Role Strain

Role strain is the stress people experience when they encounter difficulties in meeting the requirements of a role. Consider the relationship physicians have with patients. Doctors are expected to be gentle healers – humanitarian, self sacrificing saviors of the sick. Simultaneously, they are expected to be retailers of knowledge they have secured at considerable cost and sacrifice. While prescribing unnecessary services, tests, and X-rays and aggressive bill collecting are consistent with the small-business/retailer aspects of the role, they are inconsistent with that of the gentle healer. And there are few well-defined or accepted answers to the dilemmas posed by these contradictory expectations.

Uncorrected role strain can lead to chronic frustration, a sense of failure, feelings of insecurity, and even ulcers, heart disease, and early death. Yet whether or not people will experience role strain depends in large measure on how they perceive their roles. We put on and take off some roles like clothing – without lasting personal effect. Other roles we have difficulty putting aside even when the situation changes; these roles color the ways in which we think about ourselves and act in many situations, there is “a merger of role with person”. Take the case of the doctor, the judge, or the college professor who carries the bearing and air of authority of the professional role into family and community dealings. Such individuals are not merely incumbents of a status; they have fully embraced it. Each is the role – the doctor, the judge, or the professor.

The stress we experience with role strain may result from role conflict – a situation in which people are confronted with incompatible role requirements. There are countless sources of role conflict. We have already identified one source – namely, circumstances in which one expectation of a role clashes with another expectation. The clashing expectations of the physician as a gentle healer and an entrepreneur illustrate this type of difficulty. Some roles also conflict with other roles. A football coach whose son is a member of the team may experience role conflict when deciding whether to make his own son or another more talented player the starting quarterback. Some college students report they experience role conflict when their parents pay them a campus visit. They feel “on stage” before two audiences holding somewhat contradictory expectations of them. One way to handle role conflict is to subdivide or compartmentalize one’s life and to assume only one of the incompatible roles at a time. For instance, college students may attempt to segregate their school and home experiences so that do not have to stage their behavior before their parents and peers simultaneously.

Role Taking and Role Making

Interaction usually has a tentative quality to it; we start or stop and implement or transform what we are saying or doing on the basis of what other people say and do. The activities of others influence how we shape our actions. Consequently, we are involved in an ongoing process of role taking – we continually change our performance based on the feedback other people provide. In role taking we undertake to “get inside” another person and “observe” our own conduct from this person’s point of view. As we will see, this process entails “taking the role of the other toward ourselves.”

Sometimes we do not know what we are supposed to say or do. We must innovate and improvise, create and modify our roles as we interact with other people. For these reasons, role taking also involves role making – a culture-creating process. Consider the school superintendent. Some constituents may call for new school programs and tax levies, while others insist that budgets and salaries are already high enough. Many pro-life and conservative religious organizations want teachers and books favorable to their views on abortion and evolution. Professional organizations, PTA groups and teachers expect superintendents to make decisions on the basis of professional criteria and merit alone. In dealing with these conflicting pressures, superintendents must balance, adjust, and juggle the contradictory requirements. Typically, they give in to this interest group here and that interest group there, while maneuvering and negotiating. In the process the contours of their role are hammered, and trimmed, and shaped. The role is defined through day-to-day activity. In sum, social structure is not a given – something fixed forever in human affairs.