Becoming Oneself: A Sign Process
Abstract
(Last changes Febr-22 1996)
It is shown in which way personality structure is a result of communication. A pesonality
is more than a set of manifest bodily features such as being female, blue-eyed and
fair-haired. It also contains acquired personality traits such as being gracious
or clumsy, open-minded or stubborn, reliable or unreliable, honest or dishonest, and
it comprises a person's selfconcept, image, selfconcept image, image concept, metaimage
. . ., and a person's selfwish concept, selfwish image, selfconcept wish, selfconcept image wish, etc. These various selves form a stratified comprehensive self which
can be reconstructed on the basis of the predicates BELIEVE an INTEND.
The same predicates together with CAUSE can also be used to reconstruct the process
called "selfpresentation", understood as production of EXPRESSIONS of one of the
selves in question. Contraty to the folk conception of personality development, which
assumes that the self is formed independently of its presentation, it is shown to what
degree selfpresentation contributes to the creation of the presented self. Selfcreation
as achieved by means of selfpresentation just as belief creation is achieved by means
of communication: On assertive communication, one intends to produce a belief, in
the addressee and one hopes to accomplish this by reproducing in him or her a belief,
(i.e., an understandign) that one intends to produce that belief, in him or her.
In selfpresentation, one intends the addressee to produce a belief in one's having a certain
personality trait P and one hopes to accomplish this by behaving correspondingly
in all relevant situations.
By contrast with communication, however, consistent selfpresenting behavior makes
one gradually become the sort of person one intends the other to believe one has
been all along. As is shown, this effect amounts to a reduction of the order of belief-intention pairs involved (level-reduction). Ronal Reagan being the most prominent example,
selfcreation by means of selfpresentation is called the "Reagan Effect". It is, besides
the Rosenthal, Pygmalion, Messiah, Galatea and Placebo Effects, one special case
of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
REFERENCES
Roland Posner (1993), "Believing, Causing, Intending: The basis for a Hierarchy of
Sign Concepts in the Reconstruction of Communication". In: René J. Jorna, Barend
van Heusden, and Roland Posner (eds.), Signs, Search, and Communication: Semiotic
Aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Berlin an New York: Walte de Gruyter: 215-270.
Roland Posner (1996), "Mensch und Computer als Selbstdarstellung: der Reagan-Effekt".
In: Dieter Krallmann and G. Walter Schmitz (eds.), Akten des Gerold-Ungeheuer-Symposiums
am 4. bis 7.7.1995 in Essen. Münster: Nodus-Publikationen.
Roland Posner
Technische Universität Berlin
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