Selman’s Theory

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

Describes the mental processes we make use of when engaged in social interaction
E.g we make decisions on how to behave based on our understanding of a social situation

Question 2

What is perspective taking?

Answer 2

Our ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective of other people

Question 3

What did Selman (1971) investigate?

Answer 3

• Children’s responses to scenarios where they were asked to take the role of different people in a social situation
• each scenario involved a dilemma e.g asking whether holly should risk upsetting a worried parent by climbing up a tree to save her friends kitten
• he then asked the children a series of questions e.g ‘if holly climbs the tree, should she be punished?’

Question 4

What did Selman create from this experiment?

Answer 4

Levels of perspective taking

Question 5

What are the levels of perspective taking?

Answer 5

Level 0 (3-6 years): socially egocentric stage - the child can identify emotional states in others but they don’t understand what social behaviour may have caused them
Level 1 (6-8 years): social information role taking stage - the child is aware that other people have perspectives that are different to their own, but assumes it’s cause the other people have different info
Level 2 (8-10 years): self reflecting role taking stage - the child can put themselves in the position of another person and appreciate their point of view, but can only take one viewpoint at a time
Level 3 (10-12 years): mutual role taking stage - the child is able to look at a situation from their own and someone else’s point of view at the same time
Level 4 (12+ years): social and conventional system role taking stage - where the child is able to see that sometimes understanding the viewpoints of others is not enough to reach an agreement and that personal decisions have to be made

Question 6

AO3: culture bias ❌

Answer 6

• Selman’s theory has been criticised for showing cultural bias
• Only developed through research involving predominantly western children
• cross cultural research conducted by Osterman et al. shows that there were differences
• just because the children does not show perspective taking doesn’t mean they are not able to, it may mean their cultural experience taught them that this isn’t the best way to solve a problem

Question 7

AO3: high ecological validity ✅

Answer 7

• used in many different settings, including in schools and with criminals
• perspective taking should be a fundamental mission of primary schools according to Selman
• through groupwork and teamwork during play, this is a natural way that perspective taking is learnt
• so can apply to real life situations

Question 8

AO3: research is correlational ❌

Answer 8

• research is this area is largely correlational
• perspective taking and social competence are correlated, doesn’t mean that one causes the other
• 2 variables could also be accidentally correlated
• we cannot be sure about the link between perspective taking and social competence in a causal way