rôle playing

Originally developed for dramatic purposes, rôle playing has been adapted for educational and therapeutic purposes (e.g., psychodrama and sociodrama), for diagnostic purposes (i.e., to generate hypotheses about a subject’s personality from the observation of his behavior in a rôle playing situation), and for experimental purposes (7).

1955, Marshall Edelson, Arthur E. Jones, Genetic Psychology Monographs, volume 50, Provincetown, Mass.: The Journal Press, →OCLC, page 73

Janis and King (3) summarize the scant literature in this area and report an investigation in which rôle playing was carried out under laboratory conditions. They find support for “the hypothesis that overt verbalization induced by rôle playing tends to augment the effectiveness of a persuasive communication” (p. 218).

1957, Julian C[ecil] Stanley, Herbert J[ohn] Klausmeier, “Opinion constancy after formal rôle playing”, in The Journal of Social Psychology, volume 46, Provincetown, Mass.: The Journal Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11

For example: the plant manager, the personnel director, and the superintendent may employ rôle playing in preparing for a union negotiation. While the other two remain in their actual positions, each in sequence may impersonate what he thinks the significant individuals across the bargaining table may say or do, […]

1959, F. Alexander Magoun, “Teaching and Learning”, in The Teaching of Human Relations by the Case Demonstration Method, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 10