In Singapore, you can face a heavy fine or even jail for offenses like spitting on the sidewalk or importing chewing gum. Meanwhile in New Zealand, a man who hatched himself from a giant egg was appointed the country’s “official wizard.” These are examples of tight and loose cultures. Tightness and looseness explain a lot about what we think is right and wrong when there’s more at stake too and even about what we think is real.
Tightness can produce more order and cooperation, but it can also be stifling. Meanwhile looseness may get messy or even dangerous, but it also yields freedom and innovation. Much of what’s going on in America and the world right now can be understood better through knowing more about tightness and looseness: for example, the appeal of authoritarian leaders, or refusals to follow COVID safety guidelines.
Michele Gelfand is an expert on tight and loose cultures, after studying them for many years. She’s a cultural psychologist at Stanford University and the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Culture and the Secret Signals That Direct Our Lives. Her work has been published and cited in many academic journals and been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, and many other places.
Michele Gelfand is Spencer Critchley’s guest this time on Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good.
Links
Quiz: “How Tight or Loose Are You?”
Article: “A Failure of Fear: Why Certain Nations Flunked the COVID-19 Threat Test,” Behavioral Scientist, Aug. 23, 2021.
Article: “The Threat Reflex: Why Some Societies Respond to Danger Better Than Others,” Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2021.
About Michele Gelfand
Michele Gelfand is the John H. Scully Professor of Cross-Cultural Management and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business School and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy. She was formerly a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Her work has been published in outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, Nature Human behavior, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, among others. Gelfand is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press). Her book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World was published by Scribner in 2018. She is the Past President of the International Association for Conflict Management and co-founder of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution. She received the 2016 Diener award from SPSP, the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, the 2019 Outstanding Cultural Psychology Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2020 Rubin Theory-to-Practice award from the International Association of Conflict Management, the 2021 Contributions to Society award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation. Gelfand was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.