the group may not be considered arrogant isolatedly but the group as a whole would be considered arrogant. The opposite is also true. This point can be clarified by the example as follows. One classical example: Sourav Ganguly was often called arrogant by media during his captaincy though the Indian cricket team as a whole was never considered to be arrogant.
On the other hand, during the same period, the Australian cricket team was known for its arrogance but no one considered their captain Steve Waugh to be arrogant. III. Review of Literature: References of “Arrogant” can be found out in different contexts in different texts. Typically reference of “Arrogant” as a personality type can be found in the Encyclopaedia of Psychology where it is described as a defensive-vindictive behaviour. Another good insight is obtained from below: “The fear that drives Arrogance is the fear of vulnerability.
Arrogant people do not want to admit to themselves that they are imperfect, nor do they want others to discover it. Rarely do they apologize for their mistakes. ” (http://www. michaelteachings. com/) Following are a few readings: The Ramayana: It depicts Ravana as an arrogant person who had this trait of arrogance or over-bearing self-confidence from his very childhood. Because of this, in spite of being an excellent fighter, scholar & devotee, he often drew wrath of the gods. His destruction is attributed to his arrogance because of which he refused to return Sita & underestimated Rama’s capability to match him in war.
The Mahabharata : Similarly Duryodhana, because of his arrogance, refused to give Pandavas even a needle-point of land underestimating the casualties of an impending war. Here also, the result was destruction. In all these instances arrogance is always considered as a precursor to one’s fall & destruction. In the western culture: This is considered to be a very negative attitude. As we find in the holy Bible: Proverbs chapter 29 (TEV) “Arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected. ” Proverbs chapter 19 (TEV) “Arrogance should be punished, so that people who don’t know any better can learn a lesson.
If you are wise, you will learn when you are corrected. ” Texts do not stop at noting that arrogance brings downfall. Texts have explored the consequence of fall & the realisation that it befell because of arrogant behaviour: remorse. This particular aspect was analysed in the book “Arrogance & Remorse” by Pasquale Poerio. However, Wikihow had a different take on this context: “Arrogance is said to be a virtue, especially in the context of some professions such at the senior managerial or expert level. ” They in fact went on to advise being arrogant. (http://www. wikihow. com/Be-Arrogant)
There are numerous other texts but all of them cannot be listed due to constraint of space. very aggressive in nature. So, these are the features of an arrogant person. Now we consider the question why arrogant people are/became arrogant. This is the outcome of the informal discussions. Two important inherent reasons are: insecurity & vulnerability. But during the observation of these people I found out certain more reasons for the origin of arrogance & certain more aspects to it: Aspects: 1)arrogance is reflected in body language & especially in postures of standing or seating or way of walking. They walk straight, with a little swagger. )arrogance comes to the surface whenever there is a situation of confrontation 3)it is closely associated with aggression, inconsideration & high competitiveness 4)people with too many ups & downs in life generally are not arrogant 5)an arrogant person may be an introvert 6)arrogant people may have a continuous effort to prove themselves & emulate others 7)because of this reason often we would find arrogant people who are very good at their businesses 8)arrogant people are stubborn & cannot accept failure & hence they can take strong decisions & stick to them even if the decisions fail 9)arrogance is subjective.
What is arrogance to me may be confidence to someone else. Reasons: 1)arrogant people may have had a glorious past which has faded now & they still want to cling on to the past 2)they may have had continuous success & hence they may be inconsiderate to people who taste failure 3)or they may just have had a long-cherished success which has pumped up their self-confidence & ego 4)they may have had success without trying for or deserving it. Here they are basically upstarts. )They may have had continuous failure for a long time & they actually use arrogance as a way to deal with unsolicited sympathy of the society & the reality of their failures. 6)people who were emotionally bullied in childhood tend to become arrogant. They use arrogance as an offensive defence to anything that hurts them 7)people can be arrogant by nature 8)or due to a childhood- influence of a close person who himself happened to be arrogant 9)power & authority often make people arrogant VI. Implication of Group work: The implications of being arrogant may have severe impact on group work.
An arrogant co-worker would always ignore or neglect other people & their opinions, would always try to establish own ideas & if not successful would lose interest in the task. In fact he may even try to hamper the progress of it. They create tension in the working environment & would ultimately become an irritation to everyone & might be socially “quarantined”. An arrogant subordinate creates a strained relationship with his superior. This creates resistance in the progress of the task & ultimately may destroy his own career prospects.
An arrogant superior on the other hand would never get loyalty & involvement from the subordinates. There will be no organizational citizenship behaviour from the subordinates & workplace deviance will become high & motivation would be low. VII. Contribution to OB: The contribution to OB is very apparent from the discussion in section VI above. The OB of a person who is arrogant will ultimately affect the entire organization & hence it is better to judge them at the time of recruitment only. For this purpose the questionnaire that has been developed can be used with required adjustments.
But whether to recruit an arrogant person or not may be a tough decision because often they may be very capable persons. In case of a necessity to recruit such a person his profile should be carefully allocated. Arrogant people are individualistic & they would be good individual performers. But an arrogant person as a leader or manager will create lots of troubles. So, it is suggested that arrogant people should be allocated profiles which are individualistic in nature & has least scope of interaction with other people.
The study so far has unravelled many aspects of arrogant people & probable reasons of arrogance. So, if there are people who are arrogant & already recruited & if the organisation doesn’t want to fire them this study can be referred to to understand their problems & devise possible solutions. VIII. Conclusion: From the study it can be surely concluded that following are the main aspects of arrogant behaviour: 1)self-righteousness 2)overwhelming self-pride 3)severe underestimation of others’ capabilities 4)denial to own faults & incapabilities )fear of public exposure of weaknesses 6)self-denial of failure 7)stubbornness to stick to own decision The interesting part is that the causal relationship between many of these components & arrogance is generally reciprocal. This means, as an instance, it is difficult to say whether arrogance causes self-righteousness or self-righteousness causes arrogance. We have also come to understand that the reasons for arrogant behaviour can be either psychological or environmental ( though environment does affect psychology ).
One more very important point is perception of others. Actually there are three personality types which are so close to each other that it is very difficult to differentiate among them & the only differentiator is the perception. These three types are: confident, proud & arrogant. Interestingly the perception of negativity increases as we go from left to right i. e. from confident to arrogant. Confident has the most positive connotation & it is never negative. Proud has both positive & negative flavour depending upon the use of the term.
Arrogant is mostly associated with negative reception & it is rarely accepted as positive. Arrogance is often related to failure & if somehow it brings about success it is called confidence. One small example would suffice to substantiate it: A batsman in a pre-match interview claims to score a century in the upcoming match & really scores a century. The next day media hails his “confidence”. But what if he scores only ten runs & gets out playing a horrible shot? The next day the same media would crucify him for his “arrogance”. This example is based on an interview of Sourav Ganguly by a print media a few years back) So, more research is required to understand the origin & the perceptual aspect of it & possible ways to moderate arrogance. Then only we would have a comprehensive understanding of this subject-matter. IX. Bibliography: 1)The Oxford Concise Dictionary of English 2)Alan E. Kazdiz (Editor). (2000). The Encyclopaedia of Psychology Vol. -4. Oxford University Press 3)The Ramayana 4)The Mahabharata 5)The Quran 6)The Bible 7)J. W. Fulbright. (1966). Arrogance of Power.
London-Penguin Books 8) Pasquale Poerio (2009). Arrogance & Remorse. Booksurge Llc. 9)http://www. askmen. com/money/successful_60/67_success. html 10)http://www. wikihow. com/Be-Arrogant 11)http://successfromthenest. com/content/2-factors-to-determine-if-youre-arrogant-or-confident/ 12)http://www. michaelteachings. com/ 13)http://www. stevepavlina. com/forums/personal-effectiveness/6334-confidence-vs-arrogance. html 14)http://www. communicationconfidence. com/confidence-vs-arrogance. html 15)http://www. innerfrontier. org/Practices/Arrogance. htm
