#224 Michele Gelfand: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers; Tight And Loose Cultures
Dr. Michele Gelfand is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture—as well as its multilevel consequences for human groups. Her work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist, among other outlets. She is the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World (Scribner, 2018).
In this episode, we focus on some of the main topics of Dr. Gelfand’s book, Rule Markers, Rule Breakers. Dr. Gelfand gives us a definition of tight and loose culture, and then we explore the several different aspects that go associated with the tightness-looseness continuum. We explore its relationship with other ways of approaching culture, like the individualism-collectivism continuum, and if there is any relationship with the Big Five personality traits. We also refer to the divide in the US between the northern and the southern states. We talk about how normative behavior arises in early stages of development in children. Toward the end, we discuss the relationship between tightness and looseness and some health outcomes, and how we can use this framework to potentially solve some relevant contemporary issues, like political polarization.
Time Links:
What are tight and loose cultures?
What produces these types of psychology?
Tightness-looseness, and its relationship to individualism-collectivism
Does this continuum also operate at the level of individuals?
Is there any relationship with the Big Five personality traits?
No system is unconditionally better than the other
Tightness-looseness in the US (northern and southern states)
Divergence between the working class and the upper class
Children are normative beings
Tightness-looseness and health outcomes
Extremes of tightness and looseness produce the worst results
Using this cultural framework to tackle current political and social issues
Follow Dr. Gelfand’s work!
Follow Dr. Gelfand’s work:
Faculty Page: https://bit.ly/2xRVvPv
Website: https://bit.ly/2KU4YPx
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/2VbZbIX
Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2XRomhl
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World: https://amzn.to/2JCIFvf
Twitter handle: @MicheleJGelfand