By Karen Sternheimer
We have written a lot about social roles on the Everyday Sociology Blog. Back in 2020, Jonathan Wynn wrote about the role a department chair plays within a university. Within this post, he described Robert Merton’s definition of social role sets:
A role might be a patterned set of expectations, but a role set is a complement of several roles, which can, in turn, create conflicting expectations and therefore, stresses. Such a development of the concept is connected to larger organizational structures.
We can experience role strain when our various social roles produce challenges, as Jennell Paris wrote about during the pandemic, when many people were working from home and had to be parents and employees at once. Role conflict can happen when the multiple roles we play might be incompatible, as I wrote about in 2024 when encountering my dentist at a small dinner party.
We all have social roles that connect us to the larger social structure and various social institutions. It can be unexpectedly challenging when the roles to which we have become accustomed shift.
Continue reading “Social Role Shifts and Starting College”
