Role theory

Role theory is a perspective in social psychology that considers most of everyday activity to be living up to the roles, or expectations, of others.

It posits the following propositions about social behavior:
#People spend much of their lives in groups.
#Within these groups, people often take distinct positions.
#Each of these positions can be called a "role", with a whole set of functions that are molded by the "expectations" of others.
#Formalized expectations become norms when enough people feel comfortable in providing punishments and rewards for the expected behavior.
#Individuals are generally "conformists", and in so far as that is true, they conform to roles.
#The anticipation of rewards and punishments inspire this conformity.

The social role is the universe of rights and duties of a person in a given situation (e.g. mother, manager, teacher). The social role is connected to expectations, norms and behaviour a person has to face.

Sociological role theory

In sociology there are different categories of social roles:
# cultural roles: roles given by culture (e.g. priest)
# social differentiation: e.g. teacher, taxi driver
# situation-specific roles: e.g. eye witness
# bio-sociological roles: e.g. a blond woman, a mother
# gender roles: In their life people have to face different social roles, sometimes they have to face different roles at the same time in different social situations. There is an evolution of social roles: some disappear and some new develop. Role behaviour is influenced by following aspects:
# The norms, determining a social situation.
# Internal and external expectations are connected to a social role.
# Social sanctions and rewards are used to influence role behaviour.

These three aspects are used to evaluate the own behaviour and the behaviour of other people. Heinrich Popitz defines social roles as norms of behaviour a special social group has to follow. Norms of behaviour are a set of behaviour that is usually used by the group members, in case of deviance, negative sanctions follow.

Cultural roles

Cultural roles are seen as matter of course and are mostly stable. In cultural changes new roles can develop and old roles can disappear – these cultural changes are affected by political and social conflicts. For example the feminist movement initiated a change in male and female roles in Western societies.

Social differentiation

Social differentiation got a lot of attention due to the development of different job roles. Robert K. Merton distinguished between intrapersonal and interpersonal role conflicts. For example, a foreman has to develop his own social role facing the expectations of his team members and his supervisor – this is an intrapersonal role conflict. He also has to arrange his different social roles as father, husband, club member – this is an interpersonal role conflict.
Ralph Dahrendorf distinguished between must-expectations, with sanctions; shall-expectations, with sanctions and rewards and can-expectations, with rewards. The foreman has to avoid corruption; he should satisfy his reference groups (e.g. team members and supervisors); and he can be understandingly.

Situation-specific roles

Situation-specific roles develop ad hoc in a given social situation. Nevertheless the expectations and norms are predetermined by the social role.

The central weakness of role theory is in describing and explaining deviant behavior.

Literature

* George Herbert Mead: Mind, Self & Society, Chicago 1934, S. 254, 150
* Talcott Parsons, The Social System, 1951
* Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 1949
* Ralf Dahrendorf: Homo sociologicus, 1958
* Heinrich Popitz: Der Begriff der sozialen Rolle als Element der soziologischen Theorie. Mohr, Tübingen 1975
* Robert K. Merton: Der Rollen-Set. Probleme der soziologischen Theorie. In: Heinz Hartmann (Hg.): Moderne amerikanische Soziologie. Neuere Beiträge zur soziologischen Theorie. Enke, Stuttgart 1967; S. 255-267

See also

* Behaviorism
* Dramaturgical perspective
* Hedonism
* Conformity
* Generalized other
* Game theory