We can define social roles as the roles we play in society.

Social roles detail and

represent what activities or behaviors people expect from us in a given social

environment. Who are the people that define what actions we should do? Has someone

already assigned us that role, or do we create it ourselves? We’ll answer these

questions in this article.

We play a role within any and all groups. We can easily see it within a team. For

example, the defender or forward, the captain or the point guard. There are roles

within families, such as mother, father, or brother. They also exist at work: director,

secretary, colleague, or assistant. One person, depending on the context, can play

several roles. They can be a work colleague, a son in a family, or the joker within a

group of friends.

We can build our own roles or we can adapt to preexisting ones. Other group members

may initially define the type of behavior they expect from you. These expectations are

generalized and each person will have to eventually accept your personal

characteristics.