Role-playing
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Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role",[1] in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses:
- To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting;
- To refer to taking a role of a character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice;
- To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game (RPG), play-by-mail games and more;
- To refer specifically to role-playing games.[2]
Amusement
Many children participate in a form of role-playing known as make believe, wherein they adopt certain roles such as doctor and act out those roles in character. Sometimes make believe adopts an oppositional nature, resulting in games such as cops and robbers.
Entertainment
Role-playing games
A role-playing game is a
Role-playing can also be done online in the form of group story creation, involving anywhere from two to several hundred people, utilizing public forums, private message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, and instant-messaging chat services to build worlds and characters that may last a few hours, or several years. Often on forum-based roleplays, rules, and standards are set up, such as a minimum word count, character applications, and "plotting" boards to increase complexity and depth of story.
There are different genres of which one can choose while role-playing, including, but not limited to,
Psychology
In psychology, an individual's personality can be conceptualized as a set of expectations about oneself and others and that these add up to role-playing or role-taking.[3] Here, the role is fiction because it is not real but it has a degree of consistency.[3] Role-playing is also an important part of a child's psychological development. For example, the instance when a child starts to define "I" and separate him or herself from an adult is the initial condition for and the result of role play.[4] There are also experiments that found role-playing resulted in behavioral change such as the case of smokers who reported negative attitude towards smoking after being asked to pretend to be a person diagnosed with lung cancer.[5]
Training
Role-playing may also refer to role
Simulation
One of the first uses of computers was to simulate real-world conditions for participants role-playing the flying of aircraft.
Teddy bear hospital
The teddy bear hospital is a roleplay strategy where pediatric and nursing medical students as a "teddy doctor" to children who act as the carer of a teddy, or another soft toy, requiring consultation. It is used both to reduce anxiety and improve patient outcomes of children, and pedagogically for medical students to better understand children.[6] There are programs for teddy bear hospitals in dozens of universities and medical facilities worldwide.
Research method
Role playing may also refer to the technique commonly used by researchers studying interpersonal behavior by assigning research participants to particular roles and instructing the participants to act as if a specific set of conditions were true.
See also
References
- ^ "Definition of Role Playing from the Oxford English Dictionary". Askoxford.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.[dead link]
- ^ Rilstone, Andrew. "Role-Playing Games: An Overview" 1994, Inter*Action #1".
- ^ ISBN 9780202363936.
- ISBN 9781138833715.
- ISBN 9781446272251.
- ISSN 2057-1585.
- ^ "SAGE Research Methods - The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods". srmo.sagepub.com. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ^ cf. H. Schuler, Ethical Problems in Psychological Research, Academic Press, 1982, 2013; pp. 137ff.