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Social Cognition: Selman's levels of perspective taking
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- 1Social CognitionDescribes the mental processes we make use of when engaged in social interaction. For example we make decisions on how to behave based on our understanding of a social situation. Both the understanding and the decision making are cognitive processes.
- 2Perspective-takingOur ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective (point of view) of other people. This cognitive ability underlies much of our normal social interaction.
- 3Selman's work on perspective-takingSocial perspective-taking which is more about understanding what someone else is feeling or thinking, i.e. social cognition
- 4elman's work on perspective-taking continuedPiaget believed in domain-general cognitive development, so he believed that physical and social perspective-taking would occur hand-in hand. Robert Selman (1971, 1976) proposed that the development of our social perspective-taking is a separate process. This is a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development.
- 5Perspective-taking researchSelman (1971) looked at changes that occurred with age in children's responses to scenarios in which they were asked to the the role of different people in a social situation.
- 6Perspective-taking research Procedure30 boys and 30 girls took part in the study, 20 aged four, 20 aged 5 and 20 aged six years. All were individually given a task designed to measure role-taking ability. This involved asking them how each person felt in various scenarios. One scenario featured a child called Holly who has promised her father she will no longer climb trees, but who then comes across her friend whose kitten is stuck up a tree. The task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten
- 7Perspective-taking research FindingsA number of distinct levels of role-taking were identified. Selman found that the level of role-taking correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence.
- 8Selman's stages of developmentBased on children's typical responses to perspective-taking scenarios at different ages, Selman (1976) proposed 5 stages of social cognitive development:
- Stage 0 (3-6 yrs) Socially Egocentric: The child in this stage cannot reliably distinguish between their own emotions and those of others. They can generally identify emotional states in others but do not understand what social behaviour might have caused them
-Stage 1 (6-8 yrs) Social Information Role-Taking: The child can now tell the difference between their own point of view and that of others, but they can usually focus on only one of these perspectives. - 9Selman's stages of Development Continued (1)-Stage 2 (8-10 yrs) Self-Reflective Role-Taking: At this stage the child can put themselves in the position of another person and fully appreciate their perspective. They can, however, only take on board one point of view at a time.
-Stage 3 (10-12 yrs) Mutual Role-Taking: Children are now able to look at a situation from their own and another's point of view at the same time. - 10Selman's stage of development Continued (2)-Stage 4 (12 yrs +) Social and Conventional System Role-Taking: Young people become able to see that sometimes understanding other' viewpoints is not enough to allow people to reach agreement. This is why social conventions are needed to keep order.
Selman believed that development through these stages is based on both maturity and experience - 11Later developments to Selman's theorySelman has recognised that the above descriptions of cognitive reasoning do not fully explain social development. Schultz, Selman and La Russo (2003) have identified three aspects to social development:
1. Interpersonal Understanding: This is what Selman measured in his earlier role-taking research. If we can take different roles then this shows we can understand social situations. - 12Later developments to Selman's theory (Continued)2. Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies: As well as understanding what others think in social situations we also have to develop skills in how to respond to them. We therefore develop social skills such as asserting our position and managing conflict.
3. Awareness of Personal Meaning of Relationships: As well as understanding social situations and how to manage them, social development also requires the ability to reflect on social behaviour in the context of life history and the full range of relationships. Thus a violent gang-member may have an advanced social understanding and good social skills, but choose a simple approach to conflict (violence) because of their role in the gang. - 13Evaluation Evidence that perspective-taking gets better with ageSelman provided solid evidence that perspective-taking ability improves with age in line with his theory. In one study Selman (1971) gave perspective-taking tasks to 60 children, 1/2 boys and 1/2 girls, aged 4-6 yrs. Significant positive correlations were found between age and ability to take different perspectives in scenarios like that of Holly and the kitten.
Longitudinal follow-up studies (e.g. Gurucharri + Selman 1982) have shown that perspective-taking develops with age in each individual child. This shows that his earlier cross-sectional research was not simply the result of individual differences in social-cognitive ability in children in different groups.
This is a strength because Selman's ideas are both based on solid research and supported by a range of studies. - 14Evaluation Mixed evidence for the importance of perspective-takingThere is strong evidence to support Selman's idea that children's ability to take on the perspectives of others develops throughout childhood. However, evidence is much more mixed as to just how important the cognitive ability to take alternative perspectives is in understanding children's social development. In an observation of child-parent interaction in toy shops and supermarkets Buijzen and Valkenburg found a negative correlation between age , perspective-taking and coercive behaviour, i.e. trying to force parents to buy them things. This suggests that perspective-taking is important in developing prosocial behaviour, i.e. alternatives to coercion.
However, Gasser and Keller (2009) found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective-taking. This is a problem for Selman's approach as it suggests perspective-taking may not be an important factor in the development of socially desirable behaviour. - 15Evaluation Applications in understanding atypical developmentThe development of cognitive ability to take a range of perspectives appears to be important in atypical development. Research has shown that children with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum have problems with perspective-taking. In one study Marton et al. (2009) compared 50 8-12 yr old children with a diagnosis of ADHD with a control group on performance on perspective-taking tasks like those used by Selman. Those with ADHD did worse on understanding the scenarios, identifying the feelings of each person involved and evaluating the consequences of different actions.
This is a strength of Selman's work because it shows it is helpful in understanding atypical development. - 16Extra Evaluation Overly CognitiveA limitation of Selman's approach is that it is entirely based on an understanding of cognition. Perspective-taking is a cognitive ability but there is more to children's social development than their developing cognitive abilities. Selman's approach does not take into account a range of other factors that impact on a child's social development. Internal factors include the development of empathy and emotional self-regulation, whilst external factors include family climate and opportunities to learn from peer interaction.
- 17Extra Evaluation Cultural Differences in Perspective-TakingSelman's methods have allowed us to compare different groups of people on their perspective-taking ability. In one study, for example, Shali Wu and Boaz Keysar (2007) found that young adult Chinese participants did significantly better in perspective-taking than matched Americans. This shows that there is more to the development of perspective-taking than just cognitive maturity because the differences must be due to different cultural inputs.
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- AS - Level Psychology Fichas sobre Social Cognition: Selman's levels of perspective taking, creado por Chloe Woods el 27/02/2017.
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- Chloe Woods
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