Status and Roles – Elements of Social Interaction (PSY, SOC)

00:00 So let me ask you a question.

00:03 What is your status? What is your role? What groups do you belong to interact with? These are the few of the elements that influence social interaction, right.

00:12 Lets walk through some of those components.

00:14 What are we talking about when we say status? This is the term that I am sure you’ve heard before, right.

00:19 So what are we implying? Well, in the broad realm of sociology we have society, right.

00:25 Society. We belong to a society, but within that society what is your status? So where do you fit in, in that societal ladder? There is a lot of different things that will influence that and there is a different states or of status.

00:41 So the first would be if you are equal.

00:43 And know this is not the picture of me when I was young.

00:45 Alright, so same of those that you are sitting within the room. Let say in the classroom, you are in the grade school and all the kids around you.

00:52 Essentially the social ladder you are all the same.

00:56 You are all, 8-9 year old, sitting in your grade 2 class, going to school.

01:00 Say you have your group of friends, your circle of friends.

01:04 Generally speaking, you are all consider yourselves peers. You have a roommate.

01:09 Unless your roommate is like Michael Jordan you pretty much would consider yourself of all fairly equal.

01:16 Now, you would be consider inferior relatively speaking if you are of a lower status in those around you.

01:23 Let say you are a student and you’re referring yourself of to your teacher.

01:27 Your teacher in that scenario will have a higher status than you.

01:31 Or you would have a lower status than your teacher.

01:36 Now, the flip side is if you are engaging with somebody who has a higher status.

01:41 So let say the CEO of the company.

01:43 Or in this scenario this example that we have here, we have a drill sergeant and one of the cadets.

01:50 He would be definitely of a higher status. He is the one making doing the push-ups right.

01:54 So here three examples and three relative states that you can be in terms of the status.

01:59 Now, let’s look the types of status.

02:02 Now, there is the amazing option of being ascribed status.

02:07 This is when you are given assigned by society regardless the persons own effort.

02:12 The example that we have here is Prince William.

02:16 Prince William didn’t sort to choose to be next in line to the throne.

02:22 He was born into the family. So he was ascribed that level of status.

02:26 Automatically he is royalty, right.

02:29 The second one would be achieved where you for example working very hard to study for your MCAT to right the exam.

02:36 And one day hopefully you will be a world renowned doctor.

02:39 That will be you achieving that level of status, okay.

02:42 Now, let’s take a look at what is your role? And what are some different concepts within the types of role that you can have.

02:54 Social roles are expectations for people of a given social status.

02:59 If I say, you’re royalty, there is certain expectations that come with that.

03:05 You have a certain social role.

03:07 You’re not expected to go to the pub every night and get drunk and have a good time, and mingle and try and pick up young men or women.

03:16 Instead you are expected to be a philanthropist, a social ambassador for good will and go doing all this things. That is your society driven role.

03:27 Now, three concepts within social roles includes first being, role conflict.

03:33 This is when society has ascribed the role but there is some conflict there.

03:39 For example, when you been assign the role of say male, which want to be a nurse.

03:47 So society sometimes has a little bit of conflict with that. There is a little bit of role conflicts.

03:50 Its defined as conflict in society’s expectations for multiple statuses held by the same individual.

03:56 Now, I know what a male should be.

04:00 And I have some societal expectations of what a nurse typically looks like.

04:04 So if I was to ask you to draw a nurse or choose a picture of a nurse most of us would probably do the sort of gender roles assume that its woman and I am thinking here a white outfit with a little nurses cap that’s a nurse.

04:19 Now, all of a sudden, if I show you a picture and it’s a male nurse wearing a stethoscope and he is there in his light blue scrubs, all of a sudden, “ Oh yeah. I guess, that’s right. It could be a male too.” but so sometimes society has that conflicts and well men aren’t supposed to be a nurses.

04:33 Or female shouldn’t be a hockey player. And so the list can be on and on, right.

04:39 So now, we are ascribing a particular role. And when you deviate from that we have role conflict.

04:45 Then there is role strains, or a single status results in conflicting expectations.

04:51 What I have say here to gay.

04:53 So say your sexual orientation is that you are gay or homosexual.

04:58 So is there a certain amount of gayness that you need to express? I don’t want to be too gay but I don’t want to not be gay enough.

05:07 Again, so there is expectation in that’s there in the society is laid out.

05:12 And so you feel is role strain. You, as an individual, feel like well I need to sort of fit someone expectation.

05:18 But I don’t want to be either under the spectrum. I don’t want to be not gay enough.

05:21 I don’t want to be too gay. And this going to apply to anything right.

05:24 So I just highlighted this one because its I think it’s somebody you can make a lot of sense out of.

05:29 Role exit is when you actually end up trying to disengage or move from one or to another.

05:35 And the example that have here is when you, our high school student and you are transitioning to say college or university.

05:42 Or you’re in the work place or the work force and you have now enter the world of retirement.

05:48 So this is you exciting a role that you have perhaps for a long period of time.

05:53 And society has certain roles and boundaries and expectations.

05:56 And you are now moving on something different.