You Are a Social Actor Playing a Social Role
Last week’s article on how you are not responsible for your laziness got some amazing feedback. While most people might not totally agree with the ideas presented in that post, the ideas themselves are interesting to think about. How much does context control your life?
In sociology, there’s a perspective of viewing people and their actions called dramaturgy. To sum it all up, it basically means viewing individual people as actors and actresses in a play. You are an actor; the play is life itself. Other people are characters in the same play, and you can change the outcome of the play through your actions and roles you take on. (Isn’t that interesting?)
This article will take some of the ideas presented in that sociological perspective and modify them for personal development. By doing so, we can see how we can change our lives by modifying the roles we take on and perform for other people.
All the world’s a stage!
For all purposes related to personal development, I’m going to modify the definitions slightly from what they actually mean in sociology. Nothing wrong with molding a concept to fit our purposes!
To start off, there are two main definitions you need to remember:
- social actor - That’s you! In sociology, you view people as just “actors” and not “people”. For this post, just take “social actor” meaning you yourself, or another person (when appropriate).
- social role - Any position you find yourself in, inside of a context. For example, a social role could be a firefighter. Other roles could be a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a student, a church member, or a citizen of a nation.
After understanding those two simple definitions, you can now read the six steps you take when you find yourself in a brand new social role:
- You, the social actor, assume a role.
- You look around to see how to perform that role.
- You perform that role.
- You get feedback on that role.
- You modify that role based on the feedback you got.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you establish a role that other social actors accept.
Those steps probably mean absolutely nothing to you right now, so let’s delve into a little deeper detail:
1. You assume a role.
The first thing you do is take on a role. And as defined above, a social role is any position you find yourself in.
Roles can be given to you; for example, somebody might choose to make you the godparent of their child. They can be acquired, such as if you choose to become a teacher. You can also enter and leave some roles - you may be a student right now, but will you still be a student in 5 years? You also carry more roles than one at once. Right now, you are at least at 100+ roles (some of them including a family member, a worker, a spouse, a church member, an actor, and so on).
2. You look around to see how to perform that role.
All actors who receive a role in a movie have to act out that role, right? That’s why they have scripts! But in the Drama of Life, you don’t get a script. So when you’re handed a role - let’s say, of a wife - how do you act out that role?
In all honesty, you look around and see how everybody else is performing that role. Where do you look? Everywhere and anywhere. Gossip magazines, newspapers, sitcoms and dramas on TV, gossip you overhear, everything is fair game when you’re learning how to play a role.
Sometimes you need to look around to figure out how to play a role. If you’re a brand new parent and you have no idea how to change a diaper, that’s obviously a skill you need for your roll, so you’ll take the time and acquire that skill. The majority of the time, role playing is a “monkey see, monkey do” process. If you’re hired as a store clerk in Abercrombie & Fitch, you’re probably not going to ask around how to treat your customers. You already know how sales people treat customers (kind, courteous, understanding, and so on), and so you’ll automatically plug those characteristics into your role.
3. You perform that role.
So after you get an idea of how to perform that role, you play it out for other people! You bring a lot to your role, including:
- Emotional qualities. Temperamental? Depressed? Ecstatic to see everybody?
- Personality traits. Hard working? Charismatic? Procrastinator?
- Stylistic tendencies. Do you add a certain flair to your role while playing it, such as calling everybody by their full first name?
4. You get feedback on that role.
Real life movie actors get their feedback from the viewing public. If their movie bombs and the public shows disdain and contempt because “they can’t act for anything!”, they have to try even harder to make their next movie role a success. And that is exactly how feedback works in this case as well. Feedback can range from things like criticism (”Stop being such a lazy person!”) to stares in the grocery store when you knock down the pyramid of cans.
Why do people hate public speaking so much? Because the feedback they get makes them nervous! They assume a role (of a speaker), they figure out how to play it (write a speech, practice, work on personality and vocal inflection), they try to perform it, and then they worry about the awful feedback they might receive: “Oh god, they’re gonna laugh at me!” It totally makes them uncomfortable!
5. You modify that role based on the feedback you got.
So your role didn’t go too hot. You switch it up and try again! If the choice role you’re in falls flat, you have to either 1) exit the role or 2) modify your actions in the role to make it more acceptable.
“Exiting” a role simply means abandoning it, or being forced to abandon it. If you work at McDonalds and you just can’t learn to cook those hamburgers correctly - a skill that is a necessity for that role - you might be fired. And if you’re fired? You no longer occupy that role.
“Modifying” your actions simply means changing the traits about you to fit your role more closely. To continue with our example above, if you’re hired as a store clerk and you’re rude to the customers, you’ll receive some negative feedback. You’ll take that feedback into consideration, modify your role, and then try again. Maybe next time the customers won’t give you dirty looks!
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you establish a role that other social actors accept.
Roles only are effective if the people who matter most to you accept them. Why do people fake being happy to their boss and do everything they can to please him or her? Because that’s whose opinion matters the most. You redo steps 4 and 5 until everybody can come to an agreement with how your role should be acted out.
It’s a largely unconscious process!
Please don’t wander away from this blog post and assume that this sort of role playing is something you constantly think about. It’s really not!
For example, when you walk into a movie theater, do you necessarily stand there for five minutes, trying to figure out how to act, asking yourself “How do I want to perform this role of ‘movie patron’?” Not really! You assume a role, figure out how to play the role, perform the role, get feedback, adjust yourself, and perform the role again! Each and every time. You don’t think about it, you just do it.
A Helpful Example
Examples are always useful, and an example is in order so you can fully understand how this works. I’ll give you a story, and then we can break it down into the five steps (six, if applicable) of how you learn social roles.
Sally has always had a problem with procrastination. Regardless of how hard she tries, the major area of her life that she’d love to succeed at- passing her Psychology 101 class - is constantly put off in favor of mundane activities such as television watching and idle web surfing. As a result, she is beginning to fail the class and is in a state of hopelessness. No matter what new techniques she learns, from timeboxing to scheduling tricks, nothing works. At the beginning of the semester, she heard some gossip about how easy the class was and how you could do very little work and still get an A; she took this to heart and it backfired on her. Nobody is trying to help her out, either. Sally has few friends; the friends she does have are not in college and don’t care to aid her in this time of need. Her failing grade adds to her misery, as the semester ends in 3 weeks and she doesn’t know what to do.
Poor Sally! Procrastination is a wide, perversive problem in the personal development community, as many people cannot start projects on time because they whittle away their time on other less important tasks.
- What role did Sally assume? Sally is a student of a Psychology 101 class.
- Where did Sally look around to perform that role? From the gossip she’s overheard that the class was an easy A This probably translated to her as “less study, less work”, most likely she skipped out on homework assignments, required quizzes, and did not study as hard as she should have.
- Did Sally perform the role she learned? Yes. Sally performed the role of “student” exactly as she learned it.
- Did Sally get feedback on her role? Actually, Sally did get feedback on her role, no matter what you might be thinking. ;] She has friends, but those friends didn’t care enough to correct her traits she brought into the “student” role. Condoning something is just as much feedback as a verbal or physical action.
- Did Sally modify her role based on the feedback she got? Sally received feedback, but she didn’t modify her role any as the feedback was literally “nothing”.
Step #6 does not need to be included, as steps #4 and #5 were not repeated.
Do you learn personality traits?
Applying this to the self-help universe is tricky, as it goes against what is widely taught. Are you really responsible for your procrastination? Most people of personal development would say “Of course you are! You are in control of your actions. So if you want to be less of a procrastinator, just change your habits!”
That’s fine to a certain point, but then why do people procrastinate on the things that mean most to them… but they don’t procrastinate on things that they hold near and dear to their heart, such as watching TV every night? The problem can’t be solely procrastination as if that was the case, people would procrastinate on everything and the world would cease to exist. Is procrastination the problem, or is the problem applying that habit to certain roles?
It has to be because people are adapting different attributes to the different social roles they face. Maybe it’s the fact that people take the procrastination trait and pair it with the hard worker role, so they don’t get anything done at work. Then they trip the switch and attribute the keep up with this trait to TV watcher role.
I, for one, don’t buy into the whole attitude of “You are responsible for absolutely everything that happens in your life.” I just don’t believe that’s the case! I think it comes from bad roleplaying and bad contexts, not the fact the person is inherently lazy or incompetent or procrastination-laden.
Don’t look at emotions!
An important note of this is that you are not looking at emotions, motivations, and anything else in that family for reasons for behavior. You are only looking at the context. Emotions are irrelevant, as your context is determining how you act - which is what will give you the emotion later on. Sneaky, eh? ;]
Using This in Life
Thinking of things in terms of “roles” and how you can perform your roles is a way to make a major dent in your life without having to exhaust much effort. Bring new characterstics to your roles you are in, and your life will change!
Your homework for tonight? Think of how you can use this knowledge to make your life a more enjoyable experience. 
