Role ambiguity and role conflict were among the first social psychological stressors to be studied in the workplace. The theoretical and empirical description of these two stressors in Organizational Stress; Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity (Kahn et al., 1964) thrust them on to center stage in this research. Furthermore, "Role conflict and ambiguity as critical variables in a model of organizational behavior" (House and Rizzo, 1972) helped keep researchers' attention on them for almost two decades. It was noted in 1981 that all studies of role conflict and ambiguity conducted after the one by Kahn and his colleagues relied upon the theoretical approach of that early study (Van Sell et al., 1981). In order to understand my own research on them, it is useful to examine this approach as background.