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I agree with what Charlatan had to say about this.
As for my personal experience, with individual americans, I would not say arrogant.
I would say that americans come off as confident and assertive, and sometimes (on a more negative edge), loud and boisterous.
I have american friends and I get on well with them. I find that mostly they are quite curious about other cultures and are actually wary of being thought of as arrogant.
In Portugal particularly, people like foreigners and will go out of their way to be nice to them, mostly. We like to be welcoming to tourists generally and are curious also about meeting people from other parts of the world.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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