Role model

Role model refers to a person who fills his or her roleas a good or bad examplefor others. A good example is a positive role model. A bad example is a negative role model. The term role model on its own often means positive role model.

A positive role model carries out a role demonstrating values, ways of thinking and acting, which are considered good in that role. Others hopefully will follow the example. A woman professorcan be seen as a role model for other women.

Parents can be positive role models helping their children learn adult ways or they can be negative role models. In dysfunctional familiesparents tend to be primarily negative role models. The distinction in positive and negative role models can easily lead to accepting a false dilemma.

This can be

• In Sociologythe term does not necessarily imply a good example; see e.g. Observational learning.
• Morally: moral example(in ethics)
• At work: Model workeror Stakhanovite(in socialism)

The act of picking a role model consists of first evaluating what are ones own values (answering the question "what kind of things are important to me") then finding a person (usually a famous person) that exhibits a majority of those points and then emulating that person.

See also

• Role-playing

References

• The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role+model Wikipedia article Role model.