Download status-and

Roles, Relationships and Groups
1. Introduction to status and roles
Status Labels
• Show your social position
• Help us to identify expected
behaviors
• Illustrate our role in society
2 types of status
1. Ascribed: a status you receive
without choice; often given at
birth (poor, white, teenager)
2. Achieved: you make a choice/
earn the status (teacher, doctor,
drug addict, drop out)
Ascribed or Achieved?
Mother
Doctor
Studies Show…
• Statuses are important
– In an experiment involving dropped money,
77% of people will return the money to a
well-dressed person, but only 38% will
return it to a poorly dressed person
– When given a command by someone in a
police uniform 83% will do it without
question, but only 46% will do it with the
person asking is dressed as a delivery guy or
lay-person
Roles
• Behavior(s) associated with a
status
• Sociologists are interested in
how roles relate and how people
respond to conflict of roles
Reciprocal Roles
• Related roles. One could not
exist w/o the other
–Dr./patient
–Teacher/Student
–Parent/Child
Role Strain/Role Conflict
• Occurs when a choice must be
made in fulfilling roles
–EX: Mom has a daughter’s
dance recital and son’s baseball
game the same night
–EX: My daughter is sick, but I
am supposed to teach class
2 ways to solve role
strain/conflict
1. Prioritizing: choose one role over
the other (if my kid is sick, I don’t
teach)
2. Compartmentalizing: compromise
to satisfy both roles (bring sick kid
to work and teach w/ her in the
room)
Judging Relationships
•To prioritize or
compartmentalize, we look
at how close a relationship
is on a relationship
continuum
____________________________________________
Personal
Impersonal