A role set is a situation where a single status may have more than one role attached to it. This multiplicity of roles is what sociologists termed it as such. Consider a student for instance, involves one role as a pupil, another as a user of university library, and another as a member of a faculty.
The term "role set" was coined by Robert K. Merton in 1957. He made a clear distinction between a "role set" and a "status set".
Famous quotes containing the words role and/or set:
“Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mutual acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight the apparent cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, which can never be set aside.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)