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.
There are also additional approaches to consider roles:
structural approach - little attention is given to norms; attention is focused on social structures conceived as stable organizations of sets of persons (called social positions or statuses) who share the same, patterned behaviours (roles);
organization - the approach focuses on social systems that are preplanned, task-oriented, and hierarchical; roles in such organizations are assumed to be associated with identified social positions and to be generated by normative expectations;
cognitive role theory focuses on relationships between role expectations and behaviour.
Anyway, role theory has its limitations. It has a hard time explaining social deviance when it does not correspond to a pre-specified role. For instance, the behaviour of someone who adopts the role of a bank robber can be predicted - he will rob banks. But if a bank manager simply begins handing out cash to random people, role theory would be unable to explain why.
Another limitation of role theory is that it cannot explain how role expectations came to be what they are. Role theory has no explanation for why it is expected of male soldiers to cut their hair short, but it could predict with a high degree of accuracy that if someone is a male soldier they will have short hair. Additionally, role theory does not explain when and how role expectations change.
Despite these limitations, role theory describes adaptation of humans through their socialization into the basic values and norms of a given society.
Socialization of personality
The sociological view of socialization cannot be attributed to any single researcher but rather has been developed as a result of the work of many. Some of the more important researchers who have contributed to the filed are E. Durkheim, Ch. Cooley, G. Mead, J. Piaget and many others.
Socialization is a lifelong process by which, through contact with others, one becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable human being, skilled in the ways of a given culture and environment. Socialization suggests interiorizing of social roles and cultural norms. The focus is on interiorizing, not learning because one can't learn a social role after reading a book, although one can acquire knowledge how to do it. Each role includes various norms, rules and patterns of behaviour; it is locked with other roles by social contacts such as relations, rights, obligations. A human can't simply learn all this. He should interiorize. So, interiorizing has a wider meaning than learning and includes learning as its part.
Socialization is a lifelong process because an individual, in his life, has to learn not one but a number of social roles while growing older, getting married or being promoted on the career ladder. People constantly change their habits, tastes, rules, behaviours up till the old age.
Socialization can be distinguished as deliberate and unconscious. Deliberate socialization refers to the socialization process when there is a deliberate and purposeful intent to convey values, attitudes, knowledge, skills etc., for instance, when parents are telling a child to always say “please. ”
Unconscious socialization occurs as a result of spontaneous interaction with no purposeful or deliberate attempt on the part of anyone involved to train, educate or the like. An example of such socialization is when the child learns to use vulgarity in a frustrating traffic situation by observing parents.
The aims of socialization are as follows:
to instill disciplines, for instance, don't walk in front of a moving car;
to develop aspirations and ambitions, for instance, I want to be a banker, rock star, great sociologist;
to develop skills, for instance, reading, driving etc.
to enable the acquisition of social roles, for instance, male, student, son, worker etc.
Development of an individual should be considered in connection with the family, social group and culture he belongs to. His socialization begins from the very first hours of his life and traditionally includes five stages:
childhood - in medieval European paintings children were portrayed as little adults. In modern societies the separate character of childhood is diminishing once more, for instance, some observers point out that even small children may watch the same TV programs as adults;
the teenager - the concept of a teenager did not exist until recently. In modern societies, teenagers live between childhood and adulthood, growing up in a society subject to continuous change;
young adulthood - young adulthood seems to be a specific stage in personal and sexual development in modern societies. Affluent youths take the time to travel and explore sexual, political and religious affiliations;
mature adulthood - in modern societies, midlife crisis is very real for many middle-aged people;
old age - in traditional societies, the elder people usually had a major say over matters of importance to the community. In industrial societies, they tend to lack authority within the family and the wider social community.
By character socialization can be primary and secondary with their agencies (institutions) or agents. Agencies of socialization are structured groups or contexts within which significant processes of socialization occur.
Socialization is further differentiated as primary and secondary. Primary socialization occurs in infancy and childhood and is the most intense period of cultural learning. Family is the main agent, or agency of socialization during this phase.
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