Personality and his socialization

Another approach is the role theory which has been fruitful to understanding humans and society.

In general, role theory includes the following propositions:

· people spend much of their lives participating as members of groups and organizations;

· within these groups people occupy distinct positions;

· each of these positions entails a role, which is a set of functions performe

d by the person for the group;

· groups often formalize role expectations as norms or even codified rules, which include what rewards will result when roles are successfully performed and what punishments will result when roles are not successfully performed;

· individuals usually carry out their roles and perform in accordance with dominating norms; in other words, role theory assumes that people are primarily conformists who try to live up to the norms that accompany their roles;

· group members check each individual’s performance to determine whether it conforms with the norms; the anticipation that others will apply sanctions ensures role performance.

So, role theory posits that human behaviour is guided by expectations held by the individual and other people. The expectations correspond to different roles individuals perform or enact in their daily lives, such as secretary, father or friend. For instance, most people hold pre-conceived notions of the role expectations of a secretary which might include answering phones, making and managing appointments, filing paperwork, typing memos etc. These role expectations can not be expected of a football player.

Individuals generally have and manage many roles. Roles consist of a set of rules or norms that function as plans to guide behaviour. Roles specify what goals should be pursued, what tasks must be accomplished, and what performances are required in a given situation. Role theory holds that a substantial proportion of observable, day-to-day social behaviour is simply persons’ carrying out their roles, much as actors carry out their roles on the stage. Role theory is, in fact, predictive. It implies that if we have information about the role expectations for a specified position (for instance, sister, fireman, doctor), a significant portion of the behaviour of the persons occupying that position can be predicted.

Moreover, role theory also argues that in order to change behaviour it is necessary to change roles; roles correspond to behaviours and vice versa. In addition to heavily influencing behaviour, roles influence beliefs and attitudes; individuals will change their beliefs and attitudes to correspond with their roles. For instance, someone over-looked for a promotion to a managerial position in a company may change their beliefs about the benefits of management by convincing him that they didn’t want the additional responsibility that would have accompanied the position.

Many role theorists see role theory as one of the most compelling theories bridging individual behaviour and social structure. Roles, which are in part dictated by social structure and in part by social interactions, guide the behaviour of the individual. The individual, in turn, influences the norms, expectations and behaviours associated with roles. If roles are considered as dictated by social structure, they are the subject for structural functionalism, if by social interactions – for interactionsist perspective.

The functionalist approach sees a role as a set of expectations that the society places on the individual. By unspoken consensus, certain behaviours are deemed appropriate and others – inappropriate. For example, it is appropriate for a doctor to dress conservatively, ask a series of personal questions about one’s health, touch one in ways that would normally be forbidden, write prescriptions, and show more concern for the personal well-being of his clients. Shopkeepers or real estate agents may also show concern for the well-being of their clients, but if they start touching their clients, especially where doctors are allowed to touch, they’ll get in trouble; they will have stepped outside of the norms associated with their roles.

In the functionalist conception, role is one of the important ways in which individual activities are socially regulated: roles create regular patterns of behaviour and thus a measure of predictability, which not only allows individuals to function effectively because they know what to expect of others, but also makes it possible for the sociologist to make generalizations about the society. Totally, a group of interlocking roles creates a social institution. For instance, the institution of law can be seen as the combination of many roles, including police officer, judge, criminal and victim.

In the functionalist perspective, roles are relatively inflexible and more or less universally agreed upon. Although it is recognized that different roles interact (teacher and student), and that roles are usually defined in relation to other roles (doctor and patient or mother and child), the functionalist approach has great difficulty in accounting for variability and flexibility of roles and finds it difficult to account for the vast differences in the way that individuals conceive different roles. Taken to extremes, structural functionalism results in role becoming a set of static, semi-global expectations laid down by a unified, amorphous society. The distinction between role and norm (or culture) thus becomes sterile.

The functionalist approach has been criticized for its static understanding of roles. Even so, it remains a fundamental concept which is still taught in most introductory courses and is still regarded as important.

In the interactionist perspective, the definition of role is more fluid and subtle than in the functionalist perspective. In this conception, a role is not fixed or prescribed but it is something that is constantly negotiated between individuals.

To explain the idea of roles, a famous American researcher G. Mead used a development model for children. According to him, children adopt roles in the development of self. In doing so, they pass through three stages:

· preparatory stage – meaningless imitation by the infant; the infant assumes roles but doesn’t understand what they are;

· play stage – actual playing of roles occurs; but the child has no unified conception of self;

· game stage – completion stage of self; the child finds himself and must respond to simultaneous roles; the individual can act with a certain amount of consistency in a variety of situations because he acts in accordance with a generalized set of expectations and definitions he has internalized.

No doubt, adults are beyond the game stage, but they continue to adopt roles and adapt them through interpersonal interactions. This can be most easily seen in encounters where there is considerable ambiguity. For instance, let’s assume John has a friend Nick who is a lawyer. If John approaches Nick as a friend but then asks for legal advice, it forces Nick either to switch roles completely or to merge the roles temporarily. Until Nick decides on his course of action, role ambiguity will exist.

 Скачать реферат