ABSTRACT
Feffer’s (1959) theory of interpersonal decentering stems from Piaget’s (1972) theory of decentering as an aspect of operational thought. This ability to consider simultaneously more than one feature of a situation is seen by Piaget in a primarily impersonal realm involving perspective taking, the ability to see the same situation from more than one point of view. Feffer (1959) applied it to interpersonal interactions as role taking, the capacity to coordinate complementary roles in a social situation. The Interpersonal Decentering System assigns a lower score for action–reaction statements describing an interaction, because the character corrects his or her behavior in response to another’s action instead of anticipating the intended behavior. This is representative of the more primitive preoperational sequential thinking. Anticipating another’s behavior, which requires internalization, represents a higher level of decentering because it shows operational simultaneous thought. The ability to differentiate the characters while simultaneously maintaining a relationship between them indicates a high level of decentering ability in the Interpersonal Decentering categories. As a mature social cognition, higher levels of decentering represent an advance over more concrete social perception. Thus, interpersonal decentering is theorized to play a considerable role in the exchange of ideas among people and in the development and maintenance of familial, friend, romantic, and business relationships.
