Analysis

Analysis means the evaluation of subparts, the comparative ratings of parts, the comprehension of the meaning of isolated elements.
Analysis in roleplaying is usually done for the purpose of understanding strong and weak points of an individual or as a process to eliminate weak parts and strengthen good parts.
Impersonal purposes

Up to this point stress has been placed on roleplaying in terms of individuals.
Roleplaying can be done for quite a different purpose: to evaluate procedures, regardless of individuals.
For example: a sales presentation can be analyzed and evaluated through roleplaying.
Examples

Let us now put some flesh on the theoretical bones we have assembled by giving illustrations of roleplaying used for evaluation and analysis.
One should keep in mind that many of the exciting possiblities of roleplaying are largely unexplored and have not been used in industry to the extent that they have been in military and other areas.
Evaluation

The president of a small firm selling restaurant products, had considerable difficulty in finding suitable salesmen for his business.
Interviewing, checking references, training the salesmen, having them go with more experienced salesmen was expensive -- and the rate of attrition due to resignations or unsatisfactory performance was too high.
It was his experience that only one good salesman was found out of every seven hired -- and only one was hired out of every seven interviewed.

Roleplaying was offered as a solution -- and the procedure worked as follows: all candidates were invited to a hotel conference room, where the president explained the difficulty he had, and how unnecessary it seemed to him to hire people who just did not work out.
In place of asking salesmen to fill questionnaires, checking their references, interviewing them, asking them to be tried out, he told them he would prefer to test them.
Each person was to enter the testing room, carrying a suitcase of samples.
Each salesman was to read a sheet containing a description of the product.
In the testing room he was to make, successively, three presentations to three different people.

In the testing room, three of the veteran salesmen served as antagonists.
One handled the salesman in a friendly manner, another in a rough manner, and the third in a hesitating manner.
Each was told to purchase material if he felt like it.
The antagonists came in, one at a time, and did not see or hear the other presentations.
After each presentation, the antagonist wrote his judgment of the salesmen;
and so did the observers consisting of the president, three of his salesmen and a psychologist.

Ten salesmen were tested in the morning and ten more in the afternoon.
This procedure was repeated one day a month for four months.
The batting average of one success out of seven increased to one out of three.
The president of the firm, calculating expenses alone, felt his costs had dropped one-half while success in selection had improved over one hundred per cent.

The reason for the value of this procedure was simply that the applicants were tested "at work" in different situations by the judgment of a number of experts who could see how the salesmen conducted themselves with different, but typical restaurant owners and managers.
They were, in a sense, "tried out" in realistic situations.

From the point of view of the applicants, less time was wasted in being evaluated -- and they got a meal out of it as well as some insights into their performances.

Another use of roleplaying for evaluation illustrates how this procedure can be used in real life situations without special equipment or special assistants during the daily course of work.

The position of receptionist was opened in a large office and an announcement was made to the other girls already working that they could apply for this job which had higher prestige and slightly higher salary than typing and clerking positions.
All applicants were generally familiar with the work of the receptionist.
At the end of work one day, the personnel man took the applicants one at a time, asked them to sit behind the receptionist's desk and he then played the role of a number of people who might come to the receptionist with a number of queries and for a number of purposes.
Each girl was independently "tested" by the personnel man, and he served not only as the director, but as the antagonist and the observer.

Somewhat to his surprise he found that one girl, whom he would never have considered for the job since she had appeared somewhat mousy and also had been in the office a relatively short time, did the most outstanding job of playing the role of receptionist, showing wit, sparkle, and aplomb.
She was hired and was found to be entirely satisfactory when she played the role eight hours a day.
Analysis

In considering roleplaying for analysis we enter a more complex area, since we are now no longer dealing with a simple over-all decision but rather with the examination and evaluation of many elements seen in dynamic functioning.
Some cases in evidence of the use of roleplaying for analysis may help explain the procedure.

An engineer had been made the works manager of a firm, supplanting a retired employee who had been considered outstandingly successful.
The engineer had more than seven years of experience in the firm, was well trained, was considered a hard worker, was respected by his fellow engineers for his technical competence and was regarded as a "comer".
However, he turned out to be a complete failure in his new position.
He seemed to antagonize everyone.
Turnover rates of personnel went up, production dropped, and morale was visibly reduced.
Despite the fact that he was regarded as an outstanding engineer, he seemed to be a very poor administrator, although no one quite knew what was wrong with him.
At the insistence of his own supervisor -- the president of the firm -- he enrolled in a course designed to develop leaders.

He played a number of typical situations before observers, other supervisors who kept notes and then explained to him in detail what he did they thought was wrong.
Entirely concerned with efficiency, he was merciless in criticizing people who made mistakes, condemning them to too great an extent.
He did not really listen to others, had little interest in their ideas, and wanted to have his own way -- which was the only right way.
The entire group of managers explained, in great detail, a number of human relations errors that he made.

One by one, these errors were discussed and one by one he rejected accepting them as errors.
He admitted his behavior, and defended it.
He refused to change his approach, and instead he attacked high and low -- the officials for their not backing him, and subordinates for their laxness, stupidity, and stubbornness.
After the diagnosing, he left the course, convinced that it could do him no good.

We may say that his problem was diagnosed but that he refused treatment.
The engineer turned works manager had a particular view of life -- and refused to change it.
We may say that his attitude was foolish, since he may have been a success had he learned some human relations skills;
or we may say that his attitude was commendable, showing his independence of mind, in his refusal to adjust to the opinions of others.
In any case, he refused to accept the implications of the analysis, that he needed to be made over.

Another case may be given in illustration of a successful use of analysis, and also of the employment of a procedure for intensive analysis.
In a course for supermarket operators, a district manager who had been recently appointed to his position after being outstandingly successful as a store manager, found that in supervising other managers he was having a difficult time.
On playing some typical situations before a jury of his peers he showed some characteristics rated as unsatisfactory.
He was told he displayed, for example, a sense of superiority -- and he answered: "Well, I am supposed to know all the answers, aren't I"?
He was criticized for his curtness and abruptness -- and he answered: "I am not working to become popular".
On being criticized for his arbitrary behavior -- he answered: "I have to make decisions.
That's my job".
In short, as frequently happens in analyses, the individual feels threatened and defends himself.
However, in this case the district manager was led to see the errors of his ways.
The necessary step between diagnosis and training is acceptance of the validity of the criticisms.
How this was accomplished may be described, since this sometimes is a crucial problem.

The director helped tailor-make a check list of the district manager's errors by asking various observers to write out sentences commenting on the mistakes they felt he made.
These errors were then collected and written on a blackboard, condensing similar ideas.
Eighteen errors were located, and then the director asked each individual to vote whether or not they felt that this manager had made the particular errors.
They were asked to vote "true" if they thought they had seen him make the error, "false" if they thought he had not;
and "cannot say" if they were not certain.

The manager sat behind the group so he could see and count the hands that went up, and the director wrote the numbers on the blackboard.
No comments were made during the voting.
The results looked as follows: Af.

The first eight of these eighteen statements, which received at least one-half of the votes, were duplicated to form an analysis checklist for the particular manager, and when this particular manager roleplayed in other situations, the members checked any items that appeared.
To prevent the manager from deliberately controlling himself only during the sessions, they were rather lengthy (about twenty minutes), the situations were imperfectly described to the manager so that he would not know what to expect, new antagonists were brought on the scene unexpectedly, and the antagonists were instructed to deliberately behave in such ways as to upset the manager and get him to operate in a manner for which he had been previously criticized.

After every session, the check marks were totaled up and graphed, and in this way the supervisor's progress was charted.
Summary

In life we learn to play our roles and we "freeze" into patterns which become so habitual that we are not really aware of what we do.
We can see others more clearly than we can see ourselves, and others can see us better than we see ourselves.
To learn what we do is the first step for improvement.
To accept the validity of the judgments of others is the second step.
To want to change is the third step.
To practice new procedures under guided supervision and with constant feedback is the fourth step.
To use these new ways in daily life is the last step.
Roleplaying used for analysis follows these general steps leading to training.

When an evaluative situation is set up, and no concern is with the details that lead to an over-all estimate, we say that roleplaying is used for evaluation.
Observers can see a person engaged in spontaneous behavior, and watch him operating in a totalistic fashion.
This behavior is more "veridical" -- or true -- than other testing behavior for some types of evaluation, and so can give quick and accurate estimates of complex functioning.

While roleplaying for testing is not too well understood at the present time, it represents one of the major uses of this procedure.

Chapter 10, spontaneity training
the objective of this chapter is to clarify the distinctions between spontaneity theory and other training concepts.
In addition, the basic approach utilized in applying roleplaying will be reviewed.
The goal will be to provide the reader with an integrated rationale to aid him in applying roleplaying techniques in this unique training area.
The reasons for extracting this particular roleplaying application from the previous discussion of training are twofold.
1.

Spontaneity training theory is unique and relatively new.