Which of the following terms refers to a social position a person assumes voluntarily?

Role theory

Role theory is an often-used explanatory framework for the benefits of volunteering and helping others for health and well-being. Role theory has its origin in the work of the American sociologist Robert Merton (Merton, 1957). Roles refer to the social position people have (e.g., teacher, mother, and customer) and behavior associated with that position. Roles tend to carry certain risks and benefits which may vary by individual characteristics, historical time, and cultural context. Roles can provide connection to other people and access to resources, which in turn may promote feelings of security, status enhancement, and ego gratification. Roles also provide directions for behavior in otherwise uncertain situations (Hogg, 2000), which may serve to reduce stress and improve well-being. People often fulfill a set of roles at the same time (e.g., mother, director, and child), and this set may change over the life course (Riley and Riley, 1994; Rotolo, 2000). With aging an increasing imbalance occurs between the number of roles gained and lost (Baltes, 1997). Older people tend to lose more roles than they gain, for example losing roles such as parent, spouse, worker, and active member of society. Volunteering and helping others can act as substitutes for roles lost over the life course, For example, becoming a volunteer after retirement may alleviate any negative consequences associated with losing the worker role, such as a loss of a sense of personal value and identity (Greenfield and Marks, 2004).

5 Family Roles and Power

Role theory refers to the cultural norms regarding psychological and interactional aspects of members of society, such as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and grandparents. The originators of role theory are Ralph Linton in sociology and George Herbert Mead in social psychology. Role refers to the social expectations and the social scripts of family roles—how roles have been shaped by cultural conventions and by the collective ideologies of a society. One aspect of role theory studies how roles are learned during the process of social interaction. That is, people interact with others, they see themselves and others as occupants of particular statuses, and they learn guides for action. In other words, there are certain social scripts or expectations associated with certain roles.

Structural role theory as developed by Linton and Parsons refers to the structural and functional aspects of status and role. By structure is meant the positions recognized by the specific social system and the content of the role. That is, what are the social scripts associated with the roles of mother and father in the society? For example, social scripts of gender roles in a society might be that the place of mother is in the home, she should raise the children, cook, etc., whereas in other societies mothers should work, share with the husbands the daily work of the home and care of children, etc. The functional analysis is concerned with the function of role. That is, what are the consequences for the rest of the social system of the specific role? How does the role contribute to the maintenance of the system? How does a particular role help in the achievement of the goals of the system? How does the role help solve the process of adaptation to the social system and contribute to the maintenance of patterns, such as the values system? Structural role theory also has a comparative element, attempting to determine which structure features of social systems are universal through cross-cultural analysis.

Power, the degree of gender equality, and the division of resources within the family are another aspect of family dynamics in the family. Anthropology has established that power is related to the control of the economic activity or land ownership and institutionalized through the norms of the society. Power can be defined as the influence of the spouse, children, and other relatives. However, the influence is not a personality trait, although there may be individual differences in the ability to influence others. The basis of the influence is the authority bestowed by social norms to different family roles and internalized in terms of values. Power may be expressed in the control of the finances, in the ability to command respect and obedience, in feelings of autonomy and control over one’s life, in the capacity to regulate one’s dependency on others, in the power to decide where the family lives and whose career is given priority, and in the freedom to be able to leave difficult family situations.

Most agricultural societies are patrilineal, but some are matrilineal. In some agricultural societies, the male does most of the plowing or animal tending and the woman’s role is to care for the house and the children. However, in many patrilineal agricultural societies, the woman does much of the work, such as harvesting and tending the crops, in addition to the household tasks and caring for the children. Boys learn the roles of the males and the fathers, and girls learn the roles of the females and the mothers in small societies. The roles in small societies are hierarchical, in which the patriarch of the family has the ultimate power and males have more power than females. In matrilineal societies, the matriarch has more power than the father. The brothers of the matriarch have more power than the father, who is absent from the family and may visit the matriarch secretly at night. However, although the father may have the institutionalized social power within the family, the influence of the mother in extended families regarding many family matters may be greater than that of the father.

It is important to note that role theory refers to social values and social scripts—what the social scripts should be in the society. However, there is also a psychological dimension; there are individual differences in each society regarding agreement with these roles. Some members of society insist on the strict application of these roles, whereas some members rebel against these roles. In many societies throughout the world undergoing transition, women are rejecting the traditional roles of mother, housewife, and caretaker and are entering the workforce, as in Western societies. However, the process is more painstaking in these societies, and working mothers often experience strong family pressures, which may come from the grandparents or the in-laws, to be both a working mother and fulfill the traditional roles of housewife and caretaker. The structure of the traditional family in many countries provides an alternative caretaker of the child while the mother works—the grandmother.

4 Role Theory

Role theory begins with a set of normative expectations that are presumed to define particular positions or statuses in social structure and their corresponding roles or behaviors in interaction with others. The roles or statuses most clearly central here are those of ‘interviewer’ and ‘respondent’ themselves. How well one knows these roles, that is, knows the normative expectations for behavior associated with the respective roles, is a function of one's prior experience and knowledge gained either first hand or through vicarious observations—in the media, through cartoons, conversations, or the classroom. To be ‘trained’ as an interviewer is to learn a set of normative expectations about how one should interact with a respondent. The simplest norms are of ten those that are ‘taken for granted’ such as who asks the questions and who gives the answers. Sometimes there are widely accepted norms defining the ideal interviewer role such as—one should not reveal personal information that might thereby bias the respondent's responses (Gordon 1975). However, even these commonplace widely shared norms may come into question as there may be conflict among the different goals for the interview. For example, one goal may be to get as much revelatory information as possible vs. another goal which is to not bias the respondent's answers. The different goals of the interview (unbiased data vs. more fully revelatory data) may come into conflict and suggest different contradictory norms, for example, about how much personal information the interviewer should reveal to the respondent in the interview situation.

Role theory asserts that the norms governing interaction are there for the purpose of realizing specified goals out of the interaction. In short, normative behavior is goal oriented. The norms governing the interviewer are likewise oriented to maximizing certain qualities (or values) of the data—for example, norms that call for a common stimulus to achieve validity across respondents, or other norms that emphasize supportive interaction to produce full and complete responses.

A common application of role theory to the interview situation is a concern with bias introduced by other social statuses in a person's status set—the most obvious and frequently researched being the ascribed and highly visible social statuses of race, gender, and age. These statuses are often considered to be especially important when questions in the interview touch on topics closely related to them. Much research has been conducted on the effects of these statuses on interview outcomes precisely because they are considered to be master ascribed statuses that are both readily observed and ubiquitous in all interactions. They are often attributed even in telephone interviewing and not just in face-to-face situations.

One of the earliest findings of interviewer effects by race, dating to World War II, was that answers to questions about race relations were strongly impacted by the races of the interviewer and respondent (Hyman et al. 1954). African-Americans reported lower levels of satisfaction with race relations to African-American interviewers than to Caucasian interviewers. Caucasian respondents reported lower levels of acceptance of African-Americans to Caucasian interviewers than to African-American interviewers. These results have been demonstrated repeatedly since then in studies by Schuman et al. (1985) and Anderson et al. (1988). The latter study found that blacks interviewed by whites were much more likely to express warmth and closeness toward whites than blacks interviewed by blacks. It is important to note that more limited effects of race of interviewer and respondent have been observed on studies of other topics, unrelated to race.

Another interviewer status examined in some detail has been gender. Earlier research has generally shown that the gender of the interviewer has no effect on responses to survey questions except when the content of the questions relate to sexual behavior or gender related issues (Clark 1952, Hyman et al. 1954). Research by Kane and Macaulay (1993) found that both male and female respondents express more egalitarian gender related attitudes or greater criticism of existing gender inequalities to female interviewers. Furthermore, male respondents offer significantly different responses to male and females interviewers on questions dealing with gender inequality.

Age, as the third of the most visible ascribed status characteristics, has also been found to have only limited interviewer effects. School age subjects have shown different responses to older vs. younger interviewers for questions about peer influences (Ehrlich and Riesman 1961). Younger interviewers obtained slightly more peer-oriented and less adult-oriented answers than older interviewers. With respect to age of respondents, research has shown that telephone surveys tend to under-represent older respondents, but response distributions do not vary by telephone vs. face-to-face interviews across age categories (Herzog et al. 1983). As with race and gender, age appears to have little effect on interview responses except when the topic being covered is directly related to the status itself.

Role theory

Role theory is similar to social cognitive theory in that its emphasis is on the way the social environment shapes the developmental process. In this theoretical framework, a role is defined as any set of behaviors that has a socially agreed-upon function and an accepted code of norms (Biddle, Biddle and Thomas as cited in Newman and Newman, 1995). The theory holds that as people enter new roles, they modify their behavior to conform to these role expectations (Newman and Newman, 1995). Obviously, whether these changes in behavior are positive or negative depend on the role that is assumed and the context in which it is assumed.

Interventions that aim to modify behavior sometimes do so by asking clients to assume a new role that may offer opportunities for learning and positive change. This differs from role-playing in that, rather than simply acting out a role, individuals actually assume a new role (Siegel et al., n.d.). The rationale against using simple role-play is that clients may see themselves as merely performing a part, and when they step outside the role, they may also stop the behaviors associated with it. Proponents of a role assumption approach believe that it offers a greater chance for the successful assimilation of new behaviors into a patient’s repertoire (Siegel et al., n.d.).

Numerous animal-assisted intervention models appear to fit within this theoretical framework and, to some extent, any program that provides individuals with an opportunity to train or care for animals allows the person to assume the role of teacher or caretaker (Brickel, 1985). Despite the compelling nature of the anecdotes that exist in the literature (Corson et al., 1975; Rochberg-Halton, 1985) no evidence has been offered to suggest that the effects of role assumption are superior to role-play, that benefits are long-lasting, or that behavioral changes persist beyond the context of the intervention.

2.1 Belonging, Within the Individual

Emphatically sociological, role theories describe the effects of group roles and norms on individual self-presentation and self-understanding. In the theater of social life, so aptly described in the dramaturgical theory of Goffman, self-presenting people define the scene, take on roles, and follow cultural scripts. Here, symbolic interaction with generalized others forms the self (Mead), or others' reflected appraisals construct the looking glass self (Cooley).

People's motivation to fit into groups sparks strategic impression management (Schlenker) and self-presentation (Jones). Wanting to operate successfully in groups provides goals to convey desired (but not necessarily positive) self-images that are personally beneficial and socially believable, for a given audience. For example, people may ingratiate, presenting themselves as likable; self-promote, presenting themselves as competent; or supplicate, presenting themselves as helpless. When people feel under public or private scrutiny, they become objectively self-aware, in Wicklund's theory; this awareness motivates matching to internalized social standards. People and situations differ in motivating people to self-monitor; that is, to adjust their behavior to the demands of the social group (Snyder).

Belonging motivates not only selves, but also attitudes and values. Merton's reference group theory explained how people derive their values from belonging to particular groups or desiring to belong to them. Through face-to-face interaction, reference groups theoretically serve a normative function, defining acceptable standards for group membership (Deutsch and Gerard, Kelley). Some attitudes thus serve a social adjustive function (Katz, Kelman, Smith, Bruner, and White); that is, attitudes and values facilitate belonging.

48.3.1 The Representation Relation

To this point, I have only addressed how to characterize the kinds of states that can carry content. In particular, I have done so using the tools of theoretical neuroscience. I have not, however, addressed how to determine the content carried by those states.

Standard accounts of the representation relation, including both causal and conceptual role theories, identify a three place relation in describing representation: for causal theories there is the representation, the thing it represents, and the context under which it is a representation (and not just an effect)4; for conceptual role theories, there is the representation, the thing it represents, and the role it plays (i.e., its context as defined by the system of concepts).

One of the reasons that this three place relation is so ubiquitous stems, I suspect, from the nearly universal commitment amongst philosophers and neuroscientists to understanding neurobiological systems as information processing systems (see, e.g., Bialek & Rieke, 1992; Dretske, 1981; Eliasmith & Anderson, 2003; Fodor, 1998; Koch, 1998; Rieke et al. 1997; Van Essen & Anderson, 1995). Formally, the information relation is a three place relation: a {channel} carries {information} with respect to a {receiver} (Reza, 1994: 2). These three places are necessary and sufficient for an adequate and general definition of Shannon and Weaver-style information (Shannon, 1948/1949). Also notice that they loosely align with the three places of the representation relation as described above (i.e., channels or vehicles carry information or content with respect to receivers or systems). It is not surprising that both the representation relation and the information relation are three place relations since the nature of the latter often informs intuitions about the nature of the former given such a commitment.

However, the metaphor between mental representation and information does not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, as Dretske (1983) is at pains to point out, there is no such thing as “misinformation” in the same sense as there is “misrepresentation.” That is, information (in the technical sense) is never wrong about anything. Representations, by contrast, can be. This disanalogy is important because it highlights the need for identifying a fourth element in the representation relation: the referent. That is, the object or event that the content of the representation is supposed to be about. The importance of this element, of course, is something like what Frege wanted to highlight with his distinction between reference and sense (although it is not the same).

I take it, in fact, that not distinguishing contents and referents is what leads to many of the difficulties for both causal and conceptual role theories. Both equate contents and referents, though by slightly different routes. Specifically, causal theories take referents to be contents, with the result that surreptitiously changing referents leads to sometimes counter-intuitive shifts in meaning and difficulties explaining misrepresentation. Conceptual role theories, in contrast, are in a position where it seems they must take contents to be referents, not allowing them to explain the relevance of truth conditions to meaning.

So, I adopt the following four place schema for the representation relation (the “representation schema”):

A {vehicle} represents a {content} regarding a {referent} with respect to a {system}.

3.1 The representation relation

To this point, I have only addressed how to characterize the kinds of states that can carry content. In particular, I have done so using the tools of computational neuroscience. I have not, however, addressed how to determine the content carried by those states.

Standard accounts of the representation relation, including both causal and conceptual role theories, identify a three-place relation in describing representation: for causal theories, there is the representation, the thing it represents, and the context under which it is a representation (and not just an effect)5. For conceptual role theories, there is the representation, the thing it represents, and the role it plays (i.e., its context as defined by the system of concepts).

One of the reasons that this three-place relation is so ubiquitous stems, I suspect, from the nearly universal commitment among philosophers and neuroscientists to understanding neurobiological systems as information processing systems [see, e.g., Dretske (1981), Bialek and Rieke (1992), Van Essen and Anderson (1995), Rieke et al. (1997), Fodor (1998), Koch (1998), Eliasmith and Anderson (2003)]. Formally, the information relation is a three-place relation: A {channel} carries {information} with respect to a {receiver} [Reza (1994) p. 2]. These three places are necessary and sufficient for an adequate and general definition of Shannon and Weaver-style information [Shannon (1948/1949)]. Also notice that they loosely align with the three places of the representation relation as described above (i.e., channels or vehicles carry information or content with respect to receivers or systems). It is not surprising that both the representation relation and the information relation are three-place relations since the nature of the latter often informs intuitions about the nature of the former, given such a commitment.

However, the metaphor relating mental representation and information does not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, as Dretske (1983) has been at pains to point out, there is no such thing as “misinformation” in the same sense as there is “misrepresentation.” That is, information (in the technical sense) is never wrong about anything. Representations, by contrast, can be. This disanalogy is important because it highlights the need to identify a fourth element in the representation relation: the referent, that is, the object or event that the content of the representation is supposed to be about. The importance of this element, of course, is something like what Frege wanted to highlight with his distinction between reference and sense (although it is not the same).

I take it, in fact, that failure to distinguish contents and referents is what leads to many of the difficulties for both causal and conceptual role theories. Both equate contents and referents, though by slightly different routes. Specifically, causal theories take referents to be contents, with the result that surreptitiously changing referents leads to sometimes counterintuitive shifts in meaning and difficulties explaining misrepresentation. Conceptual role theories, in contrast, are in a position where it seems they must take contents to be referents, not allowing them to explain the relevance of truth conditions to meaning.

Consequently, I adopt the following four-place schema for the representation relation (the “representation schema”):

A {vehicle} represents a {content} regarding a {referent} with respect to a {system}.

2.2.2 Roles and identities

Goffman's early works in particular are to be seen in the context of role theory, influential at the time, which he criticized and developed further. Goffman treated role analysis primarily as interaction analysis, investigating the functioning and organization of the ‘actual’ practice of performing a role against the background of its normative frame. Thus Goffman developed concepts of patterns and styles of behavior, including the term ‘role distance’ (see 1961b), which has meanwhile acquired the status of a basic sociological term and which refers to a way of behavior which comments on the role and primarily serves either the interaction system or the selves relevant in the situation. For example, Goffman described a five-year-old boy riding a roundabout horse who by little irreverences in his behavior demonstrates that his current role does not correspond to his ‘true,’ ‘more adult’ self.

In Stigma (1963), Goffman differentiated the term ‘self’ in the context of an identity theory which distinguishes three types of identity in a basic sense that is still valid at the beginning of the twenty-first century: (a) social identity as a person's role set, (b) personal identity as a person's synchronic and diachronic individuality ascribed to him by observers, and (c) ego identity as a person's inner self-reference. Goffman used these concepts of identity together with the instruments of his dramaturgical approach above all in analyzing stigmatized deviations and deviants. He focused on the techniques of information control and emotion management of the stigmatized people as well as on the consequences of the stigmatization for their identities and socialization.

2 Role Theory

These ideas were taken up during the 1950s as the basis of a ‘role theory’ that tried to set out a comprehensive paradigm for role analysis. The most influential formulation of this was that of Gross et al. (1958), who used it to explore the behavior of school superintendents. They did this using Merton's (1957) argument that each social position is associated with an array of role-specific forms of behavior that together comprise a ‘role set.’ A medical student, for example, must act as a student not only in relation to other students, but also in relation to teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, patients, medical technicians, and so on. In each of these relations, the student is likely to encounter different expectations about her or his behavior (Merton 1957, p. 112).

Gross et al. showed that the school superintendent had to negotiate the conflicting expectations held by teachers, parents, children, governors, and ancillary staff. They recognized that this produces varying degrees of strain or conflict in role expectations. The concept of ‘role conflict’ has been central to many applications of role theory.

While this work concentrated on the structural aspects of position and role, it was complemented by those who worked on a social psychology of roles (Newcomb 1950). These writers explored the learning processes through which roles are acquired and the social pressures to conformity that exist in face-to-face situations. Socialization and conformity were central principles for role theorists, and their views have been subject to persistent criticism.

Role Theory

Most of the research on the work-family interface has been guided by role theory (e.g., Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek & Rosenthal, 1964; Katz & Kahn, 1978). Within role theory, researchers have described the work-family relationship in terms of the number of roles occupied by an individual. Some researchers suggest that individuals have a limited amount of time and energy, thus engaging in multiple roles tends to be overly demanding. This perspective is known as the scarcity hypothesis (Goode, 1960), and assumes that conflict and strain are probable outcomes of performing multiple roles. The more roles an individual occupies, the greater the likelihood that an individual will experience stress. Kahn et al. defined this type of work-family relationship as role conflict, which is the “simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures such that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other” (1964, p. 19). Based on Kahn et al.'s conceptualization of role conflict, Greenhaus and Beutell defined WTF conflict as “a form of interrole conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible” (1985, p. 77). It is now generally recognized that work-family conflict is bidirectional, such that work can interfere with family and family can interfere with work (Frone, 2003). Much of the work-family research continues to call attention to the negative outcomes associated with conflicting roles between work and the family.

Within the role accumulation perspective, several theorists proposed an expansion hypothesis (Marks, 1977; Sieber, 1974) in which the roles in one area (e.g., work) can benefit one's role in another area (e.g., family). Similar to the scarcity hypothesis, the expansion hypothesis also focuses on the number of roles that an individual occupies. Expansion theorists do not disagree that occupying multiple roles can lead to conflict and stress. However, occupying multiple roles may also lead to positive effects on psychological health and well-being (Barnett & Baruch, 1985) and tend to be overlooked in the literature.

Stemming from the work of early expansion theorists, several researchers have examined enrichment (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006; Rothbard, 2001), enhancement (Rudderman, Ohlott, Panzer & King, 2002), and positive spillover (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000a; Hanson, Hammer & Colton, 2006). There is a growing body of empirical evidence supporting the notion that participation in multiple work and family roles can lead to positive effects on individuals’ physical and psychological health (Barnett & Hyde, 2001; Barnett & Marshall, 1993; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000a, 2000b; Hammer, Cullen, Neal, Sinclair & Shafiro, 2005; Hanson et al., 2006; Poelmans, Stepanova & Masuda, this volume).