We know remarkably little about brain processes involved in role-play, despite the fact that it has been a focus of convergent interest between the cognitive and social sciences for more than a hundred years. Role-play has been implicated in:
1. The development of ‘theory of mind’ (Leslie, 1987, 1988; Astington et al.,
1988; Dunn, 1991; Lillard, 1998; Kavanagh & Engel, 1998)
2. Reflective consciousness and self-representation (Dilthey, 1883-1911; Baldwin, 1894; Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934)
3. States which appear to involve alternative self-representations, such as
dissociative identity disorder, hypnosis, spirit possession, and culture-specific syndromes (E.R. Hilgard, 1986; Bliss, 1986; Spanos, 1989; Coe & Sarbin,
1991; Heap, 1996; Littlewood, 1998)
4. Enculturation and cultural performance (Goffman, 1959)
5. Cultural change and cultural difference (Eliade, 1951: 179; Bateson, 1974; Burridge, 1979; Turner, 1982)
6. Ritual origins of language and culture (Durkheim, 1912; Knight, Power & Watts, 1995)
Role-play is pervasive in human behaviour. Sue Jennings (1994) divides human experience between ‘dramatic reality’ and ‘everyday reality’. This is a model with
many anthropological parallels, from ‘sacred and profane’ (Durkheim, 1912) to ‘anti structure and structure’ (Turner, 1982). There are parallels also in psychology: the ‘transitional space’ of childhood play (Winnicott, 1974), and the alternation of telic (goal-directed) and paratelic (playful) thought in ‘reversal theory’ (Apter, 1982). However, from such sources as G.H. Mead (1934) and Goffman (1959), who stressed the histrionic tendency of everyday life, we have grounds for regarding ‘everyday’ and
‘dramatic’ realities, in adults, as equally dramatic, and Jennings concurs with this view (pers. comm). If we accept such a model, then there are at least two kinds of role- play:
1. ‘Dramatic reality’ includes all kinds of human play and performance which take place in a transitional (Winnicott, 1974), liminal (van Gennep, 1909), or liminoid (Turner, 1982) space, set apart from everyday routine or domestic or pragmatic behaviour. Theatre, state ceremonial, religious ritual, and watching television, are all examples of ‘dramatic reality’. Behavioural states (‘altered states of consciousness’) such as glossolalia, trance, and spirit possession, which commonly occur in ritual contexts (Bourguignon, 1973), and dreams, reveries, and pretend play, which are not so culturally instituted, are also included. The idea of hypnotic trance as role-play has been frequently challenged. For example, Gruzelier (2(X)0a) has now provided
"irrefutable neurobiological evidence at odds with sociocognitive models of hypnosis" including engagement of brain areas distinct from those suggested for role-play by our own study (below). However, the ‘state’ versus ‘non-state’ debate in hypnosis research is, to my mind, a semantic issue. If states such as hypnotic trance are "strategic
role-play as a ‘non-state’. Gruzelier has simply clarified the sequence of events in a conventionalized hypnotic induction, showing that they involve various parts of the brain, including those necessary for the understanding of verbal instructions. This does not conflict with ‘sociocognitive models’ but, rather, adds to our understanding of them.
2. ‘Everyday reality’ may be equally varied, involving both conscious and unconscious role-play - perceived or not perceived as such by others - including the
‘affectations’ and ‘pretensions’ recognised in folk psychology, the ‘taken for granted’ cultural attitudes noted by Bourdieu (1972), the ‘scripts’ explored by cognitive anthropologists (Boyer, 1993), the manipulative ‘games’ identified by transactional analysts (Berne, 1973), the dissociated personalities involved in fugue and dissociative identity disorder (Littlewood, 1996; Krippner, 1999), and the ‘economico-moral
personae' which I have suggested we begin to assume somewhere around adolescence. To the extent that ethnic stereotypes have some basis in real-world behaviour, they presumably reflect different normative styles of role-play. We variously pretend to be self-controlled Anglo-Saxons, demonstrative Russians, spontaneous Italians, no- nonsense Australians, or can-do Americans.
Clearly one could classify the varieties of role-play in more than one way, depending on one’s focus of interest. A division between conscious and unconscious role-play, which is of considerable cognitive and anthropological interest, would cut across both of Jennings’s categories. For example, the spirits that ‘ride’ practitioners of Voodoo are wholly believed-in, but initiation rituals in West New Britain involve cynical and
agnostic impersonations of spirits by men, with the conscious intention of terrorising women and children (Lattas, 1989). The ‘sacred/profane’ distinction does not coincide either: for example, economic behaviour, regarded as ‘everyday’ in industrial
societies, is highly ritualized elsewhere, and even state ceremonial is less ‘sacred’ than holy communion. The telic/paratelic distinction also cross-cuts Jennings’s categories, because a great deal of ‘dramatic reality’ is highly manipulative, propagandist, and goal-directed (Turner, 1982). But the ‘dramatic’ and ‘everyday’ split has analytical and heuristic value in anthropological and clinical (Jennings 1997) contexts, and this too must have cognitive implications. I have already discussed the curious paradox, pointed out by Victor Turner (1982), that artists and religious believers commonly claim to find ‘truth’ in the artifice of theatre or ritual, whilst the normative world, in which we seek our daily bread and pursue apparently pragmatic ends - including scientific research - is just as persistently regarded as ‘false’. The numinous (Otto, 1958) and noetic (James, 1882; Deikman, 1969) qualities of experiential ‘truth’ and the dissatisfactions of everyday ‘falsehood’ are not well understood, if at all, in cognitive terms.
If Mead (1934), Goffman (1959), Turner (1982), and many others are correct in their assessment of the dramatic character of everyday life, then this creates a
problem for any attempt to investigate the neural correlates of role-play: how to design a ‘control task’ that does not involve unconscious dramatic performance. There are no tested solutions to this problem. The only option is to implement a pilot study which maximises opportunities for collecting useful data, and so begin a programme of research aimed at cumulatively increasing insight.
Laboratory at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London, a pilot investigation of role-play, using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), was commenced in May, 1999. In contrast to PET and SPECT scanning, fMRI is non-invasive, permits the collection of multiple brain image volumes, and has superior spatial resolution (potentially to about 2 mm: R. Turner,
1997).
We adopted an experimental paradigm which included more than one role-task, and two types of analysis: that is, in addition to a block analysis (contrasting various task ‘epochs’) we would perform an event analysis (comparing relatively brief
activations when switching from one task to another: Friston et al, 1998). If the epoch analysis failed to reveal the cerebral correlates of role-play (which would itself be a significant finding), the event analysis might provide interpretable data. A second reason for favouring an event analysis was the earlier suggestion that an apparent ‘theory of mind’ locus in Brodmann’s Areas 8 and 9 (Gallagher, n.d.), might in fact be a ‘role-switching’ locus.
METHOD Subjects
We enlisted the aid of David Craik, a professional theatre director and faculty member at the Academy Drama School, Whitechapel, who recruited six right-handed students or recent graduates from the school, judged by him to have good imagination and a Method-style approach (the technique developed by Stanislavski which emphasises detailed re-creation of the inner states of a character). The subjects were two men and four women, aged between 23 and 30 with a mean of 26 years 10 months. All were in
good health with no history of conditions which might contraindicate fMRI; all completed a health screen questionnaire prior to scanning and gave informed consent. The study was approved by the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Ethics Committee.
We chose to use actors accepted into drama school because they are likely to have at least average aptitude for the tasks, will readily understand task requirements, and should feel confident about performing them. Relative inexperience was favoured because of concern over the possible confounding effects of professionalism, which, from an anthropological point of view, may have limited the inferential value of some music research {cf. Sloboda, 1985).
Task materials
The role tasks involved two contrasting Shakespearean roles: Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. We chose five scenes from each play, because role-play can involve any conceivable human activity, and we needed to identify constancies between multiple samples of role-play. We also considered that no actor could perform a single excerpt from a demanding part a sufficient number of times without boredom, habituation, or exhaustion. More than five scenes, on the other hand, would have created a prohibitive rehearsal and direction workload.
Although we had decided against investigating song-and-dance in this study, the fortuitous availability of the Shakespeare Made Easy series, which gives the full
Shakespearean text alongside a modem prose translation, made it possible to investigate the effects of blank verse without detracting from the primary aim of studying role-play.