Power of Social Roles

http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-roles.html


This article does a great job of covering the basic concept of Social roles and Social norms in our society. It raises some interesting points about how humans need social norms to keep things running smoothly, as they dictate what behavior is acceptable in various situations.

The article uses a passage from Shakespeare to sum up what social roles mean to us:

"All the worlds a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."

I think this passage does a great job of illustrating the way people act according to varying social situations. I find it really interesting that something written so long ago can still hold so true to describing human interaction. "and one man in his time plays many parts"- this sentence is the strongest of them all, as it is describing the countless roles that we unknowingly fill, because tradition and our peers say we should.

I think this idea raises an interesting question- what would the world be like if these norms didn't exist? Would we run rampant in the streets because nobody told us we couldn't? Would we riot and rebel purely because we could? Or would things continue as normal, is it human nature to live cooperatively or would the world as we know it deteriorate before our eyes?