It has an obvious disadvantage of alienating people, but it must have some kind of advantage or people wouldn't do it.
Advantage: a successful display of arrogance could elevate one's social status? That's the first explanation that leapt to my mind, anyway.
a successful display of arrogance could elevate one's social status?
Yes, very much so. Arrogance is a high-risk strategy, though -- if you are shown wrong, your fall is very painful.
I have this belief that humility is a part of good critical thinking, and that egoism undermines it. I imagine arrogance as a kind of mind-death. But I have no evidence, and no good mechanism by which it might be true. In fact, I know the belief is suspect because I know that I want it to be true — I want to be able to assure myself that this or that intolerable academic will be magically punished with a decreased capacity to do good work. The truth could be the opposite: maybe hubris breeds confidence, and confidence results? After all, some of the most important thinkers in history were insufferable.
Is any link, positive or negative, between arrogance and reasoning too tenuous to be worth entertaining? Is humility a pretty word or a valuable habit? I don't know what I think yet. Do you?