Michele Gelfand’s book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, offers an enlightening insight into the cultural forces that influence how we see the world. If you regularly interact with people or groups from various countries for business or are keen to understand today’s geopolitical divides, this book will give you a useful new perspective.
Gelfand is an award-winning professor of psychology at the University of Maryland who researches cultural norms. In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, she introduces us to the deep structure that underlies cultural variation. The book explains how behaviour depends largely on whether we live in a tight or loose culture.
Why do the citizens of Berlin wait for the green light to cross an empty street at 11 p.m.? What explains why workers in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley are dressed in T-shirts and playing a game of ping-pong in the afternoon while bankers in Zurich mandated by a forty-four-page dress code, have barely loosened their ties while they work late into the night?
Social Norms
Gelfand offers numerous familiar cultural examples (that we have often turned into stereotypes) to illustrate her tight-and-loose concept. She explains that tight cultures have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance (rule makers), while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive (rule breakers).
Of course, countries are not monolithic, which Gelfand is quick to point out. You can find tight and loose variations within cultures or even during certain periods—like at a time of crisis, for example. You can see tight and loose orientations within organizations, specific groups, and even families.
I am definitely much more on the tight side, whereas Steve falls further along the spectrum towards loose. He often attributes this to my German heritage and jokes that my “trains always run on time.” We have generally worked out our tight and loose differences to our advantage, but put these differences on the table when it comes to solving global social, political, and economic issues, and you begin to see the overwhelming challenge.
Intuitively, we understand that some cultures are more rigid than others. As travellers, Steve and I have seen firsthand how it’s perfectly fine to jaywalk in Mexico City, for example, but is a fine-worthy act in Krakow—how you can walk down the street with an alcoholic cocktail in New Orleans, but wouldn’t dare do that in Istanbul or Singapore. No matter where you live, we all adhere to a host of cultural norms of which we are most often not even aware. Some may make sense, and others, on the face of it, seem illogical (like waiting at a green light when there is no traffic).
How tight and loose develop
The question that Gelfand answers in her book is why. Why are some countries, regions, religions, organizations tight and others loose? How did they get that way?
The answer lies in the purpose of social norms. When people come together with a shared understanding and way to do things, they are in a position as a group to accomplish tasks they otherwise could not. Rituals and traditions tie us to each other for the group cohesion necessary for a functioning society.
Gelfand illustrates the above by citing several studies but never gets bogged down in academic-speak. As someone with an undergrad degree majoring in sociology, the sections of the book that chronicle various experiments reminded me of how clever social scientists need to be to test their hypotheses. Gelfand cites several, sometimes wacky, experiments to get at how people behave in the real world. Her own research gathered colleagues from around the world to carry out one of the largest studies on cultural norms to map out the tight-loose spectrum. The results allowed Gelfand to plot thirty-three nations on a tight-loose spectrum, with countries such as Pakistan, Singapore, and India on the tighter end and the Netherlands, Israel, and Ukraine on the looser side.
Given that social norms serve to help societies function, Gelfand hypothesized that countries that historically faced more adversity (invasions, famines, natural calamities) would form much tighter norms because this would allow them to overcome these extreme hardships. Her study confirmed that. Understanding the tight-loose framework provided me with a way to see the cultural variations that have always fascinated me.
Neither orientation is good or bad
There are pros and cons to both extremes of the spectrum. Gelfand’s research reveals that very loose cultures are more creative and open but tend towards being more disorderly. Tight cultures, on the other hand, thrive when it comes to having a comforting order and predictability, but they are less tolerant.
When Gelfand expands the framework to look at organizations, groups, and even social class, the tradeoffs between being tight or loose are even more relatable. Tight companies are very efficient and effective but may struggle with innovation because there isn’t the autonomy necessary among workers to bring forward new ideas and challenge leadership. Organizations that are too loose face other challenges. Innovative ideas abound, but the cohesiveness that’s required to execute and scale those initiatives isn’t as strong, making it difficult. Success comes from being able to employ tight strategies in specific circumstances and loose in others.
Like a new eyeglass prescription, the tight-loose framework allows you to see things that you knew were there but were a bit fuzzy to grasp. After reading the book, I find myself labelling all sorts of dynamics from this perspective. Global conflicts are easier to understand and anticipate. It’s been fascinating to read this book during a worldwide pandemic where countries have approached COVID-19 differently, and groups within countries are protesting lockdown measures. It’s another way to make sense of it all.
I’ve always felt somewhat sheepish about my more rigid orientation, but through the tight-loose lens, I see how it developed and the advantages it’s brought to me. I can also see how living with someone on the looser side for more than two decades has influenced my flexibility. So has travel, because it’s allowed me to see the variation in various grades.
So, how about you? Are you tight or loose?
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