Nobody holds only one social position. Ralph Linton gave us the vocabulary: you occupy a status and you play a role. Build one person out of many statuses — then find out where the tension comes from.
One person, many positions
Tap a status on the right to add it.
Status and rolechoose a mode to begin
Statuses held0
Ascribed0
Achieved0
Tap to add or remove — tap a node in the wheel to inspect it
Scenario 1 of 6
Which kind of tension is this?
The vocabulary, kept straight
You occupy a status. You play a role.
Ralph Linton (1936) drew that line. A status is a position in a social structure; a role is the behaviour expected of whoever fills it — which is why roles outlive the people in them. A status set is every status one person holds at once. A role set (Robert K. Merton, 1957) is every role attached to a single status.
Between vs. within.Role conflict is tension between two statuses — the shift and the exam belong to different positions, and relief usually means giving one of them up. Role strain is tension within one status — the captain must be enforcer and advocate at once, and both demands are printed on the same job. If you can name two positions, it is conflict. If you can only name one, it is strain.
William J. Goode (1960) gave role strain its name and its definition: the felt difficulty of meeting the obligations of a single status. His point was that strain is normal, not pathological — every status over-promises, and social life is largely the work of bargaining those demands down to something a person can actually perform.