In 1971 Philip Zimbardo and his team of psychologists carried out an experiment on college students at Stamford University. The purpose of this infamous research was to explore the causes of conflict between guards and prisoners. The participants were randomly assigned these different roles and the guards were told to produce a set of rules for how they controlled the prisoners. Even though the guards knew they were being observed, their behaviour towards the prisoners became increasingly oppressive, abusive, and dehumanizing. Several prisoners suffered emotional breakdowns and the whole experiment was stopped after six days. Although the ethical foundation and objectivity of the experiment have since been criticised, it did demonstrate that normal human behaviour can change dramatically when people have roles with power and authority over others. On the positive side, the experiment led to some improvements in how US prisons were managed.
As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” We all play different roles in our lives: as a child, adult or parent, student or teacher, brother or sister, wife, husband or partner, friend, colleague, manager or leader. Roles are about our relationship with others and how we contribute to the values and goals of our family, social life, organisation, or society. Defined roles at work are useful as they provide structure, purpose and shape what we do and how we work together.
We all have different skills, knowledge, talents, and levels of energy. For some people, their role can dominate, define, and limit who they are – as if they’ve become unconscious of their broader sense of self. We’ve probably all experienced this happening to ourselves or to someone else. When people take their role too seriously and totally identify with it, natural human relations become distorted. As part of our language, human beings can become patients, consumers, passengers and employees, which not only limits who they are but also the relationship between the individual and the person in the functional role. It’s not that these collective nouns are not useful, it’s that we fail to notice the alienating, biased, and de-humanising power that is implicit in them.
Work hierarchies can sometimes cause people to hold beliefs and behave in ways that are limiting to the people around them. For instance, if I’m your manager then it follows that you must be inferior to me, which makes me superior. One insight from social psychology is that behind the need for superiority is the fear of not being good enough. One interesting thing to notice is what changes when you walk through the door at work, or log onto your computer. Are you the same open, kind and fun individual when you are out with friends at the weekend, or have you morphed into a limited sense of who you think you should be at work?
So, what has all this to do with mindfulness?
Roles play a powerful function in our lives, so being aware of how much we identify with our thoughts and feelings about our roles makes a difference. After all, we’re not our thoughts or emotions and we’re not the roles we play.
With awareness, we’re more likely to catch ourselves playing a role, which creates the space and freedom to remain authentic to who we are. We can also bring kindness and compassion into how we interact with others who are in roles. For instance, when we talk with the person serving us in a shop, or café; a cleaner or road sweeper, we can see them as much broader than the role they are playing, as a fully rounded human being with a complex inner life just like our own.
One illustration of the limiting nature of roles is to reflect on how we feel when asked at a party what we do. This may be okay if we’re something like a professional athlete, celebrated artist, or film director; but for most of us, we feel as if someone is just about to put us in a box, which limits who we really are.
A healthy approach is to put roles in their proper place. They’re useful and they’re important, but they don’t have to determine or limit who we are, which is always far greater than the roles we play. By creating an authentic space around our roles, we allow the freedom to embrace the broader humanity in everyone we encounter, playing our roles skilfully on the world’s stage; with awareness, kindness, and compassion, as we explore what it means to be human.
Suggested weekly practice
- Reflect on the roles you play in your life; how much you identify with them and whether or not they sometimes limit who you are.
- Observe if anything changes when you walk through the door at your workplace. Do you feel as open and expansive or has some limitation and constraint crept in?
- Bring the same openness, kindness, and compassion to everyone you encounter who is playing a role, from the chief executive to the cleaner.
Guided practice
- Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
- Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then play the second practice to explore a role you play with awareness and gain insights into the thoughts, feelings, and relationship you have with this role.
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