Role Acquisition as a Social Process |
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| Authors: | Linda L. Yellin |
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| Affiliation: | Is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. Her areas of interest are role theory, subcultures, and socialization. She is currently studying norm production and transmission within subcultures |
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| Abstract: | A model of the role acquisition process is proposed based on data from 310 first-person written narratives of a single role entrance. Content analysis of data set II ( N = 110) of narratives, which included forty-seven different roles, provides support for the model. The model conceptualizes role acquisition as involving a sequence of four stages, characterized as (1) ambivalence, (2) absorption, (3) commitment, and (4) confidence, in which each stage involves a qualitatively different interaction between the person and the role: a different affective orientation on the part of the person toward the role, and a qualitatively different relationship between the person and role partners. Common features and heterogeneous effects of role type, social context, cognitive processes, and other factors at each stage are discussed. |
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