Role
A role is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society. Social role theory posits the following about social behavior:
  - The division of labour in society takes the form of the interaction among heterogeneous specialized positions, we call roles.
  - Social roles included appropriate and permitted forms of behavior and actions that recur in a group, guided by social norms, which are commonly known and hence determine the expectations for appropriate behavior in these roles, which further explains the position of a person in the society.
  - Roles are occupied by individuals, who are called actors.
  - When individuals approve of a social role, they will incur costs to conform to role norms, and will also incur costs to punish those who violate role norms.
  - Changed conditions can render a social role outdated or illegitimate, in which case social pressures are likely to lead to role change.
  - The anticipation of rewards and punishments, as well as the satisfaction of behaving pro-socially, account for why agents conform to role requirements. The notion of the role can be and is examined in the social sciences, specifically economics, sociology and organizational theory.
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