ROLE TAKING AND ROLE CONFLICT
Role taking is when the behaviour of an individual is guided by the way he percieves himself in others’ roles. It is when a certain way of behaving is guided by whose position has he put himself in, mentally or imaginatively. It can also be percieved as “Stepping into somoene’s shoes”. Role-taking plays a significant role in everyone’s life, right from their childhood. As a child, while playing games with his peer friends or family, one takes up several roles and tries to enact it. For example, children playing the popular Indian game called “Ghar-Ghar”, the child who plays the role of the father, carries a suitcase and goes to the office, whereas the other child playing the role of the mother, cooks food for her husband and is seen serving him breakfast. Here, the role taking is also a subjective matter depending on one’s surroundings. For instance if two other children playing the same game have seen their parents in the opposite roles, where the mother goes to the office and the father remains at home or both of them are working, the way the enact the same roles of a “mother” and a “father” would differ accordingly.
Contrary to the rare subjectivity, role taking is often guided by how
the surrounding community that a child has grown up in percieves certain roles.
As a child grows up and outgrows his childhood days, stepping into the real
world, one further realises how role-taking wasn’t just restricted to games. It
brings along adapting the same roles and hence to adapt and behave pertaining
to the peripherry of the roles.
The main dilemna arises upon the realisation of how one cannot perform a
single role at a single time. How his role is so much more diversified and how
he has to adhere and behave according to each one of them, simaltaneously.
Which gives birth to the concept of “Role-Conflict”. It is the conflict
experienced by an individual at the time of role playing. Role conflict can
further happen at two stages:
1. Within his own body of roles : This
role-conflict arises internally within a single role. It is guided by the
difference between an individual’s expectation or perception of how that role
should be ideally played and how it is being actually played by him. For
example, a CEO of a company might have certain expectations from himself
regarding how he should be a leader of the company and not be a boss. But in
reality and in practice, sometimes he sees himself behaving bossy. At this
point of time, he faces a conflict of the kind of CEO he wants himself to be vs
the kind of CEO he is being. Sometimes, this role conflict takes up a lot of
energy and mind of a person, so much so that it has the potential to result in
neurotic or psychological disorders such as depression.
2. Between
his own different roles : This arises when the same individual plays two or
more different roles at the same time. For instance, a working woman plays the
role of an employee at her office, a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a
daughter-in-law and a lot more at the same point of time. There’s often a
conflict on how the society expects her to pay her full attention to her family
while she as an individual wants to pay equal attention to her work life and
career as well. Another conflict may arise when her children expect her time
and attention at the time of her work, there is a continous trade-off between
the roles of a sincere employee and a responsible mother. Sometimes, the
constant urge to play all our roles firmly is what becomes hectic for each and
everyone of us, since no matter who, it is practically impossible for any
individual to possess a single role at a single time.
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