Finding Balance Between Tightness & Looseness with Dr. Michele Gelfand

Nov 20, 2024

Dr. Michele Gelfand is a cultural psychologist and author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers. She joins us to discusses how “tight” and “loose” cultures shape societies. Tight cultures, like Japan’s, respond to threats with strict rules and order, while looser ones, like the U.S., allow greater flexibility. Gelfand suggests a balanced “Goldilocks” approach, adjusting strictness and flexibility to suit each environment's needs, from families to organizations. She also explores online accountability, recommending "nudges" to promote civility, and sees AI as a potential tool for managing biases and promoting understanding.

 

 

Guest Bio

Michele Gelfand is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy at Stanford University. Gelfand 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, De Standard, among other outlets.

 

Gelfand has published her work in many scientific outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Psychological Science, Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS 1, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, Annual Review of Psychology, American Psychologist, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Current Opinion in Psychology, among others. She has received over 13 million dollars in research funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and the FBI.

 

As a native New Yorker, Michele is now a California transplant. She is married to Todd Betke and has two daughters, Jeanette and Hannah, two birds (Bonnie and Theo) and a Portuguese water dog, Pepper.

 

 

Show Notes

• (1:47) What is culture?
• (4:08) The age that we start learning norms
• (10:01) What makes a person or nation a tight versus a loose culture
• (15:12) How the movement of people affect looseness and tightness dynamics
• (17:57) How changes in attitudes occur
• (20:59) Tightness doesn’t mean a lack of creativity
• (24:26) The Goldilocks Approach
• (30:49) Avoiding becoming too tight or too loose
• (32:55) Applying the Goldilocks Approach on social media
• (35:56) The disrupting force technology can have on loose and tight cultures
• (38:19) AI’s ability to understand culture
• (41:11) What’s next for Dr. Michele Gelfand
• (45:00) How to follow Michele’s work

 

 

Links Referenced

• Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring: https://www.amazon.com/Values-Political-Action-Change-Middle/dp/019026909X
• Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World: https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939
• Personal website: michelegelfand.com