A Structural-Developmental Analysis ofLevels of Role Taldng in Middle Childhood

Robert L. Selman and Diane F. ByrneHarvard University

SELMAN, ROBERT L., and BYRNE, DIANE F . A Structural-Developmentdl Analysis of Levelsof Role Taking in Middle Childhood. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 803-806. 40 children-ages 4, 6, 8, and 10^were interviewed by standard and Piagetian clinical method on 2 sodo-moral dilemmas. Each child's discussion of the perspectives of different characters in thedilemma was analyzed according to a previously defined sequence of role-taking levels. Thehigh correlation of these levels with increasing age indicates that role taking as a concept isamenable to a structural-developmental analysis.

The parallel structural development ofimpersonal and interpersonal cognitions hasbeen posited by a number of theorists (Mead1934; Piaget 1950). Piaget states: "There isa fundamental identity between the interper-sonal operations and the intraindividual opera-tions so that they can be isolated only by ab-straction from a totabty where the biologicaland social factors of action constantly interactwith one another" (1967, p. 129).

In this paper we focus on one aspect ofinterpersonal cognitionsocial role taJdngand attempt to define its development accord-ing to an ontogenetic sequence of structuressimilar in form to Piaget's cognitive operations.

Social role taking has a long-standingtradition as a theoretical concept of basic im-portance to developmental and social psychol-ogy. The theoretical writings of George Her-bert Mead (1934) and James Mark Baldwin(1906) support the position that the uniqueaspect of social cognition and judgment thatdifferentiates human from subhuman function-ing is "role taking," the ability to understandthe self and others as subjects, to react to othersas like the self, and to react to the self s behaviorfrom the other's point of view. The concept ofrole taking also has roots in Piaget's theory ofcognitive development. Two of his central con-cepts relate directly to role taking: egocentrism,which characterizes preoperational tibinldng, isthe inability to escape from one's own view ofthe world; decentration, a characteristic of

operational thinking, is the ability to considermultiple perspectives or aspects of a situation.While these concepts are appbcable to theimpersonal domain, they also apply to the in-terpersonal sphere and point to developmentin the ability to put oneself in another's placeand view the world through his eyes.

There have been two recent approachesto the study of social role taldng stemrmng fromthe Piagetian point of view that have influ-enced the present research. Feffer (1959,1971) and Feffer and Gourevitch (1960)equate social role taldng with the Piagetianconcept of social decentering and have devel-oped a projective technique for assessing age-related levels of the child's ability to decenterin the social domain. Feffer has described aseries of formal levels of this ability: simplerefocusing, characterized by a lack of coor-dination between perspectives; consistentelaboration, defined as a sequential coordina-tion between perspectives; and change ofperspective, at which simultaneous coordina-tion of perspectives is achieved.

A second important attempt to clarify therole-taking concept through systematic em-pirical investigation is Flavell's (1968) studyof the development of children's ability tomake inferences about another's perceptual orconceptual perspectives. Flavell has isolatedthree crucial steps in the development of role-taldng ability. The first \s self s recognition thatother can have cognitions about the self as well

This research was partially supported by a grant to the first author from the SpencerFoundation. Authors' address: Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, Larsen Hall,Appian Way, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

[Child Development, 1974, 45, 803-806. 1974 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. Allrights reserved.]

804 Child Developmentas about other extemal objects. The seconddiscovery that must be made is that the self isnot only an object for other, but also a subject.The third achievement is the recognition thatboth self and other can go on considering eachother's view of the other ad infinitum (p. 53).

The structural-developmental approachto role taking, then, is the derivation of a se-quence of developmental age-related andlogically related structures or forms that an in-dividual displays in his understanding ofother's point of view. The concern is not withcontent, not with accuracy of perception ofother or behavioral choice, but with the formin which conceptions of others emerge.

While FeflFer has explored role takingwithin the context of a projective story-tellingtask and Flavell within social problem-solvingand communication tasks, in the present studywe have focused on role taking as it is usedwithin the context of moral dilemmas similarto those developed by Kohlberg (1969), butmodified to be more appropriate for youngchildren. We constructed a series of four role-taking levels on the basis of (a) Feffer andFlavell's analyses, (b) the previous researchof Selman (1971), and (c) developmentalprinciples of differentiation (distinguishingperspectives) and integration (relating per-spectives ). The levels thus derived were testedon the experimental sample. A brief descrip-tion of each level follows.^

Level 0: Egocentric Role TakingDistinguishing perspectives.This stage is

characterized by the child's inability to makea distinction between a personal interpretationof social action (either by self or other) andwhat he considers the true or correct perspec-tive. Therefore, although the child can differ-entiate self and other as entities, he does notdifferentiate their points of view.

Relating perspectives.Just as the childdoes not differentiate points of view, he doesnot relate perspectives.

Level 1: Subjective Role TakingDistinguishing perspectives.At level 1

the child sees himself and other as actors withpotentially different interpretations of the same

social situation, largely determined by thedata they have at hand. He realizes that peo-ple feel differently or think differently becausethey are in different situations or have differentinformation.

Relating perspectives.^The child is stillunable to maintain his own perspective andsimultaneously put himself in the place ofothers in attempting to judge their actions.Nor can he judge his own actions from theirviewpoint. He has yet to see reciprocity be-tween perspectives, to consider that his viewof other is influenced by his understanding ofother's view of him (level 2). He understandsthe subjectivity of persons but does not under-stand that persons consider each other as sub-jects rather than only as social objects.

Level 2: Self-reflective Role TakingDistinguishing perspectives.The child

is now aware that people think or feel differ-ently because each person has his own uniquelyordered set of values or purposes.

Relating perspectives.A major develop-ment at level 2 is the ability to reflect on theselfs behavior and motivation as seen fromoutside the self, from the other's point of view.The child recognizes that the other, too, canput himself in the child's shoes, so the child isable to anticipate other's reactions to his ownmotives or purposes. However, these reflec-tions do not occur simultaneously or mutually.They only occur sequentially. The child can-not "get outside" the two-person situation andview it from a third-person perspective.

Level 3: Mutual Role Taking

Distinguishing perspectives.^The childcan now differentiate the selfs perspectivefrom the generalized perspective, the point ofview taken by some average member of agroup. In a dyadic situation he distinguisheseach party's point of view from that of a thirdperson. He can conceive of the concept of"spectator" and maintain a disinterested pointof view.

Relating perspectives.The child at level3 discovers that both self and other can con-sider each party's point of view simultaneouslyand mutually. Each can put himself in the

1 Fuller descriptions of each level and illustrative examples appear in a manual preparedby the authors (Selman & Byrne 1973).

other's place and view himself from that van-tage point before deciding how to react. Inaddition, each can consider a situation fromthe perspective of a third party who can alsoassume each individual's point of view andconsider the relationships involved.

Method

Subjects.^The Ss were 40 middle-classchildren, 10 each at ages 4, 6, 8, and 10. Ineach age group, there were five males and fivefemales.

Task.The Ss were given two open-ended dilemmas, each presented in the form ofa filmstrip. A sample dilemma with some stan-dard probe questions is described below.

Holly is an 8-year-old girl who likes toclimb trees. She is the best tree climber in theneighborhood. One day while climbing downfrom a tall tree she falls oflF the bottom branchbut does not hurt herself. Her father sees herfall. He is upset and asks her to promise not toclimb trees any more. Holly promises.

Later that day. Holly and her friendsmeet Sean. Sean's kitten is caught up in a treeand cannot get down. Something has to bedone right away or the kitten may fall. Holly isthe only one who climbs trees well enough toreach the kitten and get it down, but she re-members her promise to her father.

The average interview time for eachdilemma was 20-25 min. At the end of thefilmstrip, each S was asked to retell the storybefore questioning so that the E could be as-sured that any difficulties were not simply dueto faulty memory. Few Ss had difficulty in re-telling the story. If difficulty was encountered,the dilemma was repeated. Interviews weretaped and transcribed for scoring purposes.Standard role-taking questions focused on theassessment of each role-taking level. For ex-ample:

Level 1Subjective Role Takinga) Does Holly know how Sean feels about

the kitten? Why?

b) Does Sean know why Holly cannot de-cide whether or not to climb tbe tree? Why or whynot?

c) Why might Sean think Holly will notclimb the tree if Holly does not tell him about herpromise?

Selman and Byrne 805Level 2Self-reflecdve Role Taking

a) What does Holly think her father wiUthink of her if he finds out?

b) Does Holly think her father will under-stand why she dimbed the tree? Why is that?

Level 3Mutual Role Takinga) What does Holly think most people

would do in this situation?b) If Holly and her father discussed this

situation, what might they decide together? Whyis that?

c) Do you know what the Golden Rule is[explain if child says no]? What would the GoldenRule say to do in this situation? Why?

In addition, open-ended discussion in thePiagetian tradition (the Piagetian clinicalmethod) and role-playing techniques wereused further to assess level of role taking.

Green's index of reproducibility indicatedthat questions comprehended at each levelformed a Guttman scale on both tasks (/ = .88and .84, respectively). Subjects were scoredat the highest level of role taking clearly ex-hibited. For example, if a S comprehended alevel 3 question or used reasoning indicativeof the level 3 structure in the open-ended partof the interview, he was scored at level 3.

Results and Discussion

The correlation between highest level ofrole taking attained in each of the measureswas .93. Therefore, to define a subject's high-est level, a clinical assessment was made overboth situations to decide if the concept wasclearly evident. Percentage perfect agreementon highest level attained between trainedscorers was .96; percentage one level apart was.04. Differences were resolved upon discussion.The percentage perfect agreement across 20randomly selected protocols between a trainedand an untrained scorer, who used the role-taldng scoring manual without theoretical orexperiential background, was .78.

Analysis indicated a significant product-moment coefficient of correlation of role-takinglevel to age, f(40)=.80; p

S06 Child DevelopmentTABLE 1

PERCENTAGE OF ST7BJECT8 REACEINO A GIVEKROLE-TAKING LEVEL AT EACH LEVEL OF

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE{N = 10 PER AGE GROtrp)

0173

Stage

Total

Age 4

802000

100

Age 6

109000

100

Age 8

&405010

100

Age 10

0206020

100

ally deflned in structural terms. The sequenceof structures, which was constructed on thebasis of past theory and research, was found toemerge empirically in an age-related fashion.The age norms closely parallel those reportedby Feffer for his system of levels. At our level0, which is predominant among the 4-yepr-olds,there is no evidence of differentiation andtherefore no coordination of perspectives. Atlevel 1, which was present in most 6-year-olds'thinking, although a distinction is made be-tween perspectives, Ss failed to coordinatethem. This level is parallel to Feffer's level ofsimple refocusing, in evidence at age 6, inwhich S manages to change perspective butwithout maintaining consistency. Our level 2was the predominant emergent structure ofthe 8-year-olds. Perspectives at this level aretaken in a sequential manner paralleling Fef-fer's level of consistent elaboration, also reach-ing a peak at ages 7 and 8. At our level 3,which was in evidence in the 8- and 10-year-old groups, perspectives are coordinatedsimultaneously, as in Feffer's level of changeof perspective, beginning to emerge at age 9.The implication of this research is that role-taldng structures can be identified within thecontext of moral dilemmas as well as in otherinterpersonal contexts and that the structuresare similar in form and sequence to those de-scribed in other areas of interpersonal func-tioning.

There are several possible lines of futureresearch that might clarify the nature of thesequence of structures we have defined. A firstline of research is the examination of thestructures in longitudinal studies over different

populations to assess the degree to which theyconform to the requirements of a true develop-mental sequence. Second, they may be ex-amined in relation to development in the im-personal sphere. The egocntrism of stage 0may have its counterpart in preoperationalthought, the decentering of levels 1 and 2 maycorrespond to concrete operational ability, andthe mutuality and infinite-regress character oflevel 3 might parallel the emergence of formaloperations in the impersonal sphere.

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