THE INTERACTION AND THE VANTAGE-POINT EFFECTS

One route by which our actions eventually influence our own thoughts is indirect. What we do influences people’s opinions of us; and form their reactions to our behavior we draw some part of our opinion of ourselves. A braggart antagonizes people, causing them to withdraw form him. Form their reactions he comes to feel that he is inadequate and that people are almost impossible to impress. Believing himself unnoticed and unheard, he invents stories of accomplishments even grander than those he has talked about in the past-a tactic which antagonizes people further, provoking reactions that in the end make him feel even less desirable. His bragging is, by its influence on other people, producing an eventual change in his own attitude toward himself. Changes of this sort follow what we may call the interaction route; it seems meaningful to say that he is producing an interaction effect on himself.