UNDERSTANDING GROUPS STRUCTURE; ROLES UNPACKED 2

Roles have been defined in the article 'understanding groups structure; roles unpacked' as the types of behaviour expected of individuals who occupy positions in a group. I ended that article by stating that roles can also be the source of group conflict and personal stress. in this article we shall look at how roles can bring about these stress by looking at the interventionist concept of role stress(to understand more about the reason why i have adopted this school of thought and the meaning of micro sociology, check out the article "communication; a micro-sociological outlook on the concept).
 so what then is role stress? Forsyth (2009) identified some concepts to understand the reason for roles stress:

•  Role ambiguity: unclear expectations about the behaviours to be performed by an individual occupying a particular position within the group due to lack of clarity in the role itself, lack of consensus within the group regarding the behaviours associated with the role, or simple just the role taker's uncertainty regarding the type of behaviour expected by others("so now am a member of the greatest Chelsea supporters club, would it be weird to wear a Red jersey to the forum" a clear example of an individual;s uncertainty of the expected behaviour to perform in a group).
• Role conflict: a state of tension, distress or uncertainty caused by inconsistent or discordant expectations associated with ones roles in a group. it could either be intra-role conflict(a form of role conflict that occurs when the behaviours that make up a single role are incongruous, this so often results in inconsistent expectations on the part of the person who occupies the role and other members of the group) or inter-role conflict (a form of role conflict that occurs when individuals occupy multiple roles within a group and the expectations and behaviours associated with one of their roles are not consistent with the expectations and behaviours associated with another of their roles, for example your role in your family might sometimes conflict with your roles at work or school).
• Role fit: this is the degree of congruence between the demands of a specific role and the attitudes, values, skills and other characteristics of an individual who occupies the role.

this is just an interactionist approach to addresing roles, am sure the functionalist, conflict theorist and other theorist of different world views will unpack the concept in a different manner. however these concepts are key in understanding the issue of roles stress in individuals who are members of groups.