How Role Models Influence Behaviors

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Addictive Behavior
Psychology of Addictive Behavior
Aims of Socialisation
Process of Socialisation
References

Introduction

A role is a behavior or attention to duty expected of an individual to which he or she may adhere to another. A role model is a character implementing a certain role in society for others to copy. This is to say a role model is used as an example by other actors in the society. They can be teachers in various institutions whose characters are admired by students acting as role models to their children or even vice versa.

Role models are perceived differently in each society and even each individual or age group, one’s role model may not be another’s or one society’s role model may differ from another. A certain age group for instance teenagers may look at a popular reggae musician as their role model, a case which may not apply to adults who may treasure gospel music. If you can go ahead to ask these teenagers why they treasure reggae, they would give a reason that reggae music has lots of teachings like culture, lifestyle a reason which may not satisfy adults who are hitched to gospel music.

Everyone in society is a role model in his or her own capacity and others are seen as role models by others in society yet they are not aware, though others could be aware. There are two types of role models, positive ethical role models, and negative role models. Parents, religious leaders, political leaders can either be positive or negative role models depending on their behaviors too which can be disastrous or developmental to other actors in the society be it, children or fellow adults.

So the critical issue here is to really see if these role models influence behavior and how. As I have shown in the previous role models influence, both children and adults, and also these role models can be both old people and young people.

These models also vary in that we have religious leaders, social leaders, professional models, personal friends, relatives. A good driving example is Kofi Annan who is considered a professional model because of his tireless efforts to resolve the Kenyan post-election crisis which he succeeded in restoring peace back to Kenya. He is a role model not only to the Kenyan people but also to many other countries which had the same problems but he managed to resolve the crisis. Being retired from a UN secretary post, he only offers services in conflict resolution.

Role models are influential in shaping people’s characters-making these people internalize the ethical behavior they learn, imitate, or copy from their role models. Research on role models and socialization of human beings indicate that role models have great impacts on shaping ethical behavior we see in the world today, for example, parents can shape their children’s behaviors in that the child will exactly copy what he or she sees the father or mother doing making such behavior become part and parcel of the child. Thus role models highly influence and convey ethical standards to young people whether they are wrong or right.

For elementary students, parents also act as their role models. They tend to take their characteristics which later are changed by their attitudes and shaped differently depending on their new friends and associates. For instance, their interaction with their workmates, classmates, and managers will tend to change their ethical behavior and characteristics. It will take an elementary child great tactics to learn from their parents or their surroundings.

For example, if a parent’s way is to make false promises, ever fighting mum when some things go wrong, idle and disorder, then the child is also likely to take ever such characteristics. This makes me believe that however much role model is seen as a positive word, other role models are completely on the negative side and to some extremes are seen as misfits in the society because they just cause trouble instead of living in harmony and bringing positive interactions amongst societal members.

There are many factors affecting the development of behavior of individuals all these sources state that behavior is influenced through imitations which can become permanent. Again Bandura, 1997, children who watch violent movies or for that matter action movies tend to behave in more aggressive ways towards their peers because what they watch remains in their minds, and always want to practice that. This basically shows that if a role model has antisocial or pro-social behaviors, children will definitely copy those behaviors and their social ethics changed in that direction. It is not only children who imitate the behaviors of people they consider to be their role models but even the adults do. These behaviors sometimes become part of individuals hence making them not able to live without them.

Addictive Behavior

Addictive behavior is a behavior that has become part and parcel of one’s character and he or she feels incomplete before actually fulfilling. Just like role models, addictive behavior can either be positive or negative. Addictive behavior comes from within and in most cases, it may not be the same that is being copied or imitated presently but something that was copied in the past could be from a role model and is now just being implemented by another character. Positive addiction can include habitual prayers before sleeping or eating, simple words like thank you, am sorry, please. Negative addiction can include chain-smoking, sexual maniacs, fighting, gossiping.

In the current study, teens with favorable outcome expectations that were balanced by high parental expectations for their behavior were mostly less likely to start drinking than teens with favorable drinking expectations for their behavior. Hence parents should build up their expectations during early adolescents just when teens begin forming their expectations about drinking and still holding their parents as very important to them. While most parents expect their early adolescents not to drink, young people’s perceptions of their parent’s expectations about their behavior may vary depending on the amounts and quality of time parents spend with their children and also the quality and nature of their communication about their expectations on their children’s behavior.

Psychology of Addictive Behavior

Psychology basically deals with the minds and emotions of individuals. Thus psychology of addictive behaviors is concerned with mental addiction. They are behaviors basically brought about in the mind that is one does what he or she is thinking or has been thinking. Just like the previous two discussed issues, psychology addictive behavior has its extremes of positive and negative aspects which definitely mislead or build up someone. Positive behavior can for instance be courtesy, submission, love while negative behavior can be like pride that is thinking one is better than the rest, hatred bringing negative attitudes towards others. All these behaviors come from within, that is in the mind.

Now the role models here are supposed to act as a big example to the rest. Just like as indicated before, these role models can be parents, politicians, church leaders. Let’s take an example of a church leader as a role model, he or she can help in controlling the psychological addictive behavior of the young and the old in the society more so the positive psychological addictive behaviors. When for instance he or she is going to officiate a church weeding between two lovebirds, he or she will try to bring them to an understanding of why it is important for a wife to submit to a husband and the husband to love his wife by reading to them such scriptures in the bible. He will tell them the advantage and disadvantages of doing so and not doing so.

When counseling these two people they will tend to psychologically adhere to this, thus making them get used to such lifestyle (behavior addiction) so as mainly not to face marriage wrath. On the other hand psychology of addictive behavior can be negative. A good example is that most children look at their parents as role models and if these same parents go astray somewhere they tend to mislead their children. A child who has been brought up in a family where violence is a daily routine cannot be calm in the mind. This child grows up knowing that the only way to solve a problem is not by sitting down and reasoning or having a dialogue but by violence.

This behavior then becomes part and parcel of this child which in further extremes can cause him or her mental depression especially in cases where the child cannot succeed even though he or she uses his or her might. When it reaches such a case, of lets say mental depression, role models like counselors are seen as very important to society, and without them, something is seen to be lacking in society.

The question of whether one is worth living is uprightly important. Human beings act as role models to each other as already mentioned before and have some attachments to the community he lives in. it is said in a proverb that “you may never realize that you have something good until when you lose it” it’s the same here that the importance of human being who are perceived as misfits in the society may not be realized until when they for instance leave or die.

So life is important and everyone is worth living because each person is complex in his or her own ways and thus each person contributes to the society differently and in a special way which can transform lives to the better side which is already seen as role models to others. As long as they are not feeling sick, hungry, and uncomfortable, they will always fill the adult’s atmosphere with humor. This shows that however much someone is seen to be young, but has life; he or she can influence others in a way. Who does not like happiness or humor? Hence these people are seen as role models who inflict happiness in other people’s lives.

So life is an important factor influencing both the role models and those imitating the role models. Remember the dead have got no influence on others, they are just there. Yet life is a conditional function of creatures that influence others.

This then brings up the issue of socialization. Only and only living things socialize. This still shows the importance of life as shown previously. So we must first get to understand the meaning of socialization. In a layman’s understanding, socialization is to take part in social; activities or to take control or adapt to the needs of the society. No society is fully satisfied with what it has because human beings’ needs are insatiable and they keep recurring be it social needs, psychological nits. Economical needs and many others. In this case we are basically going to talk, about the aims of socialization in influencing people’s behavior, more so through role models.

As we have seen before, everyone is a role model in the society thus socialization is entitled to everyone. Without this socialization, most fields in role modeling would not succeed. For example, parents, church leaders, counselors, teachers, peers, husbands and wives need to socialize so, as to succeed as role models. Lets see it in a living example, Let’sough socialization African counselor has succeeded in pulling out street children from the streets taking them to children’s homes or even introducing them to blue-collar jobs like carpentry, masonry which has helped in changing their status in life.

Through socialization, parents have talked telling them the importance of education which has made most children succeed in their lives and eventually have lived comfortably. Church leaders as role models have socialized with their church members through preaching and telling them the importance of sex in marriage and not premarital sexual behaviors. This has helped society in reducing the rate of AIDS scourge, especially among young people thus restoring and maintaining many lives which life is also an important aspect in society for role modeling.

Husbands and wives have also acted as role models to each other in that wives have really shown submission to their husbands thus making them love their wives and hence maintaining marriages and priming a society that is not promiscuous. Even peers have also acted as role models through socialization in schools by encouraging weak colleagues who feel they were not blessed with brains like others. This they do in group discussion thus helping the weak to excel.

Socialization can either be positive or negative, the examples shown above or negative socialization. Negative socialization mostly misleads for example a father who takes his child to a tavern or a pub when taking alcohol with his friends and where obscene words are used is exposing the child to negative socialization because this child can end up becoming an alcoholic, immoral in talks and maybe in deeds. Therefore we realize that socialization is also important when it comes to role modeling.

Aims of Socialisation

Socialization bridges the gap between the two extremes of different categories of societal members or even the same categories. This sometimes is seen as difficult without a role model as either initiator or a mediator. Take for example in our day-to-day lives people with high status (the rich) naturally will tend to segregate themselves with those of low status (the poor). The rich will live in posh places while the poor will mainly be found living in slums or average areas.

These two groups will rarely interact or socialize because they believe their needs and wants can never be the same. Little do they know that each and every human being is dependent on the other despite their sex, education, economic, social, and even psychological status. For instance, a poor man’s son can marry a rich man’s daughter and they live comfortably, a rich man’s son can assist a poor man’s daughter in a subject she doesn’t understand and help her excel in education thus making her also rich in future. Here is where the role models in the society try to bridge gaps between people enhancing socialization and thus promoting the spirit of acceptance.

To understand society clearly socialization may be there. This will help to attend to any calamity that may befall society. Human beings being interwoven or dependent units in the society need each other as the saying goes ‘no man is an island.

This can only be accomplished through socialization. No one knows everything that is why even various governments have to involve the grassroots members so as to solve grass root problems. This is done through a bottom-up approach. On the contrary also for the government to succeed in its service provision after getting to know grass root problems it has to use a top-down approach. Top-down and bottom-up approaches are two ways of socialization which mostly is enhanced by role models who are sincere.

Through socialization native language and culture are passed with their originality. In this case, the best role models here are our grandparents or for that matter our forefathers. Our grandparents also are seen only being able to pass on the native language and culture through socialization. The old people socialize by telling stories, teaching cultural practices for instance in Africa many grandmothers teach their granddaughters how to take care of a husband, how to cook the native local foods, how to take care of their babies after giving birth while grandfathers are seen to be teaching their grandsons how to take care of their homes, how to hunt and bring food home, how to command respect from their families and how to treat their wives.

The fourth aim of socialization is to maintain societal norms, virtues, and beliefs. The church leaders, government arms are good examples here because they act as role models to maintain these. Church leader’s role models will inflict virtues like telling people the importance of living in harmony with for instance stealing, killing, smoking, irresponsible sexual behaviors. These they only do through socialization which eventually can transform some societal members. So as we have seen in all these points above, socialization aims at transforming society for the better and the main transformers are the role models who only interact or socialize with others when trying to influence them positively.

Process of Socialisation

Socialization being a social activity must have a process for its smooth running. This process of activities must start from somewhere going step by step in order for instance when two people meet and fall in love and even plan to marry, they will first get to know each other name, age, origin, and even denomination for some people. From that point, they will become normal friends with no ultimate socialization than they later become intimate and start courting and eventually tie the knots thus becoming husband and wife. In their process of socialization, they will have their role models like God the almighty, other friends who may be married, and living comfortably to help them go about this issue correctly.

When babies are born, they totally know no one and nothing. As they grow, they learn things around them, who their parents are, when they are hungry, when they have been left alone. Some qualities may vary from child to child depending on their role models who are mainly their parents. Within the environment in which the child is born, he or she learns the language, customs, attitudes, and various things in which things are done in his or her society. Therefore different environments will play different vital parts in molding the potentiality and effect they learn to behave.

I have seen everyone as a role model in society in his or her own ways. Role models have also been portrayed as either positive influencers or negative influencers. Role models have also been seen as having vast professions or status in society. Like teachers, church leaders, government leaders, grandparents, peers, parents, husbands and wives, sisters, brothers, the rich, and the poor.

Role models have been seen as actors who shape people’s characters where others become addictive behaviors that are either positive or negative. Role models are also seen to be great actors in psychological addictive behaviors. For instance, counselors, as role models have tried to advise let’s, say street children to move away from the streets a place where these children have gotten used to and are psychologically comfortable there.

Socialization is also an issue that has sheen discussed her stating that its why only through socialization that the role models can be able to convey their influences to others who an example given is grandparents teaching their grandchildren native cultures and language through socialization. Human life as an important aspect in society has also promoted role models influences to other people. Here I have seen that there is no man who is an island.

The socialization process is important because it helps the role models take for instance counselors advise two people wishing to marry on what to expect in marriage and how to handle these issues.

In conclusion, it can be seen that these role models are very influential and in most instances important to society and that’s why society needs them.

References

Bandura A. (1971) Social learning theory General Learning. Press: New York.

Bandura A. (1974) ‘Behaviour theory and the models of man’, American Psychologist.

Bandura A. (1997), The Exercise of Control.

Bandura A. (1977) Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change, 84(2) Psychological Review 191-215.

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