Role Perception

It was Shakespeare who said that, life is a stage and all of us are actors! How true. There is an issue when we cannot comprehend the role that is to be played by us in different settings. Many an employee is at odds and ends at the workplace because role perception is skewed. How does he/she perceive his role? How does his/her boss perceive the role and finally how does the organization (top management) perceive the role? It is when these perceptions are at loggerheads that we have a genuine problem on our hands. Perceptions are a wonderful entity, nebulous and vague but play a major role in how we navigate life, its complexities and all that it throws in our path.In short they have a stupendous bearing on how our lives play out.

The famed and ill fated trans Atlantic passenger ship ‘The Titanic’, predominantly carried two nationalities on board on her ill fated voyage, traversing the Atlantic –American and British. When the ship went down, let us see how the passengers either lived or died. Total Americans: 306 Total Americans who died: 119 % who died: 39. Total Brits: 327 Total Brits who died: 221 % who died: 66 Aren’t the figures staggering? Sixty Six percent Brits died to thirty nine percent Americans.

The anomaly may be explained by how the passengers perceived their roles in the crisis. The British being a mature sea faring nation had well developed nautical traditions, one of them being, that in an emergency at sea, women and children would be saved first. There would be no rushing to the life boats to save themselves by the British.The Brit male played his role out and died. The American had no such perception, and saved himself first. He too played out his role and lived!

Post the event,onbeing rescued this was what a womanpassenger said-"There was no panic and the discipline of the Titanic's crew was perfect. My husband joined me on the Carpathia, and we knelt together and thanked God for our preservation."

When the chips are down!

I remember a scene from a flick where this very drunk rich guy, staggers past his parked Merc, on to his beautifully manicured lawns to piddle, even while his PA ( these days fashionably called Executive Assistant ) attempts to get him to enter his house to do the deed!

What is that, which gets us to return to our more basic instincts, when we have lost our inhibitions or social conditioning is overpowered by other factors! A case in point definitely is the sinking of two ships, over the last century. Two great marine disasters- one the famous Titanic & the other a more staid ‘Lusitania’.
While the Titanic, has been made famous by James Cameron the Lusitania is a very famous ship, because its sinking, dragged the United States into World War 1.

Research into the two tragedies has thrown up the following:
Women and children came first when the Titanic sunk but not when the Lusitania was torpedoed, a study has claimed.

The difference in behavior was due to the speed at which the two maritime disasters struck, researchers said.

The Titanic took more than two hours to sink when it hit an iceberg four days into its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, on 14 April, 1912.
But the liner Lusitania sank in 18 minutes in 1915 when it was torpedoed by a U-boat during World War One.
The passenger ship was heading for Liverpool from New York when it was sunk by the German submarine off the Irish coast with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives.
Both historic tragedies involved similar vessels, passenger populations and death tolls.

But in the case of the Titanic, it was a case of "women and children first" in the best maritime tradition, according to researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

'Selfish behavior dominated'

A study of the disaster showed that females, children and people accompanying a child were more likely to survive than males, adults and passengers without children.
Of the 2,207 passengers and crew on board the ship when it set sail, all but 690 perished.
Children on the Titanic had a 14.8% higher chance of surviving than adults and a person accompanying a child was 19.6% more likely to survive than someone without a child.
Being female increased a passenger's chance of survival by more than 50%.
In contrast, fit passengers aged 16 to 35 stood the greatest chance of surviving from the Lusitania disaster.
Among the 1,949 passengers and crew on the Lusitania, there were 636 survivors.

Time pressure seems to have been key in determining who lived and who died. The study says that on the Lusitania, selfish behavior dominated and on the Titanic, social norms and social status (class) dominated, contradicting standard economics.
"One of the major implications is that people really do behave differently when they are under enormous stress. Then the animal-like aspects and survival of the fittest really come to the fore.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg the norms upheld themselves surprisingly well. Many people think that when there is a disaster, a natural hurricane or whatever, everything breaks down, there is chaos and the norms do not apply any more.
"But it's only when they are under extreme duress: there's an explosion on the ship, the torpedo hits and you are in the water, then survival of the fittest becomes active but not otherwise.

Next time you feel 'uppity', remember that at a basic level & when the chips are down, we are all in the same boat, irrespective of your education or social standing!

A sobering thought pardner!