For cognitive developmentalists working in the tradition of Piaget and Kohlberg, morality is largely a matter of abstract reasoning about problems of justice and equity (see Rest, 1986, for a review). The most capable moral problem solvers in this view are those who can transcend the particulars of situations and formulate principled solutions to whatever justice and equity problems they pose. Because role taking is held to be an important part of the social cognition underlying this kind of moral problem solving, and because of his association with the concept, G. H. Mead has often been cited as providing theoretical grounding for this approach. But in fact his views are almost diametrically opposed.

Mead rejected the idea that intelligent moral action is equivalent to facility with formulas or abstract principles (see Mead, 1934: 379–389; 1908/1964; 1924–1925/1964; 1929/1964; 1930/1964). For Mead, moral action is practical problem solving – a matter of trying to reconcile within concrete situations the impulses that simultaneously impel action in different directions. He argued that although thought is necessary to generate hypotheses about how conflicting impulses might be reconciled, solving a moral problem requires linking thought to overt action. He conceived of moral development in terms of “enlarging the self” by learning how others perceive, interpret, and respond to the world – in other words, by improving role-taking abilities.