experience a serious conflict between certain social and occupational roles.
Role conflicts call for important ethical choices. In the example just given, the new supervisor has to make a difficult decision about how much allegiance she owes her friend whose work is unsatisfactory. Our culture tells us that success is more important than friendship. If friends are holding us back, we should leave them and pursue our ambitions. Yet, at the same time, we are told that abandoning our friends is contemptible. The supervisor must decide whether she will risk her promotion out of concern for her friend.
One common type of role conflict occurs when individuals move into occupations that are not common among people with their ascribed status. Male preschool teachers and female police officers experience this type of role conflict. In the latter case, female officers must strive to reconcile their workplace role in law enforcement with the societal view of women, which does not embrace many skills needed in police work. And while female police officers encounter sexual harassment, as women do throughout the labor force, they must also deal with the "code of silence, an informal norm that precludes their implicating fellow officers in wrongdoing (S. Martin 1994; C. Fletcher 1995)