What term describes a situation in which a person is expected to fulfill the duties of two contradictory positions?

• A. Intra-role conflict
• B. Dual-role conflict
• C. Role conflict
• D. Inter-role conflict

Answer: (C)

When two legitimate duties come from different positions a person holds and those duties conflict, you’re looking at role conflict. The situation describes having to meet the demands of two different roles that clash, making it hard to fully satisfy both. For example, being a parent and an employee can create a clash between needing to stay late for a work deadline and needing to be at a child’s important event. That tension between separate roles is exactly what role conflict captures.

Intra-role conflict would be a struggle within a single role’s expectations, not between two different roles. Inter-role conflict is a closely related term that describes conflicts between roles, but role conflict is the general, widely used label for this phenomenon.