Roles. Roles are what makes us, us. They create our identity and tell us what we ought to be. There are many ways in which these roles can be created, but I propose that most people create and develop their roles as a coping mechanism.
As established in the previous blog, most people are afraid of change. We associate change with fear, anxiety, and danger. As we develop, we realize that we must find ways to try and stop the change. Unfortunately for us, change is an inextricable part of life. We eventually conclude that attempting to control the world around us is the next best thing. After all, if we can make the world predictable, then change won’t be unexpected.
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There have been a variety of different coping mechanisms theorized by different psychologists. Universally, they are adaptations to our environment that give us psychological comfort. I propose a new form of coping mechanism called the “Faulty Role Creation”.
First, we must ask ourselves, “what is a role?” Fundamentally, a role is an archetype of ourselves that we build through experience. It is a compilation of what our society and family expect us to be, and most importantly the things that we expect ourselves to be and the things that we expect to bring us happiness and fulfillment.
Next, we must realize that many of the coping mechanisms are not rational processes. When we are creating and developing our sense of identity (our roles), we do it through social osmosis and other forms of observation. This developmental process requires little to no introspection. As a result, the sense of identity we build is not conducive to bringing us fulfillment or happiness. This irrationality is why the Role Creation is “Faulty”. Most of our identities are built on layers of presupposition and thoughtless accumulation of social/cultural information.
This Faulty Role Creation starts at age 3 and can continue into adulthood. 3 years old is the age when we start to develop our sense of identity. The reality is that we accept our identity and roles as given, we rarely do introspection on our identity itself. We will explore the potential for harm with two abstract examples:
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1. For the last several centuries, women were held as second-class citizens. This perpetual oppression was, in part, preserved through the Faulty Role Creation mechanism. In their youth, children were raised to believe that women ought to be quiet and deferential to men. As a result, faulty beliefs of superiority and inferiority were engrained in the roles of children. The Faulty Roles of this era allowed for the perpetuation of the status quo for hundreds of years.
2. Another example of the harm of the coping mechanism is seen in the archetypical nerd. In this context, a nerd is anyone who cares about getting very good grades. While this isn’t an inherently bad thing (I would fit under this definition myself), it is important to consider the reasons why we care about grades. Frequently, the person has developed a value system that revolves around being perceived as intelligent. This inevitably leads people to make major decisions (career, future education, etc.) based upon the erroneous belief that being intelligent or perceived as intelligent will bring them fulfillment in life.
It is important to understand the mechanism of Faulty Role Creation. More importantly, introspection is a necessary step to see how this mechanism has affected our identity, value systems, and decisions. Finally, we must change the aspects of our roles that will harm us in favor of rationally created roles.
People’s whole lives can be influenced by and based on a specific role. Thats pretty widely known but I never thought about how people end up creating their own roles as a coping mechanism. This made me think and I believe that I can definitely relate to the archetypical nerd role and how being seen as intelligent can bring fulfillment. I can recognize that while this role can help me do good with my academics it can stress me out pretty bad and be negative. I like this post and it was really interesting seeing as I can relate to it.
I appreciate your level of detail and depth. The two examples summarize and support your idea of Faulty Role Creation. If you think about it, faulty role creation is the precursor to stereotypes; as we know, stereotypes are no good at all. People’s lives can be influenced by their society and media, which is why many people fall under faulty role creation.
I am always impressed how you are able to explain a complex psychological concept in a way that is easy to understand. I appreciate this post a lot because I think a lot of people acknowledge that they have certain roles or identities, but many wonder how these roles are formed. This post reminded me of a documentary I watched called Three Identical Strangers, which is about a set of triplets separated at birth to see which would win, nature or nurture. While the triplets did have some similarities, the documentary crew hinted at the end that nurtue in fact wins over nature, which I think proves the point you are conveying in your blog.
It’s interesting to me how much of impact roles play on society. They can have extremely positive or extremely negative effects. I think your examples really helped to paint of a picture of that concept. Faulty role creation is able to describe a lot about society.