A Technique For Teaching Social Interaction*

by Jan B. Roosa, Ph.D.

Often we may want to change our behavior and learn new skills, but we don't know how to go about it. The SOCCSS™ Framework will help you do that.

SOCCSS™ is a technique for teaching Psychological and Social Skills. It is a methodology for helping people master, negotiate, and create their social environments. Mastering negotiating and creating our environment, i.e., social competence, is seen in the ability of a person to build a better social, psychological, and moral life for him/herself. Thus, emphasis is on developing skills to make and keep things right, more than to correct those things that have gone wrong.

As a methodology, SOCCSS™ is useful either in groups or in one-to-one exposures. The technique is described sequentially, and once learned, can be practiced by most anyone with formally or informally derived teaching abilities and interests. It involves defining Situations, defining Options, Choosing Options, and relating them to Consequences and Strategies. This is followed by a Simulation, which involves rehearsing the particular skills involved, such as Decision Making or Empathy, so as to provide not only the ability to carry out the behavior, but to receive a total experience that is correlated with the development of a new skill.

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