A Theory on the Impact of Social Roles on Human Behavior

Human behavior has been a mystery in the minds of men since before the time of the enlightenment and has continued into the modern day, encompassing an entire scientific field of study. Even the very act of specialization and separating the question into a specific field with its own experts and research shows much to the nature of human behavior. There is an external dynamic that ads to this already question that is necessary to fully understand it though.

Like a cell or a protein in biology, it is a complex and fascinating thing, but it is nothing without the network of thousands of other similar objects working together to create a more complex organism. In context of man, society is the complex organism that has developed from the interactions of the individual human beings. This is a two-way street however, as the many singular minds of individuals make up and effect the whole "consciousness" of society, that society in return effects the individual in just as profound a way, if not more so. This theory of society can be exemplified in a very powerful phrase created during the enlightenment: society is a "social contract"(Friend). This term, originally used by political philosophers of the enlightenment to describe the nature of government as it relates to the people, can be used very effectively to describe not just governmental but also more cultural aspects of society, down to a persons' basic morality. That is the essence of the theory presented here. Almost all of a person's actions can and probably are affected, sometimes drastically, by their perception of that contract with society. To put it more simply, a person perceived role in society, how they see themselves as compared to the people around them, very heavily affects that person's choices.