The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding (1980) by Robert Selman

When

I read this during my master’s and/or doctoral studies.

Why

As a scholar who approaches moral development from a constructivist perspective, I owe much of my early thinking in this area to structural developmentalists like Lawrence Kohlberg and those influenced by him, such as Robert Selman.

How

Like Flavell’s early work on role-taking, Selman’s work on social perspective taking was influential in the subsequent development of Theory of Mind as well as other approaches combining aspects of children’s moral development with their social development. Thus, it also informs my approach to the study of children’s understanding of superheroes on some level.