Q6: Social Roles (I)

Preview

The Q6 Arena, as shown in the diagram below, is created (by definition) from a combination of the L'6-Structural and L'7-Unitary paradigms.

The L'6-Structural paradigm captures a reality in which there are numerous related components in some order. Social life is therefore perceived as possessing a structure, and that social structure is constituted by social roles. Roles are the way we appear to exist and function as social beings in our interactions. Should a particular role suit us (e.g. a professional vocation), get chosen (e.g. becoming a parent), or be forced upon us (e.g. conscription to the military), then it cannot be ignored. Attention to enable a suitable orientation to the particular social role is therefore required.

So «social role» is the name of the Arena.

The L'7-Unitary paradigm guides fitting in to any social role because roles have certain features and requirements that apply uniformly to all and to which all individuals must conform. Social pressure for conformity can be intense and certain role requirements may be backed by law.

Fitting in to a social role is about adopting a role while retaining your individuality. To fit in, the social role must be named and distinctive with established norms. The role can then be personalized while acting in accord with social expectations. If you do not personalize and identify with the role, then you will ultimately become socially ostracised or ineffective.

Example Roles:
Citizen. Husband. Parent. Mother, Politician. Professional. Adventurer. Mentor. Eccentric.

Frameworks

TET: In order to function in society, it is necessary to adopt a variety of roles and find a way to fit your individuality into them. There are 7 distinctive ways to personalize any role (PH'3Q6t), which emerge from the depiction states shown in the diagram, and these can be usefully analysed with a Typology Essentials Table (TET).

Spiral:  By converting the ways to modes, it is possible to cumulate them via a spiral trajectory that strengthens identification with a social role (PH'3Q6C).

The Spiral-derived Triplet

Expected Pressures:   1°: Autonomy; 2°:Well-Being

Autonomy is the identity pressure that determines selection of a social role, and this accords with the desire to find social roles that are personally suitable and actively desired. Forcing individuals into a social role is therefore likely to be counterproductive. Once in role, its handling becomes subject to a Well-Being pressure even if circumstances mean living the role is miserable. These two pressures underpin the importance of personalizing a role and becoming strongly identified with it.

Ways to Personalize a Role

Fitting in to a role means personalizing its normative features.

t1: imposing a structural paradigm: state = compartmentalization

The social structure can be conceived as being compartmentalized via roles. While not all roles are available to everyone, many are. These roles carry expectations from others as to activities and relationships and embody various rights and duties. Fitting in to a role means adapting your individuality to it, but that assumes a role has been selected: which is therefore the foundation of this framework. Any selection is a personal matter with considerable consequences, so deliberation is required.

Selection appears to be characterized by a minimal and a maximal version.

Proposed t1 Name:   Role Selection

Minimum: Role Adoption without much experience in the role.
Maximum: Role Justification after the role has been lived.

t2: refining the compartmentalization: state = specification

While there are generalized and widely understood social expectations which guide role selection (t1), there is not a complete set of prescriptions for any social role. That leaves open the opportunity to interpret role norms and guidelines according to one's own preferences and personality.

Proposed t2 Name:   Personal Interpretation

t3: probing the integrity of compartmentalization: state = reorganization

Once a role is in use, it becomes apparent that its operation is dependent on situations, and one's own personal state. The handling of such things is governed by self-interest and what is convenient or easiest; and this assessment will vary from person to person.

Proposed t3 Name:   Expedient Adjustment

t4: confirming the validity of compartmentalization: state = functioning

Any social role carries rights which may be desired while imposing duties which may be shirked. Some expectations and norms may be welcomed and others disliked and disregarded. The pattern of adoption and application of role components will therefore vary from person to person and this determines functioning in an individualized way.

Proposed t4 Name:   Distinctive Functioning

t5: imposing a unitary paradigm: state = conformity

Roles accord with norms into which everyone is socialized. These norms are taken for granted and when we follow norms that are part of our socialization, we feel that we are acting autonomously.

Proposed t5 Name:   Socialized Norms

t6: refining the conformity: state = significance

Roles lend themselves to stereotyping e.g. the mother role can be the stay-at-home mother, the career mother, the nurturing mother; the father role can be as a bread-winner, an alpha-male, a protector, a stoic, a decision-maker. Conforming to a particular stereotype can validate preferred attitudes and behaviours as well as engendering a sense of importance.

Proposed t6 Name:   Accepted Stereotypes

t7: probing the uniformity of conformity: state = opposition

Within never-prespecified limits, roles can be what you make them. Society and its social structures continually evolve and that means social roles naturally evolve. That evolution occurs as particular individuals assert their view of what the role should entail based on the world they experience themselves living in.

Proposed t7 Name:   Idiosyncratic Definition

Plotting on a TET

The Executing Duality

The layout of a set of Q-types on a TET is is standard. So we can immediately generate the diagram shown at right. Accepting this layout as correct then poses two demands:

a) to identify appropriate axes (the psychosocial executing duality);
and then
b) to check that the named ways are appropriately located.

The X-axis typically captures the social output: in this case  the expected or desired result of personalizing the role.

Roles exist to be used in social life to produce socially expected outcomes.
So the X-axis is named: Focus on Role Fulfilment.

The Y-axis captures the psychological input: in this case  the inner requirement that conditions fulfilment of the role.

Roles are societally given, not personally created. They operate within a social structure and milieu that exists equally and impersonally for all.
So the Y-axis is named:  Need for Personal Submission.

Checking Locations

High Fulfilment & Low Submission

t1: Role Selection leaves a lot of freedom to the individual so it belongs in the lower half of the Y-axis. However, it is firmly oriented to a person's ability and willingness to fulfil the role, so it lies in the right half of the X-axis. For initial role-adoption there is more submission and less fulfilment, for justifying a long-standing role, there is less submission and more fulfilment. Hence this way covers an ellipse in the lower right quadrant.

Low Fulfilment & Low Submission

t2: Personal Interpretation provides for control which means it is low on submission (Y-axis), and it relates more to personal preferences which means it is low on role fulfilment (X-axis). So it belongs in the lower left quadrant but not at an extreme. t5: Socialized Norms does lie at the extreme because they are so internalized that there is minimal sense of submission, and these norms exist without any concern for a role fulfilment by any person.

Low Fulfilment & High Submission

t3: Expedient Adjustments are made based on submitting to the pressure of circumstances, so that places it moderately high on the Y-axis. However, these adjustments are based on convenience and self-interest, and not necessarily oriented to role-fulfilment. That places it moderately low on the X-axis. So it belongs in the central part of the upper left quadrant. By comparison, t6-Accepted Stereotypes demand full submission with minimal concern for role fulfilment in practice, and so are placed at the extreme upper left of this quadrant.

High Fulfilment & High Submission

t4-Distinctive Functioning has a moderately high focus on role fulfilment and flows from submission to the conditions in which the role is performed. So this places it in the central corner of the upper right quadrant. t7-Idiosyncratic Definition lies in the more extreme position because such assertion targets an ideal of personalized role fulfilment and flows from a full submission to influences and demands from within and without.

Layout Features

Quadrants

Ways in the lower two quadrants give a sense of being in charge, while those in the upper two quadrants generate a sense of demands to be met.

Ways in the two quadrants on the right side are about performance while those in the left two quadrants are about modification.

Ways in diametrically opposite quadrants engender a degree of antagonism: 
• LR enables general opportunity, while UL demands a specific adaptation;
• LL is about existence, while UR is about performance.

The arrows indicate preferences for guidance i.e. in role selection (t1), adopting a role is guided by justifications for the role; personal interpretations (t2) are guided by a person's socialized norms (t5), adjustments to a role (t3) are guided by accepted stereotypes (t5), finally distinctive functioning in role (t4) is guided by idiosyncratic definitions of the role (t7).

Circles

The inner circle defines personalization that is self-oriented and practical.
The outer circle defines personalization that is societally-oriented and conceptual.
The two circles fuse in role selection which shifts from the practicality of adopting to a conceptual justification of the selection.

Diagonals

These define the Apollonian-Dionysian duality (or approach duality).

The Apollonian diagonal runs from LL to UR. It contains ways that demand assertion: via norms-t5, then via interpretations-t2, then via functioning-t4 and finally via definition-t7. Moving up the diagonal, the assertion is ever more individualistic. So these are: increasingly individualistic assertive ways of personalizing roles.

The Dionysian diagonal runs from LR to UL. It contains ways that are intrinsically reactive: via selection-t1 from what is available, then via adjustment-t3 to unavoidable situations, then via stereotypes-t6 held in the social milieu. Moving up the diagonal, the ways are ever more controlling. So these are increasingly controlling reactive ways of personalizing roles.

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• Strengthening your identification & an overview of orienting to a role.

Originally posted: 26-Jan-2026.