Identities and Roles

Your behavior is shaped by the identities that you have in different situations. Each identity defines a different social role - a different set of expected behaviors. Consider the case of Jim.

You have to know Jim's identity in a given situation in order to know what behavior Jim might do next. You predict behavior better if you also know the identities of others and if you are aware of recent happenings. For example, Jim in his role of physician is more likely to medicate patients than to medicate nurses, and Jim is especially likely to medicate a patient after Jim has listened to the patient's complaints.

Institutional Roles

Roles are part of different social institutions or arenas of social activity, like medicine, law, religion, academia, commerce. Roles in these institutions - such as physician, judge, minister, professor, executive - often involve technical performances that require trained judgment and rationality. Thus you might think that ACT would be of little use in predicting the behavior of people in such roles. Doesn't ACT deal with intuitive, expressive action rather than rational action?

Yes, ACT relates to affect rather than rationality. Nevertheless, ACT does a pretty good job of delineating institutional roles. Here are some examples. (The ACT predictions were obtained with Interact using U.S.A. sentiments.)

Overall, these predictions seem plausible. Being a doctor stereotypically calls for friendliness, social support, and cooperation. The doctor-doctor relation seems egalitarian, and the doctor acts with greater authority toward the nurse. The doctor is supportive and attentive with the patient, and medicating is among the behaviors that are expressively appropriate in the doctor-patient relation.

Remember, ACT doesn't contain rules about institutional roles. Rather what you are seeing here are predictions of role behaviors based on affect. Those predictions correspond to stereotypical role behaviors in social institutions.

ACT's predictions about institutional roles add credibility to the theory because institutional roles are so well defined that they provide a clear framework for deciding whether predictions are sense or nonsense, and ACT often predicts sensibly.

Work Roles

Could ACT be put to use to understand problem situations? Consider this work-world example.

Suppose that supervisor-worker relations in a factory are more conflictual than desired.

ACT analysis begins by determining which definitions actors are using for each other. Among the identities that might be relevant are: authority, boss, employer, executive, expert, manager, slave-driver, specialist, superior, supervisor on the one hand, versus: apprentice, assistant, coworker, colleague, do-nothing, employee, loafer, subordinate, wage-earner, worker, workman on the other hand. The definitions that are in use can have important impacts on the tone of interactions.

Suppose Eric Smith sees himself as an employer and he sees Hal Brown as an employee, and Brown's definitions are parallel. Then according to ACT's predictions, Smith's acts toward Brown include: counsel, authorize, advise, instruct, negotiate with, explain to, exonerate, reassure. Let Smith authorize Brown to do something. Then Smith might feel at ease, while Brown feels a bit awe struck. Brown then might: ask about something, agree with, appeal to, address, ask, exalt, admire, idealize.

All that, of course, is the way the relationship is supposed to work.

Now suppose Smith still sees himself as an employer, but he sees Brown as a loafer. Brown, on the other hand, sees himself as an employee, but he sees Smith as a slave-driver. With these definitions, Smith might lull, placate, test, pacify, hush, evaluate, examine, consider Brown. Say Smith evaluates Brown: this leaves Smith feeling emotionally neutral, but it makes Brown feel self-conscious. Meanwhile, Brown would be inclined to pacify, appease, hush, placate, shush, lull, query, doubt Smith. Say Brown placates Smith: that leaves Brown feeling melancholy, and if Smith catches on, he feels flustered.

While work could get done in the second relationship, its tone contrasts with the cooperative interaction produced by normal symmetrical definitions, and work satisfaction would be less.

These results suggest that ACT can be useful in understanding problem situations in the work world.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracies are the epitome of rationality - so say famous sociologists. So, do ACT's predictions about behavioral intuitions have no relevance? Let's see - by using ACT to examine ordinary and exceptional events in a bureaucracy.

Lynn Peters defines herself as a civil servant and Tim James as a client, and James has the same definition of the situation. Then according to ACT, both Peters and James could behave as follows: address, agree with, appeal to, consult, examine, excuse, accommodate, pacify. If Peters "addresses" James, then Peters should feel at ease, and James should feel emotionally neutral.

Suppose, however, that James bribes Peters. ACT reports that Peters would feel overwhelmed, fearful and flustered, and Peters' predicted behavioral responses include hushing or disciplining James.

ACT can predict the usual role activity that occurs in a bureaucracy! Not only that, ACT - a theory relating to affect and intuition - "knows" that a civil servant might respond to bribery with social control, using sanctions that do not occur in the ordinary interaction. Social control looks like rule-governed behavior, but it arises affectively as officials try to restore appropriate sentiments about themselves after events have corrupted their identities.

Bureaucracies are rational, yes, but bureaucratic behavior is affectively driven.

Principle of Affective Rationality

Social institutions like the family, the judiciary, medicine, academia, are comprised of role-identities and role behaviors,

(e.g., in the judiciary: judge, attorney, district attorney, juror, defendant, criminal; cross-examine, convict, sentence)

and the affective meanings of the identities and behaviors are scrupulously formed by culture,

especially by those who participate in the institution,

so that the actions that are required of institutional roles are actions that confirm affective meanings.

Thus as participants act spontaneously on an affective basis, they produce events that rationally contribute to instrumental goals.

Informal Roles

Many of the interactions you have in everyday life do not involve institutional roles. You find yourself in generic identities that fit any situation - like man or woman, pal, advisor - and you deal with others who also have such identities. You may not think of yourself as taking on negative identities, but you encounter other people who behave like a prude or a jerk or a party-pooper or a bully, etc., so informal negative identities are operative in your everyday life, too.

ACT predicts the behavior associated with informal roles as well as behavior attached to institutional roles. For example, ACT predicts that buddies are supportive and bullies are aggressive, novices kid around, and jerks - well, jerks act like jerks. Advisors are sympathetic, loners show independence; party-poopers and fuddy-duddies exasperate those who are with them. Moreover, ACT predicts that behavior gets adjusted in plausible ways, depending on one's interaction partner: e.g., a man shows excitement and helpfulness with valued others; he is brusque and uncompromising with those he scorns. And ACT's predicted responses to deviance in informal relationships make sense, too. For example, an individual who gets caught lying to her roommate may cause the other to disagree with her, correct her, contradict her.

This leads to a corollary to the principle of affective rationality:

As participants act spontaneously on an affective basis in informal relationships, they produce events that express and maintain those relationships.

Constructing a Logical Sequence

ACT provides no guidance about the order in which things have to happen. For example, a thief has to be convicted before being sentenced, but a model of logical sequencing instead of intuition would be needed to deal with event prerequisites.

ACT's ability to predict technical activities within social institutions indicates that such activities are motivated, but the intuitive system motivating roles needs help in restricting activities to just those that are appropriate in a given institutional context. For example, we have no way to know from our feelings alone that sentencing to prison occurs only in the legal institution, in a courtroom.

The logical and cognitive aspects of social interaction require additional theories. ACT will have to be integrated with such theories before it can get really specific in its predictions.