Final answer:
Merton's five adaptations represent different responses to the tension between societal goals and the means to achieve them, ranging from conformity to rebellion, with examples including a student's pursuit of education or an employee's embezzlement for financial success.
Step-by-step explanation:
Merton's five adaptations include ways individuals respond to the tension between societal goals and the means to achieve them. These adaptations are:
- Conformity: Embracing the cultural goals and the conventional means of achieving them. For example, a student working hard to achieve good grades and obtain a college degree.
- Innovation: Accepting the goals but using illicit means to achieve them, such as an employee embezzling funds to reach financial success.
- Ritualism: Abandoning the goals but continuing to adhere to the means, like a worker who goes through the motions without aiming for promotion.
- Retreatism: Rejecting both the goals and the means, for instance, a person dropping out of society to live off the grid.
- Rebellion: Rejecting and replacing both the goals and the means with alternative ones, as seen in revolutionary movements that aim to overhaul the current system.
Each adaptation represents a different strategy to cope with the pressures of societal expectations and the individual's ability to fulfill them.