rôle playing meaning (dated): definition, quotations

rôle playing

nounalso spelled rôle-playing

Dated Dated form of roleplaying.

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:

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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:
Rôle playing helps us do what we should always try to do anyway—attempt to put ourselves in the other person’s place and see things from his point of view.1962, Gladys Gardner Jenkins et al., Guidebook for Health and Safety for Teen-agers, Chicago, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, →OCLC, page 63, column 1:

noun

Dated Dated form of roleplaying.

Psychiatric disorder is less often associated with somatic impairment, and rôle-playing is the more significant part. The self may enact its distress as well as explain it, but the enactment can be misconstrued.1982, David C. Taylor, “The Components of Sickness: Diseases, Illnesses and Predicaments”, in John Apley, Christopher Ounsted, editors, One Child (Clinics in Developmental Medicine; 80), London: William Heinemann Medical Books; Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott Co., →ISBN, page 7:
The contradictoriness and multifacetedness of identity is a constant theme in a play which deals so centrally with ideas of plays, illusion, rôle-playing and theatricality.1991, Michael Mangan, “‘Break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue’”, in A Preface to Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Preface Books), London; New York, N.Y.: Longman, →ISBN, part 3 (Critical Analysis: […]), page 133:

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As in their previous production Winston Ntshona played the character who lacks natural versatility in rôle-playing while John Kani, as in his rôles of Styles and Buntu, played the character who embraces and celebrates the possibilities of theatricality.1996, Brian Crow, “‘A Truly Living Moment’: Acting and the Statements Plays”, in Geoffrey V. Davis, Anne Fuchs, editors, Theatre and Change in South Africa (Contemporary Theatre Studies; 12), Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 21: