Role Conflict and Role Confusion
See also: Role conflictThere are situations where the prescribed sets of behaviour that characterise roles may lead to cognitive dissonance in individuals. Role conflict is a special form of social conflict that takes place when one is forced to take on two different and incompatible roles at the same time. For example, a person may find conflict between her role as a mother and her role as an employee of a company when her child's demands for time and attention distract her from the needs of her employer. Similarly, role confusion occurs in a situation where an individual has trouble determining which role he or she should play, but where the roles are not necessarily incompatible. For example, if a college student attending a social function encounters his teacher as a fellow guest, he will have to determine whether to relate to the teacher as a student or a peer.
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Famous quotes containing the words role, conflict and/or confusion:
“The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.”
—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)
“There is no prescribed method for resolving every specific conflict a mother has with her child, and there is certainly no method that will enable her to have exactly what she wants....There is, however, a larger goal, which is to establish and over-all climate of reasonableness, one in which she and her child can hear each other.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“When heaven and earth were in confusion hurl’d
For the debated empire of the world,
Which awed with dreadful expectation lay,
Soon to be slaves, uncertain who should sway:”
—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)