Notice what shaped every account, including the neutral one
Ask how background, role, culture and setting shaped your view, their view and the observer’s view alike.
Why it works
In O’Fallon’s model the fourth-person perspective brings awareness of contexts and systems — the ability to "zoom out" and see that a view is produced by its setting. The characteristic confusion she describes at the start of that perspective is not yet telling apart what has been socially conditioned from one’s own individuality. Applying the question to the third-person account, which feels most neutral, is what makes this step different from the previous three.
How to do it
- Lay out your first-, second- and third-person accounts of one conflict.
- For each, list what shaped it: family norms, profession, culture, gender, money, the room it happened in, who else was listening.
- Circle the assumptions the observer’s account shares with yours. Those are the ones you could not see from the third person.
- Write one sentence on how the conflict would look in a setting where those assumptions did not hold.
Evidence
O’Fallon (2020) describes the fourth-person capacity as awareness of sub-personalities, contexts and complex adaptive systems, and its entry confusion as being unable to separate social conditioning from one’s own individuality; at the later 4.5 stage she describes awareness of contexts in both self and other and of projections. These descriptions come from her qualitative analysis of sentence completions in the STAGES database. O’Fallon et al. (2020) define each person perspective as able to observe the prior one as an object. (anecdotal)
The fourth-person description is the model author’s theory, drawn from her own research database, and has not been independently tested. Naming influences is not the same as being free of them.
Sources
- O’Fallon, T. (2020). States and STAGES: Waking up Developmentally. Integral Review, 16(1).
- O’Fallon, T., Polissar, N., Neradilek, M. B., & Murray, T. (2020). The validation of a new scoring method for assessing ego development based on three dimensions of language. Heliyon, 6(3), e03472.
Common mistake
Using context to dissolve every disagreement into "it’s all just conditioning." Seeing what shaped each view is meant to widen the conversation, not to excuse yourself from it.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for First, Second, Third and Fourth Person Perspectives
- Walk one conflict through four perspectives
Write the same disagreement four times — as you, as the other person, as a neutral observer, and as someone seeing how context shaped all three.
- Write their account in their own voice
Tell the story of the disagreement in the first person as the other person, using the words they would use.
- Check your version of them by asking
Treat your picture of someone else’s view as a hypothesis, and get their perspective directly before acting on it.
- Write the observer’s account
Describe your own conflict the way a fair bystander who knows both of you would, using names instead of "I" and "they".
- Take their perspective without taking on their feelings
Separate understanding what someone thinks and wants from feeling what they feel, and use the first when you need to solve something together.
- Separate the well-mapped steps from the speculative ones
When you read about person perspectives, sort each claim by what kind of evidence stands behind it.
- Hear which perspective you speak from
Read back what you wrote or said about a situation and mark each sentence by the perspective it speaks from.
Related concepts
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- Self-Distancing: Thinking Clearly About Your Own Problems
Solomon’s paradox, third-person self-talk, and the science of stepping back
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