You Are a Social Actor Playing a Social Role

Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 1:00 pm. 3 comments

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:

1. You, the social actor, assume a role.
2. You look around to see how to perform that role.
3. You perform that role.
4. You get feedback on that role.
5. You modify that role based on the feedback you got.
6. 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.

1. What role did Sally assume? Sally is a student of a Psychology 101 class.
2. 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.
3. Did Sally perform the role she learned? Yes. Sally performed the role of “student” exactly as she learned it.
4. 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.
5. 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.

You Are Not Responsible for Your Laziness

Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 10:45 am. 4 comments

I’ve always enjoyed reading about and absorbing other people’s views that starkly contrast my own. I think it has something to do with being a curious person - I love to stay up-to-date with new information and trends, and share what I learn with other people. (That’s the primary reason for this blog!) This post is about a viewpoint I’ve thought about that contrasts with the very core of personal development.

The basic assumption of the self-help literature is that you are the molder, the designer, the master of your life. You assume 100% responsibility for all that happens. If something - anything! - goes awry, you take the blame so you can fix what went wrong.

But is that necessarily true? Does responsibility for your life always lie with you? And are you truly responsible for personality traits like being lazy?

The basis of personal development? It’s always about you!

Survey of personal development literature says… yes! It’s always about you.

For example, what’s the first thing people do when they can’t master a personal development skill, such as the basics of time management? They blame themselves. It’s always their fault! I don’t know why this profound level of self-acceptance is so popular, but people love to blame themselves when they can’t figure out how to schedule their day.

You see this so clearly when you read what people post on self-help forums:

• “What’s wrong with me?”
• “I can’t seem to do anything right!”
• “Why am I so unmotivated and lazy?”

And other people reinforce the belief that you are in control of your life, by blaming you for your errors:

• “They are so irresponsible!”
• “Why can’t he take the time to learn the new skills to make his career even better?”
• “She’ll never amount to anything, she’s out of touch with the ‘real world’.”

Need further evidence? Look at what we call resources like this blog: personal development, self-help, self improvement. We expect you to take those first steps to master a life skill or change careers. If you don’t arrive at where you want to go, it’s obviously something innately wrong with you, right? You took the wrong steps because you didn’t do your research. You’re just lazy, you’re not working hard enough, you’re just not “up there” with the rest of us. Stop blaming everybody else for your problems when the answer clearly lies within yourself! If you can’t learn how to schedule correctly it’s obviously because you’re a lazy person who can’t figure it out on your own. Who cares about if you claim you’re “lazy”, that’s just a cop-out mindset! What is wrong with you?!

(Actually, I’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong with you. At all. You’re just like everybody other member of the human race!)

After seeing so much of this “take responsibility” ethic everywhere, it started to make me think. How come some people just naturally have a gift of self-discipline and others don’t? (Self-discipline doesn’t appear to be a natural skill, after all.) How come some children end up being overachievers in high school and college, while others fail even though they appear very gifted and talented? Why do some people succeed in a world of blinding, horrific setbacks and others fail with enough money, time, talent, and gifts for 10 lifetimes? What gives?

Personal development constantly claims people have free will, the power to chose what actions they want to take. And it’s a consistent claim, in all of the literature. But… what if you took away the choice of free will, and pretend it doesn’t exist?

Suppose that the skills you learn in personal development are not inborn (but can be developed on your own), and you have absolutely no free will whatsoever. What would determine your actions at that point? What would possess you to do things like quit a job you hate, start a family, go on a cruise, or sit around and watch TV all day?

No free will: Your context determines your outcomes.

If you have no free will, something from outside of you has to determine your actions. And that… is your context!

Your context is your environment, your life. It’s who you hang out with. It’s what places you go to on a daily basis. It’s what your house or apartment looks like. It’s what you do in your free time. It’s your entire life. Everything in your life contributes to your context.

It’s not your fault that you’re lazy. Or de-motivated. Or feel like sleeping all the time. Or unsatisfied with the choices you’ve made in life. None whatsoever. Those circumstances are caused by everything around you, not anything from inside of you.

Let’s put this into a clear example. When people get trapped in a boring job they hate, do they really have the “free will” to quit that job? Pretend that there’s a man who’s trying to feed his family of four and pay off rent, bills, and credit card loans. He has a decent paying job, but it’s work he loathes, and he knows in his heart he’d rather be doing something else. Also pretend that he’s never heard of personal development before and has no idea about that realm of thinking. Based on context, what are some of the reasons he’d stay in that job?

• His family’s physical well being. No food, they all starve. Don’t pay the bills? No house or apartment to live in. No gas to put in the car. Maybe not even transportation.
• His family and friend’s mental well being. What is his wife going to say if he even thinks about quitting? “Why on earth would you do a stupid move like that?! We need food! You can’t just quit your job! You make good money, and right now we’re in a tight spot.” What would his kids think if he quit? That daddy can’t hold down a job. What about his friends, what would they think of him? “Wow, that guy has a family to support, and he just quit his job! What a loser!”
• His environment at home. He comes home at night, and sees the kind of place he lives in: old furniture, the carpet is worn down, the kids are wearing hand-me-down clothes, there’s no computer because he can’t afford one, the TV is 10 years old. What goes through his mind when he sees these things? “I have to keep my job. I want to create a better life for my family, and while I might hate this job, making money is the only way I can move up in the world.”
• His environment at work. What will the people at work think when he quits? “Why’d he quit, this position pays so well! And what are we supposed to do without him here, that would throw off the whole team! Ugh!”

So tell me; in his mind, does he have free will?

I know what you’re thinking: “Of course he has free will! He can go against the grain, quit his job, and follow his passion! He’s in total control of his life, no matter what.”

I wholeheartedly disagree. He’s in constant ambush of these forces dictating at him what to do. These forces literally keep him in his place, preventing him from doing anything else. Does anybody remember the Milgram experiment? It overwhelmingly shows people don’t have much free will when thrown into a context of “You must do this.” And that’s exactly what that guy is in. “You can’t quit!” screams his family, friends, and environment. His context locks him in place.

Right now, there is nobody telling him “You know, you can save up a bit of money, then change careers to something you enjoy,” or “Honestly, follow your heart. You’ll be happier, make more money in the long run, and lead a totally fulfilling life - one that’s perfect for you.” How can he possibly entertain those viewpoints if nobody is influencing him to think that way? And even if one person tells him those things and supports him, he still has an overwhelmingly negative environment that reinforces the “keep job or else” mentality.

Better yet, let’s take it a step further. What if he joined Steve Pavlina’s forums, got massive support from the online community, and Steve himself posted an uplifting message of hope and encouragement? What would our guy do now - continue on the same path, or switch routes to something better for himself? It very well might be the latter. A new variable was added into the context - a group of folks who support him quitting the lowly job he hates - and it’s influencing his behavior.

You see, your context teaches you what moves are acceptable or not. Then you go out and you perform what you’re taught. If lots of people teach you that “Staying in a job you hate is respectable if you need to make money to feed your starving family,” then that’s what you’re going to do. But if some other people say… “Staying in a job you hate is not what’s best for you - go and find a job you love and perform that!” then you might take a different set of actions. Context determines outcomes.

Are you responsible for your laziness?

Deep down, are you actually responsible for your lazy feelings? Or are you just a product of your complete environment, and really have no choice in the matter?

I like to think it’s a bit of both. Your environment creates who you are, but you actually do have some way in the realm of free will and thinking. For example… you have your imagination. And you have role models you can look up to and emulate, even if they aren’t in your immediate environment.

So are you responsible for your laziness? You decide.