Robert Selman's stages of friendship development

Robert Selman / Stages of Friendship

Robert Selman -- Stages of Friendship

Robert Selman was a social cognition scientist who developed a theory of childhood friendship based on the stages of social cognition that children go through as they are developing. Selman created a 5-stage model of Social Perspective Taking, which does a very good job of explaining how children come to understand both themselves and other people as they grow older and gain greater cognitive abilities. With each of these stages, the qualities and nature of childhood friendships change. In order to understand how Selman's stages of friendship work, it is first important to understand his stages of role-taking, or social perspective taking.

Selman's theory of social perspective taking posited that children go through successive phases of development in which they learn more about their positions in a social world. The first stage (Stage 0) is called the Egocentric stage and can be found in children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. During this time period children are not able to take any other perspectives besides their own and assume that others share the same feelings and views of that they do. As the child ages, they enter Stage 1, the Social-informational stage between the ages of 6 and 8. During this period children are aware that others can have different perspectives than their own, but they believe that such differences can only be based on others having received different information. In Stage 2, when children are between the ages of 8 and 10, children begin to understand that it is possible for people to have differing perspectives or opinions, even if they have received exactly the same information. This knowledge allows children to consider the perspective of other people, and to put themselves in the position of another person, which gives them a greater ability to anticipate the responses of others. During this stage a child is still limited in that they are unable to consider both their own perspective and that of another person at the same time.

In the second to last stage of social perspective taking, when the child is between 10 and 12 years of age, they become able to consider both their own perspective and that of another at the same time. A child in this stage also understands that other people can do the same thing, and they are able to take on the perspectives of disinterested parties in order to anticipate how such individuals would respond. The final stage takes place between the ages of 12 and 15, in which the child sees the societal role of perspectives and can evaluate their own perspective as well as the perspectives of others and compare them with the values and morals of the social system in which they live.