THE HUMAN CONDITION / ARROGANCE : Know-It-Alls, Old Dogs and Power Trips

This is the best story ever. Unless some incompetent editor gets ahold of it and ruins things. Actually, even if that happens, the sheer brilliance of the writing and reporting can’t help but shine through. You should feel honored to read it.

Arrogance, that obnoxious attitude of superiority, shows up in all sorts of settings these days--from the corner store to Capitol Hill. Or even in the morning newspaper.

Some reports from the front:

* A Pacific Beach man buys and reads new books by his girlfriend’s favorite author--whom he dislikes--just to tell her how lousy the writing is.

* A Texas congressman tells a news magazine that his bounced check is “no big deal,” and says: “It’s not like molesting young girls or young boys. It’s not a show-stopper.”

* A Los Angeles dinner party guest, His Majesty the Harvard Attorney, issues so many infallible proclamations that other revelers decide the only civilized response would be to politely beat him senseless with a large, blunt object--such as a Buick.

* And Leona Helmsley, who reportedly once said “only the little people pay taxes,” sees her haughtiness catch up with her in the form of a four-year prison sentence for cheating the IRS.

Although nobody seems to like arrogance in others, nearly everyone has the trait, some experts say. And it plays some curious but usually poisonous roles in finances and relationships. Yet arrogance also can be tamed and, according to one psychiatrist, can even occasionally prove somewhat beneficial.

In general, arrogant people can be lumped into three categories: Know-It-Alls, Old Dogs and Power Trippers.

Perhaps the most familiar is the Know-It-All. No party or office is complete without one of the two basic models: those who know what they’re talking about and those who don’t.

The bluffers are easy to spot and are often laughingstocks.

At a high-tech repair shop in Hollywood, employees broke up when the office blowhard once insisted that the problem with a video graphics machine was its “EXB component.”

He was pointing at a part labeled EXB, not realizing that it was the name of the entire machine.

“It was like picking up the carburetor from a Pontiac and saying, ‘The problem with your car is this Pontiac,’ ” recalls one of the blowhard’s colleagues.

Far more infuriating, and rare, is the arrogant person who really does know what he’s talking about.

But even that’s a bluff: “Under the facade (of arrogance) lies a quivering mass of insecurity,” says psychiatrist Martin Brenner, medical director of Community Psychiatric Centers Santa Ana Hospital.

The insecurity typically stems from feeling ridiculed as a child or watching one parent run roughshod over another, says Mark Goulston, a psychiatrist and an assistant clinical professor at UCLA. As adults, arrogant people fear they must dominate or be dominated, he says: “They think there can only be one winner.”

For that reason, many arrogant people tend to belittle, blame and attack others to make themselves look good. “They feel threatened by anyone else’s success,” says Lawrence Josephs, assistant professor of psychology at Adelphi University in Garden City, N. Y.

At the repair shop, for instance, if someone so much as receives a compliment on a new shirt, the blowhard quickly cancels it out with a disparaging remark.

Old Dog arrogance is usually found among business people and professionals who think they know everything about their fields and don’t need to keep up with new developments.

Again, says Goulston, insecurity is to blame: “As people get further away from school, they fear they’ve become old dogs who can’t learn new tricks. . . . So they look for ways to put down anything new as foolish or unimportant.”

Not surprisingly, they often pay a heavy toll. When Goulston recently asked members of a therapy group how much money their arrogance had cost them, “it was like a thunderbolt hit the room.” Among the casualties: a tax attorney who’d been sued by a client for failing to stay up on new tax laws. He had missed deductions worth $50,000.

Power Tripper arrogance affects people who become seduced by their own success or power and start to believe they can do no wrong or are above the rules.

In some cases, it results from a spoiled childhood in which the youngster dominated both parents and never learned accountability, Goulston says.

Power tripping thrives among big-shot executives, Hollywood stars, politicians and other swollen heads. It too can backfire.

When Pepsico officials tried to figure out why some of their management superstars never lived up to potential, the chief culprit was “arrogance . . . the illegitimate child of confidence and pride,” according to a 1991 report in Industry Week magazine.

Other members of the Power Tripper pack include TV actors-turned-dictators (“Roseanne Arnold got away with it; Delta Burke didn’t,” Goulston says) and politicians-turned-perkmeisters (insert your favorite House check-bouncer here).

Arrogance also runs rampant in the medical and legal professions, experts say. Doctors and lawyers are trained to be authoritative when dealing with patients and clients, Goulston says, but sometimes they take liberty with that and become authoritarian.

The rest of us also have bouts of arrogance. Nearly everyone feels smug or self-righteous about something--from musical tastes to politics to religion.

(Even those trained to detect arrogance in others aren’t immune. After being interviewed for this story, psychiatrist Goulston asked twice that his name be mentioned in the first paragraph. He later apologized: “I don’t know what got into me . . . maybe it was my arrogance.”)

Cultural differences are another area where arrogance affects large swaths of the population. For example, recent Japanese criticism of American education, industry and work habits met with a wave of collective arrogance in the United States, Goulston says. “We got defensive instead of looking at whether we really do need to change some of our ways.”

In relationships, arrogance can operate in curious fashion.

Many people are actually attracted by the trait, Goulston says. Some believe the arrogant person will “take care of them,” although in truth, arrogant people are more interested in being right than in being protective.

Others mistake arrogance for confidence. One difference, experts say, is that genuinely confident people don’t feel a need to impress others with their knowledge or achievements.

Confidence sometimes contains elements of arrogance, Brenner says, and that can lead to success. But the arrogance part will eventually limit the success or bring the person down, he warns: “It always catches up with you.”

Hastening that slide, perhaps, some men and women seek out arrogant people as sort of an intellectual challenge, Goulston says. It’s a bit masochistic, perhaps, but they enjoy matching wits with the arrogant, trying to one-up them.

In most cases, dealing with arrogance poses more problems than pleasures, especially in the workplace.

In a business where the customer--even an arrogant one--is always right, all you can do is go home and kick the dog or yell at the kids, says a water deliveryman from Running Springs.

Experts offer other tips for coping. Borrowing from the animal kingdom, psychiatrist Brenner recommends a version of the trick dogs use to get out of a fight: roll over and expose your neck to the competition.

Although arrogant people act otherwise, they are often intimidated by others, Brenner says, so assuming a humble stance defuses their competitiveness and increases the chances for normal conversation. A simple “you intimidate me” might disarm them, Brenner says. Or try something like, “I’m extremely impressed by your presentation and I’m probably not right about this, but. . . .”

Failing that, it might be best to change one’s own attitude, says Josephs: “It probably isn’t strategic to tell off your arrogant boss, (but) you can stand up for yourself in your own mind. . . . Don’t take (the arrogance) personally; realize he’s that way with everyone.”

Occasionally a confrontation is warranted, Brenner says, but consider the stakes. Facing down an arrogant driver on a freeway, for example, might get you shot. The average dispute--on the road or off--is over something trivial, he says.

Maybe so, argues Goulston, but vengeance is much more satisfying. Instead of turning the other cheek, the psychiatrist advises knocking the arrogant person off balance by injecting humor or uncertainty into the conversation. In the middle of a Know-It-All’s diatribe, he suggests, “Look at your watch and ask, ‘How long is this going to take?’ ”

Another tactic is simply asking the arrogant person to repeat himself. “They often can’t because they’re not trying to impart information; they’re trying to dominate,” Goulston says.

Once a blowhard is tripped up, the battle is won, he says: “Arrogant people are bullies--and bullies only have one punch.”

But rarely do they stay down for the count.

Some years back, students at Palos Verdes High School got so fed up with a braggart classmate, they chipped in during a medieval carnival day to keep him locked in a pillory.

The thrill was short-lived. The classmate took the imprisonment as a sign of his popularity, one jailer recalls.

Other arrogant people seem equally oblivious.

When co-workers at the high-tech repair shop patiently sat down with the office blowhard and told him to stop calling people idiots, he replied, “It’s not my fault they’re idiots.”

“Arrogant people are like alcoholics--they’re in denial and they truly don’t see it,” Brenner says. So anyone who calls attention to the behavior is dismissed as jealous. The message doesn’t sink in until the accusations pile up or the arrogance leads to a major fall, experts say.

Once the problem is recognized, some suggested cures involve conversation and cars.

Pay attention to talking, Goulston advises. Instead of “alternating monologues,” listen to others with an open mind.

Brenner, who calls himself a “recovering road warrior,” suggests turning to the freeways for help. He attacked his own arrogance by forcing himself to slow down, stop tailgating and lay off the horn.

The idea was to take a more considerate approach to driving, then transfer it to other areas. “If you can get control over one part of your life, the beneficial effects will spread,” he says.

Yeah, but being nice isn’t always practical, Goulston says. Arrogance can help athletes intimidate competitors, sales people overpower buyers and heart patients survive surgery.

Even the dreaded Know-It-All merits occasional praise, he insists: “You wouldn’t want your sister to marry one, but they’re great when you need an attorney.”