What do you think?
Rate this book
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World
A celebrated social psychologist offers a radical new perspective on cultural differences that reveals why some countries, cultures, and individuals take rules more seriously and how following the rules influences the way we think and act.
In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, Michele Gelfand, “an engaging writer with intellectual range” (The New York Times Book Review), takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves. With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference—how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms. Just as DNA affects everything from eye color to height, our tight-loose social coding influences much of what we do.
Why are clocks in Germany so accurate while those in Brazil are frequently wrong? Why do New Zealand’s women have the highest number of sexual partners? Why are red and blue states really so divided? Why was the Daimler-Chrysler merger ill-fated from the start? Why is the driver of a Jaguar more likely to run a red light than the driver of a plumber’s van? Why does one spouse prize running a tight ship while the other refuses to sweat the small stuff?
In search of a common answer, Gelfand spent two decades conducting research in more than fifty countries. Across all age groups, family variations, social classes, businesses, states, and nationalities, she has identified a primal pattern that can trigger cooperation or conflict. Her fascinating conclusion: behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat.
“A useful and engaging take on human behavior” (Kirkus Reviews) with an approach that is consistently riveting, Rule Makers, Ruler Breakers thrusts many of the puzzling attitudes and actions we observe into sudden and surprising clarity.
In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, Michele Gelfand, “an engaging writer with intellectual range” (The New York Times Book Review), takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves. With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference—how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms. Just as DNA affects everything from eye color to height, our tight-loose social coding influences much of what we do.
Why are clocks in Germany so accurate while those in Brazil are frequently wrong? Why do New Zealand’s women have the highest number of sexual partners? Why are red and blue states really so divided? Why was the Daimler-Chrysler merger ill-fated from the start? Why is the driver of a Jaguar more likely to run a red light than the driver of a plumber’s van? Why does one spouse prize running a tight ship while the other refuses to sweat the small stuff?
In search of a common answer, Gelfand spent two decades conducting research in more than fifty countries. Across all age groups, family variations, social classes, businesses, states, and nationalities, she has identified a primal pattern that can trigger cooperation or conflict. Her fascinating conclusion: behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat.
“A useful and engaging take on human behavior” (Kirkus Reviews) with an approach that is consistently riveting, Rule Makers, Ruler Breakers thrusts many of the puzzling attitudes and actions we observe into sudden and surprising clarity.
384 pages, ebook
First published September 11, 2018
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 133 reviews
October 13, 2018
Uma ótima ideia que achei esticada demais e aplicada demais como a única explicação.
Michele Gelfand é uma psicóloga que pesquisa sobre um aspecto cultural bem particular, o eixo tightness-looseness, algo como regrado-desregrado ou tenso-relaxado. É o traço que define culturas ou pessoas mais restritas, que seguem muitas regras e protocolos, como a cultura japonesa, ou culturas e pessoas mais relaxadas, com menos protocolos, como a brasileira. E discute como isso se desdobra em culturas nacionais, empresariais ou mesmo familiares.
Ela passa o livro todo discutindo o que acontece em culturas mais tensas, que se baseiam muito em regras para funcionar, com protocolos de como as pessoas devem se comportar e dependem de respeito e deferência à autoridade. E o que acontece em culturas mais relaxadas, que dão espaço para as pessoas agirem por conta própria, são mais flexíveis em relação à regras e valorizam mais resultado do que protocolo.
A discussão em si é muito legal e pensar nesse eixo de mais regrado ou mais relaxado (meu caso) me ajudou a entender muito a minha diferença e interação com outras pessoas. Especialmente com aquelas que tendem a ser mais regradas. E também ajudou a entender o valor de outras culturas, especialmente as mais distantes da brasileira, onde cresci.
Mas acho que ela força demais a barra no quando diz que essa característica explica sobre culturas e países, sem levar em conta várias outras coisas como valores conservadores, estabilidade econômica e afins. Parece que ela tem o martelo do tightness-looseness na mão e todos os problemas viram pregos. Outro ponto que acabou cansando no livro e teria me feito deixar de lado se estivesse lendo (e não ouvindo) é o quanto ela estica o argumento, puxa exemplos e descreve situações bem além do necessário, para depois aplicar o conceito. Senti que é mais um caso de uma boa ideia esticada demais para caber em um livro. Talvez um bom texto sobre o assunto já seja suficiente para entender o que ela defende.
Michele Gelfand é uma psicóloga que pesquisa sobre um aspecto cultural bem particular, o eixo tightness-looseness, algo como regrado-desregrado ou tenso-relaxado. É o traço que define culturas ou pessoas mais restritas, que seguem muitas regras e protocolos, como a cultura japonesa, ou culturas e pessoas mais relaxadas, com menos protocolos, como a brasileira. E discute como isso se desdobra em culturas nacionais, empresariais ou mesmo familiares.
Ela passa o livro todo discutindo o que acontece em culturas mais tensas, que se baseiam muito em regras para funcionar, com protocolos de como as pessoas devem se comportar e dependem de respeito e deferência à autoridade. E o que acontece em culturas mais relaxadas, que dão espaço para as pessoas agirem por conta própria, são mais flexíveis em relação à regras e valorizam mais resultado do que protocolo.
A discussão em si é muito legal e pensar nesse eixo de mais regrado ou mais relaxado (meu caso) me ajudou a entender muito a minha diferença e interação com outras pessoas. Especialmente com aquelas que tendem a ser mais regradas. E também ajudou a entender o valor de outras culturas, especialmente as mais distantes da brasileira, onde cresci.
Mas acho que ela força demais a barra no quando diz que essa característica explica sobre culturas e países, sem levar em conta várias outras coisas como valores conservadores, estabilidade econômica e afins. Parece que ela tem o martelo do tightness-looseness na mão e todos os problemas viram pregos. Outro ponto que acabou cansando no livro e teria me feito deixar de lado se estivesse lendo (e não ouvindo) é o quanto ela estica o argumento, puxa exemplos e descreve situações bem além do necessário, para depois aplicar o conceito. Senti que é mais um caso de uma boa ideia esticada demais para caber em um livro. Talvez um bom texto sobre o assunto já seja suficiente para entender o que ela defende.
October 2, 2018
Unscientific snake oil for the gullible. All these bold statements are based on a short (6 questions) questionaire locally filled in 2010 by small samples of mostly female psychology students grading what they thought was the general importance of social norms in their own country, which produces a metric for overall tightness. Yep. And, true to form, the author touts in the text as universal truths the results of several social psychology experiments which have been either disproved (e.g. the marshmallow test) or at least seriously questioned.
February 9, 2019
The author found a nice hammer and this book is a huge list of nails.
May 7, 2020
I heard Gelfand on a podcast talking about this book. I loved that conversation, so I went into this book with high expectations, especially after seeing who blurbed it (Steven Pinker, Paul Bloom, Daniel Gilbert, etc). Unfortunately I found the book to be incredibly frustrating.
The premise is intuitive and straightforward: There are both implicit norms and explicit rules in societies and these vary across the globe. Tight cultures have more of these norms and rules than loose cultures. That makes sense. The problem is when she tries to tie this idea to macro events, often through sweeping generalizations and the citation of questionable psychological studies.
How does her idea of tight vs loose explain macro events like Brexit, Trump, Immigration? Frame everything as binary, throw in a "tend to..." to cover yourself. Pick overly simplistic psychological studies that make your case (e.g. Three year olds from low socio-economic households respond to puppets differently than those from high socio-economic households). Extrapolate that result to a larger subset of the population (all low socioeconomic households), again, throw in a "tendency towards..." to avoid valid criticism. Keep doing this until you get to the point where you are explaining large macro differences across countries, like attitudes towards immigration, with a single variable.
I was hoping for something similar to Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, but this is not that kind of book.
The premise is intuitive and straightforward: There are both implicit norms and explicit rules in societies and these vary across the globe. Tight cultures have more of these norms and rules than loose cultures. That makes sense. The problem is when she tries to tie this idea to macro events, often through sweeping generalizations and the citation of questionable psychological studies.
How does her idea of tight vs loose explain macro events like Brexit, Trump, Immigration? Frame everything as binary, throw in a "tend to..." to cover yourself. Pick overly simplistic psychological studies that make your case (e.g. Three year olds from low socio-economic households respond to puppets differently than those from high socio-economic households). Extrapolate that result to a larger subset of the population (all low socioeconomic households), again, throw in a "tendency towards..." to avoid valid criticism. Keep doing this until you get to the point where you are explaining large macro differences across countries, like attitudes towards immigration, with a single variable.
I was hoping for something similar to Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, but this is not that kind of book.
July 3, 2018
This is an interesting and informative book. If you enjoy books that explore culture, social psychology and human behavior while successfully avoiding being too heavy or abstruse you will enjoy Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. Cultural psychologist and author Michele Gelfand has spent more than 20 years studying and researching culture in over fifty countries. She provides entertaining insight and explanatory studies revealing the curious and compelling reasons individuals may think and act as they do - and the reasons might just surprise you!
December 20, 2020
Pseudo Science. Author trivializes very complicated issues like geopolitics by applying the ‘Goldilocks’ method to it. ‘Not too hard, not to soft, but just right ‘. She posits ‘everything in moderation’ as the thesis for the entire book. She just continues with example after example , comparing and contrasting , then explaining with how moderation would be best for the world. By stating the obvious, I don’t believe this book has any value or will stand the test of time. Is the author and publisher trying to ride the coattails of Malcolm Gladwells genre of success?
August 31, 2022
Rules makers, rules makers
بالأعراف والقوانين ننتقل من عالم الأفراد المشتّت إلى عالم المجتمع. تجمعنا أعرافٌ تشكّل المادة اللاصقة التي تجعلنا كلًّا متشابهًا ومترابطًا.
قد تكون هذه الأعراف شرائع إلهية تبني أمّة، أو ثقافة تجمع قومًا، أو قوانين حكومية تنشئ شعبًا لدولة، وقد تكون مجرد عادات وأعرافًا اجتماعية تلتحم بها وحولها قبيلة أو عائلة.
وجود تلك الأعراف/ القوانين عادي وطبيعي. لكن مقدار الحزم في فرض تلك القوانين على الناس هو الفارق بين مجتمع ومجتمع. ونعرف مقدار الحزم بشدّة العقوبة التي يفرضها ذاك المجتمع على المارق والمخالف.
وكما هي الحال في كلّ الظواهر الاجتماعية؛ فإن للحزم أبعاده وآثاره وللتراخي أبعاده وتمظهراته وآثاره. يدرس هذا الكتاب تلك الأبعاد والظواهر والآثار، على مستوى الفرد والمجتمع والدولة والأمّة. ولا يخفى أنّها جميعًا تمتد على مدىً (طيف) ولا تقف على طرفي نقيض، أبيض وأسود!
وتطرح الكاتبة رؤيتها بضرورة البحث عن منطقة وسطى، والعمل على إيجاد توازن ما بين الحزم والتراخي من جهة أخرى.
الكتاب ماتع مفيد ويستحق القراءة، والعدسة التي تنظّر لها وتنظُر منها تستحقّ العناية والنقاش.
بالأعراف والقوانين ننتقل من عالم الأفراد المشتّت إلى عالم المجتمع. تجمعنا أعرافٌ تشكّل المادة اللاصقة التي تجعلنا كلًّا متشابهًا ومترابطًا.
قد تكون هذه الأعراف شرائع إلهية تبني أمّة، أو ثقافة تجمع قومًا، أو قوانين حكومية تنشئ شعبًا لدولة، وقد تكون مجرد عادات وأعرافًا اجتماعية تلتحم بها وحولها قبيلة أو عائلة.
وجود تلك الأعراف/ القوانين عادي وطبيعي. لكن مقدار الحزم في فرض تلك القوانين على الناس هو الفارق بين مجتمع ومجتمع. ونعرف مقدار الحزم بشدّة العقوبة التي يفرضها ذاك المجتمع على المارق والمخالف.
وكما هي الحال في كلّ الظواهر الاجتماعية؛ فإن للحزم أبعاده وآثاره وللتراخي أبعاده وتمظهراته وآثاره. يدرس هذا الكتاب تلك الأبعاد والظواهر والآثار، على مستوى الفرد والمجتمع والدولة والأمّة. ولا يخفى أنّها جميعًا تمتد على مدىً (طيف) ولا تقف على طرفي نقيض، أبيض وأسود!
وتطرح الكاتبة رؤيتها بضرورة البحث عن منطقة وسطى، والعمل على إيجاد توازن ما بين الحزم والتراخي من جهة أخرى.
الكتاب ماتع مفيد ويستحق القراءة، والعدسة التي تنظّر لها وتنظُر منها تستحقّ العناية والنقاش.
October 25, 2018
The best way to introduce this book is to reproduce the opening sentences of the introduction: It's 11:00 pm in Berlin. Not a single car is in sight, yet a pedestrian waits patiently at the crossing until the light turns green. Meanwhile, four thousand miles away in Boston, at rush hour, commuters flout the 'Do Not Cross' sign as they dart in front of cabs.
Michele Gelfand is introduced as a 'cultural psychologist.' In this book she analyses different nations, cultures and societies on a tight-loose axis. A culture like Germany, where pedestrians follow rules relating to traffic lights even when there is no traffic, is termed 'tight'; while one like Boston is termed 'loose'.
Having introduced the concept the author goes on to analyse different social and cultural phenomena around the world along the tight-loose axis. The rise of Trump, Putin, Erdogan is explained by positing that cultures that feel threatened - whether by economic downturn, immigration, or major change in balance of power - become tighter and tight culture have a marked preference for autocratic leaders, as opposed to the chaos of democracy.
The analysis makes interesting reading, and there are a few convincing insights. What spoiled the book for me was the classification of India as tight. As an Indian with some experience of the West I would classify my culture as loose. The following extracts from the book about tight and loose cultures simple do not apply to India as a tight culture:
In addition to having less crime, tight nations tend to be more organised and cleaner.
In addition to generally being cleaner, tight cultures tend to have less noise pollution.
Transportation tends to be more coordinated in tight cultures. If you live in a tighter culture, you’re more likely to be able to depend on the preset schedules of public transport, whereas if you’re in a loose culture, you should expect delays.
And in Japan, where foreigners make up only 2 per cent of the population, many landlords have a ‘no foreigners’ policy, Indians, in fact, love to rent out their property to foreigners - from developed countries.
On the other hand, these statements do fit India's classification as tight:
And the tighter a country is, the more likely it is to require school uniforms.
Some of the highest scores for alcohol consumption in litres per capita also came from loose countries such as Spain, Estonia and New Zealand. Residents of tight nations such as Singapore, India and China score low on alcohol consumption rates.
Loose nations also have lower gross national savings
Take another stigma that might not be as obvious: marital status. Are you single, married or divorced? In loose cultures, such distinctions are comparably unimportant.
When people from all over the world were asked if they would tolerate immigrants as their neighbours, it was the loose cultures, including Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, that were the most welcoming, whereas the tightest cultures – such as Malaysia, South Korea and Turkey – were not.
Generally, people in tight cultures are more likely to believe their culture is superior and needs to be protected from foreign influences.
So, the picture is confusing, and the author doesn't say much to clear the confusion.
I would very much welcome comments from knowledgeable readers who happen to read this review if they have any explanation for this confusion, or if they can refer me to an article addressing India's position on the tight-loose spectrum.
Michele Gelfand is introduced as a 'cultural psychologist.' In this book she analyses different nations, cultures and societies on a tight-loose axis. A culture like Germany, where pedestrians follow rules relating to traffic lights even when there is no traffic, is termed 'tight'; while one like Boston is termed 'loose'.
Having introduced the concept the author goes on to analyse different social and cultural phenomena around the world along the tight-loose axis. The rise of Trump, Putin, Erdogan is explained by positing that cultures that feel threatened - whether by economic downturn, immigration, or major change in balance of power - become tighter and tight culture have a marked preference for autocratic leaders, as opposed to the chaos of democracy.
The analysis makes interesting reading, and there are a few convincing insights. What spoiled the book for me was the classification of India as tight. As an Indian with some experience of the West I would classify my culture as loose. The following extracts from the book about tight and loose cultures simple do not apply to India as a tight culture:
In addition to having less crime, tight nations tend to be more organised and cleaner.
In addition to generally being cleaner, tight cultures tend to have less noise pollution.
Transportation tends to be more coordinated in tight cultures. If you live in a tighter culture, you’re more likely to be able to depend on the preset schedules of public transport, whereas if you’re in a loose culture, you should expect delays.
And in Japan, where foreigners make up only 2 per cent of the population, many landlords have a ‘no foreigners’ policy, Indians, in fact, love to rent out their property to foreigners - from developed countries.
On the other hand, these statements do fit India's classification as tight:
And the tighter a country is, the more likely it is to require school uniforms.
Some of the highest scores for alcohol consumption in litres per capita also came from loose countries such as Spain, Estonia and New Zealand. Residents of tight nations such as Singapore, India and China score low on alcohol consumption rates.
Loose nations also have lower gross national savings
Take another stigma that might not be as obvious: marital status. Are you single, married or divorced? In loose cultures, such distinctions are comparably unimportant.
When people from all over the world were asked if they would tolerate immigrants as their neighbours, it was the loose cultures, including Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, that were the most welcoming, whereas the tightest cultures – such as Malaysia, South Korea and Turkey – were not.
Generally, people in tight cultures are more likely to believe their culture is superior and needs to be protected from foreign influences.
So, the picture is confusing, and the author doesn't say much to clear the confusion.
I would very much welcome comments from knowledgeable readers who happen to read this review if they have any explanation for this confusion, or if they can refer me to an article addressing India's position on the tight-loose spectrum.
January 22, 2019
Gelfand is a cultural psychologist best known for her tightness-looseness theory of culture. It is the difference between Sparta (movie 100) and Athens (Painting School of Athens); in more modern times, Singapore (no gums please) and New Zealand (total freedom). Wow I didn’t know we in Singapore are Spartans!
In general, Asian countries are tight and Western countries are loose. Exception is Germany and Japan which are also tight. However, even in America there ar me tight states (the South) and loose ones (California and New York).
Tight countries are safe, clean, orderly and united. Loose countries are messy, more dangerous and not as clean. The flip side is that tight countries are not as tolerant to deviants and immigrants, and are less creative. Loose countries are simply more fun.
The rich has a looser culture, because money can give second chances, and because jobs associated with the rich require creativity and flexibility. The poor has a tighter culture, because they work in jobs where mistakes are not tolerated and can be dangerous.
Cultures are tight in general when space is tight (so that we don’t bother others), there is external threat (so that we can fight it), or lack of resources (so they must be rationed).
Tightness and looseness can fluctuate, and America went tighter after 911 and Boston bombings. The public thus allowed the government more power to check on citizens and foreigners who can post a threat.
Companies have tight-loose cultures too; manufacturing parts tighter, advertising, marketing and PR parts looser. Mergers of divergent companies end in loss of values.
Clearly there is a sweet spot for tightness-looseness. After the collapse of the Soviets and Arab spring countries, the people yearned for order because chaos ensued. The rise of dictators and ISIS certainly make life better, at least at first. Putin is often credited with giving order back to Russia. More alarmingly, a lot of Western countries are voting for populist leaders who promises a return to the ‘Good Ol’ Days’, even in America, and in Hungry, Turkey and Poland. Brexit can also be seen as a result of the yearning for tightness.
We can all be better citizens of the world if we remove our echo chamber social media and instead learn about people different from us.
A solid book! However I do wonder whether the driver in chaotic Jakarta is tight or loose? Certainly even the same person can be tight or loose depending on the situation. Also looseness may just be a privilege of the well to do, as we can see when life gets tough, the people turn tight.
In general, Asian countries are tight and Western countries are loose. Exception is Germany and Japan which are also tight. However, even in America there ar me tight states (the South) and loose ones (California and New York).
Tight countries are safe, clean, orderly and united. Loose countries are messy, more dangerous and not as clean. The flip side is that tight countries are not as tolerant to deviants and immigrants, and are less creative. Loose countries are simply more fun.
The rich has a looser culture, because money can give second chances, and because jobs associated with the rich require creativity and flexibility. The poor has a tighter culture, because they work in jobs where mistakes are not tolerated and can be dangerous.
Cultures are tight in general when space is tight (so that we don’t bother others), there is external threat (so that we can fight it), or lack of resources (so they must be rationed).
Tightness and looseness can fluctuate, and America went tighter after 911 and Boston bombings. The public thus allowed the government more power to check on citizens and foreigners who can post a threat.
Companies have tight-loose cultures too; manufacturing parts tighter, advertising, marketing and PR parts looser. Mergers of divergent companies end in loss of values.
Clearly there is a sweet spot for tightness-looseness. After the collapse of the Soviets and Arab spring countries, the people yearned for order because chaos ensued. The rise of dictators and ISIS certainly make life better, at least at first. Putin is often credited with giving order back to Russia. More alarmingly, a lot of Western countries are voting for populist leaders who promises a return to the ‘Good Ol’ Days’, even in America, and in Hungry, Turkey and Poland. Brexit can also be seen as a result of the yearning for tightness.
We can all be better citizens of the world if we remove our echo chamber social media and instead learn about people different from us.
A solid book! However I do wonder whether the driver in chaotic Jakarta is tight or loose? Certainly even the same person can be tight or loose depending on the situation. Also looseness may just be a privilege of the well to do, as we can see when life gets tough, the people turn tight.
August 3, 2020
Consider clocks. In a “tight” culture, the clocks are mostly right and also mostly consistent—like within 30 seconds of each other. In a “looser” culture, the clocks may not be right or may vary up to two minutes. Coming from a relatively loose culture, who cares about two minutes?
People care. When I interact with Japanese students, who come from a tight culture relative to mine, they nearly always mention punctuality. They also nearly always express frustration that they cannot plan around buses and public transportation because it can be off by as much as five minutes. They nearly always comment on how messy Canada is. And here’s the thing, although “tight” and “loose” sound like they are just reflecting psychological dispositions, my psychologically “fluid” and “open to new experiences” Japanese students will still comment with polite irritation on these differences. To some extent, a culture emerges and influences our psychological dispositions.
This doesn’t mean that fixed and fluid people are erased, though they often seem to make their way to like minded communities within their nation. At some margin, liberals in Arizona wind up in Tucson, creative people wind up in a part of their city called the “village,” Tara Westover winds up in a university, or homosexuals move to San Francisco back in the day. They follow their muse. It also doesn’t mean that “fixed” mindset people are erased. They too wind up in the military, police forces, economics departments, or dentistry. They follow their "rules" for life. But I wonder if in every community a culture does eventually emerge in which one group becomes ascendent, its normative influence becomes slightly more pronounced, and the other group finds a sort of bastion. When Gelfand analyzes corporate culture, she points to organizations that try to have it both ways. They usually settle on either “structured looseness” (e.g. Google’s 70-20-10 rule) or “flexible tightness,” which sounded to me like principles and decision trees that give what is in my opinion an illusion of autonomy.
Here are three limits to tight/ loose.
Limit 1: How much do tight and loose really explain?
A harsh, unpredictable environment should lead to tightness. Violence should lead to tightness. Well, the Inuit obviously live in a harsh environment, but their culture is loose. Brazil is loose, but shouldn’t they be tight given their colonial history? Israel is loose, but you’d think they’d be tight given their immediately threatening neighbours and their living in a desert—Gelfand speculates that maybe Judaism’s questioning discourse explains the looseness. Cities have more people and a greater diversity of ethnicities than rural areas, but diversity, in this moment, leads to a looser culture.
Further, haven’t New Zealand and Taiwan, which are loose and tight respectively, both dealt with coronavirus relatively effectively and relatively similarly? In this case, culture seems less important than geographic determinism (they’re both islands) and trusted public institutions. Disease should trigger a "tightening" response, but most of the xenophobic nationalist leaders (who at first glance should advocate for cultural “tightening”) seem to have caused total disasters in their downplaying of the coronavirus threat. It seems natural to wonder why “tight” and “loose” matter if it’s so easy to find exceptions.
Limit 2: Tight and Loose can explain X and Not X.
People who live in poorer communities tend to live within tighter constraints and this seems to lead them to feel threat and to prefer tighter cultural norms. When we look at class, the richer classes seem to have greater security and to prefer looser norms. But men, heterosexuals, and whites (or someone who is all three) are likely to have greater power than women, homosexuals, or any minority population in the USA. But I would expect women, homosexuals, and some minority groups to, in the aggregate, prefer looser norms and straight white males to vote for tighter cultural norms. Might it be possible that men are more tightly triggered by threat? Gelfand can always explain contradictory dynamics in her scenarios, but to me the contradictions suggest a need for further research or other explanatory levers.
Limit 3: What is a culture?
Here are some cultural boundaries: international (e.g. the West), nation states, provinces, regions (e.g. the American South). Corporations can be cultures. If the culture is limited to one person (an analysis Gelfand also considers), we usually refer to this as psychology. But Gelfand looks at a culture and sees a counter culture, looks at a counter culture and within it can find another counter culture. What is the net effect of someone working in a loose organization like a bakery, in a loose part of a city, in a tight state of a tight country if there are hurricanes that year?
Limit 4: Isn't this a bit reductive?
I find fixed/ fluid analyses of individuals reductive, so the larger the group, the noisier our analysis will become and therefore the more cautious we should be of our conclusions. But this is less problematic if we can accept that we wrongly want an explanatory dial rather than a sort of mixing board of influences to explain human behavior.
All in all, I liked Rule Makers, Rule Breakers. In Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein suggests that our identities are stacking, to some extent artificially, but it’s difficult not to think that maybe we are less interested in mixing than we prefer. If so, perhaps some form of Neal Stephenson’s enclaves in The Diamond Age await us in some near future. We think of the enclaves today as a dystopia, but maybe we’ll enter them willingly and gratefully rather than “solving” polarization. Gelfand suggests that cultures that are too extremely loose or tight suffer higher rates of depression and suicide (having said that, her charts seem to reflect affluence more than culture), but I wonder if we're not really seeking the extremes so much as we want to live in mostly tight or mostly loose cultures.
3.5.
People care. When I interact with Japanese students, who come from a tight culture relative to mine, they nearly always mention punctuality. They also nearly always express frustration that they cannot plan around buses and public transportation because it can be off by as much as five minutes. They nearly always comment on how messy Canada is. And here’s the thing, although “tight” and “loose” sound like they are just reflecting psychological dispositions, my psychologically “fluid” and “open to new experiences” Japanese students will still comment with polite irritation on these differences. To some extent, a culture emerges and influences our psychological dispositions.
This doesn’t mean that fixed and fluid people are erased, though they often seem to make their way to like minded communities within their nation. At some margin, liberals in Arizona wind up in Tucson, creative people wind up in a part of their city called the “village,” Tara Westover winds up in a university, or homosexuals move to San Francisco back in the day. They follow their muse. It also doesn’t mean that “fixed” mindset people are erased. They too wind up in the military, police forces, economics departments, or dentistry. They follow their "rules" for life. But I wonder if in every community a culture does eventually emerge in which one group becomes ascendent, its normative influence becomes slightly more pronounced, and the other group finds a sort of bastion. When Gelfand analyzes corporate culture, she points to organizations that try to have it both ways. They usually settle on either “structured looseness” (e.g. Google’s 70-20-10 rule) or “flexible tightness,” which sounded to me like principles and decision trees that give what is in my opinion an illusion of autonomy.
Here are three limits to tight/ loose.
Limit 1: How much do tight and loose really explain?
A harsh, unpredictable environment should lead to tightness. Violence should lead to tightness. Well, the Inuit obviously live in a harsh environment, but their culture is loose. Brazil is loose, but shouldn’t they be tight given their colonial history? Israel is loose, but you’d think they’d be tight given their immediately threatening neighbours and their living in a desert—Gelfand speculates that maybe Judaism’s questioning discourse explains the looseness. Cities have more people and a greater diversity of ethnicities than rural areas, but diversity, in this moment, leads to a looser culture.
Further, haven’t New Zealand and Taiwan, which are loose and tight respectively, both dealt with coronavirus relatively effectively and relatively similarly? In this case, culture seems less important than geographic determinism (they’re both islands) and trusted public institutions. Disease should trigger a "tightening" response, but most of the xenophobic nationalist leaders (who at first glance should advocate for cultural “tightening”) seem to have caused total disasters in their downplaying of the coronavirus threat. It seems natural to wonder why “tight” and “loose” matter if it’s so easy to find exceptions.
Limit 2: Tight and Loose can explain X and Not X.
People who live in poorer communities tend to live within tighter constraints and this seems to lead them to feel threat and to prefer tighter cultural norms. When we look at class, the richer classes seem to have greater security and to prefer looser norms. But men, heterosexuals, and whites (or someone who is all three) are likely to have greater power than women, homosexuals, or any minority population in the USA. But I would expect women, homosexuals, and some minority groups to, in the aggregate, prefer looser norms and straight white males to vote for tighter cultural norms. Might it be possible that men are more tightly triggered by threat? Gelfand can always explain contradictory dynamics in her scenarios, but to me the contradictions suggest a need for further research or other explanatory levers.
Limit 3: What is a culture?
Here are some cultural boundaries: international (e.g. the West), nation states, provinces, regions (e.g. the American South). Corporations can be cultures. If the culture is limited to one person (an analysis Gelfand also considers), we usually refer to this as psychology. But Gelfand looks at a culture and sees a counter culture, looks at a counter culture and within it can find another counter culture. What is the net effect of someone working in a loose organization like a bakery, in a loose part of a city, in a tight state of a tight country if there are hurricanes that year?
Limit 4: Isn't this a bit reductive?
I find fixed/ fluid analyses of individuals reductive, so the larger the group, the noisier our analysis will become and therefore the more cautious we should be of our conclusions. But this is less problematic if we can accept that we wrongly want an explanatory dial rather than a sort of mixing board of influences to explain human behavior.
All in all, I liked Rule Makers, Rule Breakers. In Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein suggests that our identities are stacking, to some extent artificially, but it’s difficult not to think that maybe we are less interested in mixing than we prefer. If so, perhaps some form of Neal Stephenson’s enclaves in The Diamond Age await us in some near future. We think of the enclaves today as a dystopia, but maybe we’ll enter them willingly and gratefully rather than “solving” polarization. Gelfand suggests that cultures that are too extremely loose or tight suffer higher rates of depression and suicide (having said that, her charts seem to reflect affluence more than culture), but I wonder if we're not really seeking the extremes so much as we want to live in mostly tight or mostly loose cultures.
3.5.
January 14, 2023
I loved the (brief) parts of this book that discuss the “tight/loose” distinction of personality and family culture. Such a fun difference to notice and think about.
Applying this at a cultural level and thinking it has explanatory power felt absolutely ludicrous (and possibly dangerous) to me. For example, you’re really going to explain US Southern culture without reference to race or the enslavement of Africans? I would love to read a review of this book by a scholar of cultural studies, critical theory, and/or history.
Applying this at a cultural level and thinking it has explanatory power felt absolutely ludicrous (and possibly dangerous) to me. For example, you’re really going to explain US Southern culture without reference to race or the enslavement of Africans? I would love to read a review of this book by a scholar of cultural studies, critical theory, and/or history.
August 13, 2019
I stopped reading this book. It's awful. It's a mediocre college paper at best. I feel like there a lot of personal observations that are unnecessary. Stick to the science. Instead of providing a report with what I feel are questionable and sometimes stretched assumptions, give some anecdotes instead of "these 3 states are like this, but these 3 states are like that." If you can put up with that for 200+ pages, you're a better person than I. I tried more than a few times to keep reading, but after a few pages it was awful all over again and I remembered why I wanted to quit. I'm upset I spent $7 on this book and would ask for it back if I bought it directly.
After finally deciding to abandon this book, I read through the acknowledgements to see if maybe this was a thesis for a Masters or Doctoral candidate. Nope. Don't waste your time.
TL;DR: more regulation = tight and less regulation = loose. Like everything there's a trade off between tight/loose and positive/negatives, a yin and a yang. Common sense = don't read this book if you value your free time. Hey, maybe I did learn something about achieving the ideal yin and yang after all!
After finally deciding to abandon this book, I read through the acknowledgements to see if maybe this was a thesis for a Masters or Doctoral candidate. Nope. Don't waste your time.
TL;DR: more regulation = tight and less regulation = loose. Like everything there's a trade off between tight/loose and positive/negatives, a yin and a yang. Common sense = don't read this book if you value your free time. Hey, maybe I did learn something about achieving the ideal yin and yang after all!
August 28, 2019
I started off with a good impression of the book, as I had heard the author speak publicly and her talk was engaging. However, like many mainstream books on “sociology” or “psychology”, this book does not hold up to the standards of actual, rigorous, modern-day social science.
As the book progresses, you start to notice more and more cracks its conclusions. For the most part, the research it cites is often the result of self-declaration in surveys. For those psychology experiments that were done by actual researchers in the lab, there was no mention of double-blindness, statistical analysis, replication of results, or other methods to suggest scientific rigor. As a result, the book felt like a long, hand-waving explanation by a un-scientific researcher trying too hard to make their results match their hypothesis.
That said, the book wasn’t entirely uninteresting, and contained some accurate fun facts about certain nations or organizations ... I just wouldn’t suggest that you form your opinions of the world based on the analyses in this book.
As the book progresses, you start to notice more and more cracks its conclusions. For the most part, the research it cites is often the result of self-declaration in surveys. For those psychology experiments that were done by actual researchers in the lab, there was no mention of double-blindness, statistical analysis, replication of results, or other methods to suggest scientific rigor. As a result, the book felt like a long, hand-waving explanation by a un-scientific researcher trying too hard to make their results match their hypothesis.
That said, the book wasn’t entirely uninteresting, and contained some accurate fun facts about certain nations or organizations ... I just wouldn’t suggest that you form your opinions of the world based on the analyses in this book.
July 31, 2018
This is an incredibly accessible book that is both engaging and informative. It is peppered with interesting studies from social and cross-cultural psychology. Not only do you get to read many unique cultural tidbits from all over the world, but you also gain insight into how psychologists run studies and analyze human behavior. The framework of tightness-looseness is fascinating to understand. You'll learn all about the power of social norms and how they influence us on a daily basis. There is much to think about within these pages on why cultures differ, but also share a universal pattern.
November 7, 2019
I read this as part of the GW Alumni Book Club. Although I was familiar with a lot (but definitely not all) of the underlying information in this book, I thought that the particular lens of analysis of the book, “loose” or “tight” social norm and rules, was a really eye-opening way of examining a lot of conflicts- personal, national, and international. I highly recommend this one.
October 28, 2019
Watch a detailed review along with my favorite ideas and takeaways at:
https://youtu.be/rgrlVGr1Hkc
https://youtu.be/rgrlVGr1Hkc
December 7, 2022
Cultural differences are a lot like mines in a minefield: it only takes one unwitting, careless step to detonate them and unleash disastrous consequences. Some of us have trained ourselves to identify and navigate our way through them. Others, sadly, haven’t and find themselves injured and scarred by them time and time again.
As Rule Makers, Rule Breakers makes clear, we cannot afford to remain ignorant of them. These mines exist everywhere in our everyday world: in our romantic relationships, in our workplaces, in our communities, between social classes, within our own countries, and between countries. The main thesis of the book is that these cultural differences rest on a loose/tight spectrum. Loose cultures do not strongly adhere to rules and favor openness, individual expression, creativity, and informality while tight cultures prize order, strict adherence to rules, and conformity to ensure the wellbeing and happiness of the community. As the author convincingly argues, training ourselves to see this divide can help us better navigate cultural differences to avoid conflict and build stronger relationships with those around us.
Being able to do so is also more important now than ever before. The author illustrates how climate change, economic inequality, refugee crises, and the challenges of globalization have made our world into a pressure cooker, bringing tight and loose cultures into uncomfortably close proximity with each other. At the end of the book she suggests that as countries turn to ethnic nationalism and populism for relief from this pressure, it is possible our world could erupt into a period of unending international conflict that will leave us all poorer. That is, unless people across the loose/tight cultural divide sit down with each other to work together to address their differences and build a future that serves everyone’s needs. Reading Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, as well as other books like it such as The Culture Map, is a crucial first step we all need to take together to get to that point.
As Rule Makers, Rule Breakers makes clear, we cannot afford to remain ignorant of them. These mines exist everywhere in our everyday world: in our romantic relationships, in our workplaces, in our communities, between social classes, within our own countries, and between countries. The main thesis of the book is that these cultural differences rest on a loose/tight spectrum. Loose cultures do not strongly adhere to rules and favor openness, individual expression, creativity, and informality while tight cultures prize order, strict adherence to rules, and conformity to ensure the wellbeing and happiness of the community. As the author convincingly argues, training ourselves to see this divide can help us better navigate cultural differences to avoid conflict and build stronger relationships with those around us.
Being able to do so is also more important now than ever before. The author illustrates how climate change, economic inequality, refugee crises, and the challenges of globalization have made our world into a pressure cooker, bringing tight and loose cultures into uncomfortably close proximity with each other. At the end of the book she suggests that as countries turn to ethnic nationalism and populism for relief from this pressure, it is possible our world could erupt into a period of unending international conflict that will leave us all poorer. That is, unless people across the loose/tight cultural divide sit down with each other to work together to address their differences and build a future that serves everyone’s needs. Reading Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, as well as other books like it such as The Culture Map, is a crucial first step we all need to take together to get to that point.
July 30, 2018
I recently finished reading “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers” by Michele Gelfand, and I must say—I loved it. The book's got just the right balance of evidence and anecdotes to make it both engaging and informative. It offers fascinating insights into a hidden dimension of culture—“tightness-looseness”—shedding much needed light on domains ranging from politics, negotiations, workplace relations to family life.
The book describes the surprising ways in which the strength of social norms explains the differences in how nations, organizations, teams and individuals perform. I read the book in one sitting, and it was totally worth it.
"Rule Makers, Rule Breakers" is a wonderful and riveting read and I strongly encourage anyone interested in psychology, sociology, culture or politics to read it as soon as humanly possible.
The book describes the surprising ways in which the strength of social norms explains the differences in how nations, organizations, teams and individuals perform. I read the book in one sitting, and it was totally worth it.
"Rule Makers, Rule Breakers" is a wonderful and riveting read and I strongly encourage anyone interested in psychology, sociology, culture or politics to read it as soon as humanly possible.
July 3, 2019
The central study of this book is a bit questionable in methodology, and some of the analysis feels really shaky. That said, the general idea seems to make sense and offers an interesting framework for understanding culture. It’s especially strong on understanding authoritarianism. I also wish that some of the thinking around how to tighten loose cultures and loosen tight cultures was more robust. Still, in general it was a quick read that made you think.
December 27, 2020
الأعراف الاجتماعية
.
.
تخيل عالماً يتأخر فيه الناس دائماً. القطارات والحافلات والطائرات لا تلتزم بأي جدول زمني محدد. في المحادثات ، يقاطع الناس بعضهم البعض بشكل متكرر ، ولا يتواصلون بالعين أبدًا. يستيقظ الناس متى شاءوا ويغادرون منازلهم بالملابس أو بدونها. في المطاعم - التي تفتح في أي وقت - يطلب الناس طعامًا غير موجود في قائمة الطعام ، يمضغون وأفواههم مفتوحة ، ويتجشأون كثيرًا . استقل مصعدًا مزدحمًا وستجد الناس يغنون ويهزون مظلاتهم المبللة على بعضهم البعض ويواجهون الاتجاه الخاطئ. في المدارس ، يتحدث الطلاب على هواتفهم طوال المحاضرات ، ويطلقون نكات على المدرسين ، ويغشون علانية في الامتحانات. في شوارع المدينة ، لا أحد يهتم بإشارات المرور ، ويقود الناس على جانبي الطريق. يتناثر المشاة بلا هوادة ، ويسرقون دراجات الغرباء ، ويلعنون بصوت عالٍ. الجنس ليس مخصصًا للأماكن الخاصة مثل غرف النوم ؛ يحدث ذلك في وسائل النقل العام وفي مقاعد المنتزهات وفي دور السينما.
هذا عالم بلا أعراف اجتماعية - عالم لا يمتلك فيه الناس أي معايير سلوك متفق عليها اجتماعيًا.
لحسن الحظ ، يتمتع البشر - أكثر بكثير من أي نوع آخر - بقدرة خارقة على تطوير الأعراف الاجتماعية والحفاظ عليها وفرضها لتجنب السيناريوهات المذكورة أعلاه. في الواقع ، نحن كائنات ذات معايير فائقة: دون أن ندرك ذلك ، فإننا نقضي قدرًا كبيرًا من حياتنا في اتباع القواعد والأعراف الاجتماعية - حتى لو لم تكن القواعد منطقية.
تأمل في بعض الأمثلة: في مدينة نيويورك في اليوم الأخير من كل عام ، يقف الملايين من الناس في البرد القارص ويهتفون بعنف عند سقوط كرة من عمود. هناك ممارسات غريبة بنفس القدر في العام الجديد تتمثل في تناول اثني عشر حبة عنب في منتصف الليل بشغف كبير في إسبانيا ، وتناول ملعقة من العدس من أجل حسن الحظ في تشيلي ، وملء الأسلاك الشائكة بمواد قابلة للاشتعال وأرجحتها في اسكتلندا. وفي كل عام ، يحتشد الآلاف من الناس بحماس في الملاعب للتعبير عن فرحتهم ، والصياح ، وحتى الصراخ وهم يشاهدون أشخاصًا آخرين يتعاملون مع بعضهم البعض ، أو يعزفون الموسيقى ، أو يروون النكات.
يتم تنفيذ هذه الإجراءات الروتينية في الغالب في مجموعات كبيرة ، ولكن العديد من سلوكياتنا التي لا تحظى بالتشجيع من الجماهير تكون غريبة تمامًا. لماذا ترتدي النساء فستانًا أبيض عديم اللون في أحد أسعد أيام حياتهن؟ لماذا يقطع الناس أشجارًا جيدة تمامًا في ديسمبر ، ويزينونها ، ثم يتركونها لتموت في غرف معيشتهم؟ في الولايات المتحدة ، لماذا نمنع أطفالنا من التحدث إلى الغرباء ، ولكن في 31 أكتوبر ، نشجعهم على ارتداء الأزياء والتجول في الشوارع متوسلين الكبار للحصول على الحلوى؟ في جميع أنحاء العالم نلاحظ سلوكيات محيرة بنفس القدر. على سبيل المثال ، لماذا في أيام معينة في الهند يتجمع الملايين من الناس بفرح للخوض في نهر متجمد وملوث احتفالًا بكومبه ميلا؟
من الخارج ، غالبًا ما تبدو أعرافنا الاجتماعية غريبة ، لكن من الداخل ، نأخذها كأمر مسلم به. يتم تقنين بعض الأعراف الاجتماعية في لوائح وقوانين (طاعة لإشارات التوقف ؛ لا تسرق دراجة شخص ما) ؛ البعض الآخر غير معلن (لا تحدق في الناس في القطار ؛ غطِ فمك عند العطس). يمكن أن تظهر في سلوكيات يومية عادية ، مثل ارتداء الملابس أو قول مرحبًا عند الرد على الهاتف ، وداعًا عند إنهاء المكالمة. أو يمكن أن يتخذوا شكل السلوكيات الطقسية المكتسبة التي نؤديها في المناسبات الخاصة غير العادية ، مثل Kumbh Mela أو Halloween.
الأعراف الاجتماعية في كل مكان حولنا - نحن نتبعها باستمرار. بالنسبة لأنواعنا ، فإن الامتثال للمعايير الاجتماعية أمر طبيعي مثل السباحة في أعلى النهر بالنسبة لسمك السلمون. ومع ذلك _ ومن المفارقات _ في حين أن الأعراف الاجتماعية منتشرة في كل مكان ، إلا أنها غير مرئية إلى حد كبير. نادرًا ما يلاحظ الكثير منا مقدار سلوكنا المدفوع بهم - أو الأهم من ذلك ، مقدار ما نحتاج إليهم.
هذا لغز بشري عظيم. كيف قضينا حياتنا كلها تحت تأثير هذه القوى القوية ولم نفهم أو حتى نلاحظ تأثيرها؟
.
Michele Gelfand
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
.
.
تخيل عالماً يتأخر فيه الناس دائماً. القطارات والحافلات والطائرات لا تلتزم بأي جدول زمني محدد. في المحادثات ، يقاطع الناس بعضهم البعض بشكل متكرر ، ولا يتواصلون بالعين أبدًا. يستيقظ الناس متى شاءوا ويغادرون منازلهم بالملابس أو بدونها. في المطاعم - التي تفتح في أي وقت - يطلب الناس طعامًا غير موجود في قائمة الطعام ، يمضغون وأفواههم مفتوحة ، ويتجشأون كثيرًا . استقل مصعدًا مزدحمًا وستجد الناس يغنون ويهزون مظلاتهم المبللة على بعضهم البعض ويواجهون الاتجاه الخاطئ. في المدارس ، يتحدث الطلاب على هواتفهم طوال المحاضرات ، ويطلقون نكات على المدرسين ، ويغشون علانية في الامتحانات. في شوارع المدينة ، لا أحد يهتم بإشارات المرور ، ويقود الناس على جانبي الطريق. يتناثر المشاة بلا هوادة ، ويسرقون دراجات الغرباء ، ويلعنون بصوت عالٍ. الجنس ليس مخصصًا للأماكن الخاصة مثل غرف النوم ؛ يحدث ذلك في وسائل النقل العام وفي مقاعد المنتزهات وفي دور السينما.
هذا عالم بلا أعراف اجتماعية - عالم لا يمتلك فيه الناس أي معايير سلوك متفق عليها اجتماعيًا.
لحسن الحظ ، يتمتع البشر - أكثر بكثير من أي نوع آخر - بقدرة خارقة على تطوير الأعراف الاجتماعية والحفاظ عليها وفرضها لتجنب السيناريوهات المذكورة أعلاه. في الواقع ، نحن كائنات ذات معايير فائقة: دون أن ندرك ذلك ، فإننا نقضي قدرًا كبيرًا من حياتنا في اتباع القواعد والأعراف الاجتماعية - حتى لو لم تكن القواعد منطقية.
تأمل في بعض الأمثلة: في مدينة نيويورك في اليوم الأخير من كل عام ، يقف الملايين من الناس في البرد القارص ويهتفون بعنف عند سقوط كرة من عمود. هناك ممارسات غريبة بنفس القدر في العام الجديد تتمثل في تناول اثني عشر حبة عنب في منتصف الليل بشغف كبير في إسبانيا ، وتناول ملعقة من العدس من أجل حسن الحظ في تشيلي ، وملء الأسلاك الشائكة بمواد قابلة للاشتعال وأرجحتها في اسكتلندا. وفي كل عام ، يحتشد الآلاف من الناس بحماس في الملاعب للتعبير عن فرحتهم ، والصياح ، وحتى الصراخ وهم يشاهدون أشخاصًا آخرين يتعاملون مع بعضهم البعض ، أو يعزفون الموسيقى ، أو يروون النكات.
يتم تنفيذ هذه الإجراءات الروتينية في الغالب في مجموعات كبيرة ، ولكن العديد من سلوكياتنا التي لا تحظى بالتشجيع من الجماهير تكون غريبة تمامًا. لماذا ترتدي النساء فستانًا أبيض عديم اللون في أحد أسعد أيام حياتهن؟ لماذا يقطع الناس أشجارًا جيدة تمامًا في ديسمبر ، ويزينونها ، ثم يتركونها لتموت في غرف معيشتهم؟ في الولايات المتحدة ، لماذا نمنع أطفالنا من التحدث إلى الغرباء ، ولكن في 31 أكتوبر ، نشجعهم على ارتداء الأزياء والتجول في الشوارع متوسلين الكبار للحصول على الحلوى؟ في جميع أنحاء العالم نلاحظ سلوكيات محيرة بنفس القدر. على سبيل المثال ، لماذا في أيام معينة في الهند يتجمع الملايين من الناس بفرح للخوض في نهر متجمد وملوث احتفالًا بكومبه ميلا؟
من الخارج ، غالبًا ما تبدو أعرافنا الاجتماعية غريبة ، لكن من الداخل ، نأخذها كأمر مسلم به. يتم تقنين بعض الأعراف الاجتماعية في لوائح وقوانين (طاعة لإشارات التوقف ؛ لا تسرق دراجة شخص ما) ؛ البعض الآخر غير معلن (لا تحدق في الناس في القطار ؛ غطِ فمك عند العطس). يمكن أن تظهر في سلوكيات يومية عادية ، مثل ارتداء الملابس أو قول مرحبًا عند الرد على الهاتف ، وداعًا عند إنهاء المكالمة. أو يمكن أن يتخذوا شكل السلوكيات الطقسية المكتسبة التي نؤديها في المناسبات الخاصة غير العادية ، مثل Kumbh Mela أو Halloween.
الأعراف الاجتماعية في كل مكان حولنا - نحن نتبعها باستمرار. بالنسبة لأنواعنا ، فإن الامتثال للمعايير الاجتماعية أمر طبيعي مثل السباحة في أعلى النهر بالنسبة لسمك السلمون. ومع ذلك _ ومن المفارقات _ في حين أن الأعراف الاجتماعية منتشرة في كل مكان ، إلا أنها غير مرئية إلى حد كبير. نادرًا ما يلاحظ الكثير منا مقدار سلوكنا المدفوع بهم - أو الأهم من ذلك ، مقدار ما نحتاج إليهم.
هذا لغز بشري عظيم. كيف قضينا حياتنا كلها تحت تأثير هذه القوى القوية ولم نفهم أو حتى نلاحظ تأثيرها؟
.
Michele Gelfand
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
October 30, 2020
“Culture is at the heart of our divisions and we need to know more about it”
I once waited until 3:43 for a bus that was supposed to leave at 1:50 in Barbados. Waited 54 hours for a ferry to depart in Vanuatu, and was locked out of a lecture for being one minute late in Munich. I was refused entrance to a pizza place in Florence for wearing blue jeans, unable to board a train in Brussels for not being “on time”, though it would not leave for another 7 minutes, and was the only person in a black suit at a funeral in New Zealand. It seems like no matter where I go, it takes a while to get it right.
Michele Gelfand’s spectacular investigation of culture, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers - How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, helps us to understand why we are the way we are, why we do what we do and how the social norms of our culture, country school, organization and family dictate the way we perceive the world and how we act in it.
“Behavior, it turns out, largely depends on whether we live in a tight or loose culture.”
Rules Makers, Rule Breakers explores the tremendous diversity of human culture and customs. Explains the elements that lead cultures to the formation of their social norms and how these norms play out in the everyday decisions we make.
This book is based on the premise that all cultures in the world sit on a continuum of Tight and Loose. Tight cultures are the rule makers. These cultures value order and have little tolerance for deviance. The loose cultures of the world are the rule breakers. They favor independence and are highly permissive. Both cultures have advantages, drawbacks and a unique set of characteristics that explain how they came to be.
“We need a tight-loose Goldilocks balance.”
Told through a series of well-constructed experiments and deep global analysis, Rule Makers is a cipher for decoding behavior and understanding the roots of conflict in the world today. By perceptively shining a light on the cultural motivations behind our actions, we are better than ever before able to understand why people act the way they do.
“In an age of breathtaking global change, we need to be prepared to recondition our cultural reflexes.”
In a globe hopping cross cultural adventure, Gelfand has showed with startling clarity an improved way to view the world, yourself and the way people interact with others. If you want to understand the nature of geopolitical conflicts, why your neighbor mocks you for wearing white after labor day or why your boss shows up late to meetings and never apologizes Rule Makers, Rule Breakers is an enlightening lesson that seems long overdue.
Overall Score: 4 / 5
In a Sentence: Why and how our culture and its ‘tight or looseness’ is at the heart of our behavior and decisions.
I once waited until 3:43 for a bus that was supposed to leave at 1:50 in Barbados. Waited 54 hours for a ferry to depart in Vanuatu, and was locked out of a lecture for being one minute late in Munich. I was refused entrance to a pizza place in Florence for wearing blue jeans, unable to board a train in Brussels for not being “on time”, though it would not leave for another 7 minutes, and was the only person in a black suit at a funeral in New Zealand. It seems like no matter where I go, it takes a while to get it right.
Michele Gelfand’s spectacular investigation of culture, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers - How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, helps us to understand why we are the way we are, why we do what we do and how the social norms of our culture, country school, organization and family dictate the way we perceive the world and how we act in it.
“Behavior, it turns out, largely depends on whether we live in a tight or loose culture.”
Rules Makers, Rule Breakers explores the tremendous diversity of human culture and customs. Explains the elements that lead cultures to the formation of their social norms and how these norms play out in the everyday decisions we make.
This book is based on the premise that all cultures in the world sit on a continuum of Tight and Loose. Tight cultures are the rule makers. These cultures value order and have little tolerance for deviance. The loose cultures of the world are the rule breakers. They favor independence and are highly permissive. Both cultures have advantages, drawbacks and a unique set of characteristics that explain how they came to be.
“We need a tight-loose Goldilocks balance.”
Told through a series of well-constructed experiments and deep global analysis, Rule Makers is a cipher for decoding behavior and understanding the roots of conflict in the world today. By perceptively shining a light on the cultural motivations behind our actions, we are better than ever before able to understand why people act the way they do.
“In an age of breathtaking global change, we need to be prepared to recondition our cultural reflexes.”
In a globe hopping cross cultural adventure, Gelfand has showed with startling clarity an improved way to view the world, yourself and the way people interact with others. If you want to understand the nature of geopolitical conflicts, why your neighbor mocks you for wearing white after labor day or why your boss shows up late to meetings and never apologizes Rule Makers, Rule Breakers is an enlightening lesson that seems long overdue.
Overall Score: 4 / 5
In a Sentence: Why and how our culture and its ‘tight or looseness’ is at the heart of our behavior and decisions.
October 8, 2021
I find the concept of tight and loose cultures really useful in a lot of settings (it's great for explaining to couple clients why one of them cares about rules and punctuality so much more than the other). I didn't dig into the research, but I did get the general feeling that the author was trying to explain more with her theory than I felt it warranted, but as a framework, very useful. I would have loved more information on the intersections of communial cultures and loose cultures. She claims the concepts are totally distinct, but that feels . . . iffy to me, though I didn't look into the research so feel free to ignore my speculations.
April 25, 2023
I really find social psych fascinating but this book just seemed like a crash course (in the worst way possible) and over generalized too much. The author is definitely a notable researcher in the field, but the book just felt like she was listing off bullet points of examples and studies without going in depth. There’s other authors/psychologists who explore similar (if not the same) topics far better imo —Haidt, Gladwell, Kahneman
December 23, 2019
The concept of tight and loose cultures doesn't feel like it has a lot of practical applications. Sure, there are aspects of tight and loose cultures, but the nuance seems to get lost in trying to categorize. It is a distinction that is almost too broad to be useful.
March 21, 2024
Gelfand offers a useful metric for better understanding relationships at every level--in the home, at work, between companies, within and between states, and within and between nations. With the math tucked away in the notes at the end of the book, the body of the book is an easy read. Aside: the book was published 6 years ago and it's fascinating to read about how Putin and Israel looked before Ukraine and Gaza and also to read before COVID about how the world might react to a global pandemic.
April 10, 2019
This is a fascinating book about how cultural norms impact our lives. You might not get that from the title, but I'd say ignore the title and look at the subtitle. (The title, to me, sounds like it's some kind of business success book or something.)
Gelfand makes a strong case that cultural norms are a main contributor to human behaviour, especially human behaviour which at first seems irrational. So-called "cultural psychology" is an important missing component in understanding human behaviour, especially given the WEIRD problem in social psychology. (Subjects are predominantly western and educated and from industrialized, rich democratic countries.) Gelfand shows how her conceptual framework can help explain cross-cultural differences but even intra-cultural and class differences. It's pretty powerful stuff and there are moments of insight here which I really found eye-opening.
But I have a couple of issues with the book.
Gelfand doesn't claim that the tightness-looseness divide is the only explanation of behaviour, but she sure seeks to use it to explain just about everything. I am not just its explanatory power is quite as strong as she believes, particularly given the nature of some of the studies she cites. Now, I haven't gone through the sources, but some of the studies have really poor samples, and many of them are merely surveys. There is a lot of work here to be done, especially given the replication crisis. Is it not possible, perhaps even likely, that something deeper is going on here?
The other issue I have is one of the four sections of the book is basically devoted to business culture. I understand the utility of this chapter for managers and owners (some of whom appear to be her clients) but, for the rest of us, it's pretty boring stuff. I actually worried the book would only be about business culture for the remaining pages and was glad when she shifted back to more universal problems.
Overall, I found the book insightful and I suspect it's pretty important. I just want to hedge my recommendation a bit because I'm not sure the studies are quite as conclusive as she makes them sound give the sample size and the likely fact that most of them have not been replicated. Still, even thinking about sociopolitical problems in this light is more helpful than not thinking about them in this light, even if the fundamental reasons for the behaviour might be slightly different than what she claims.
For anyone interested in psychology, it's a must read.
Gelfand makes a strong case that cultural norms are a main contributor to human behaviour, especially human behaviour which at first seems irrational. So-called "cultural psychology" is an important missing component in understanding human behaviour, especially given the WEIRD problem in social psychology. (Subjects are predominantly western and educated and from industrialized, rich democratic countries.) Gelfand shows how her conceptual framework can help explain cross-cultural differences but even intra-cultural and class differences. It's pretty powerful stuff and there are moments of insight here which I really found eye-opening.
But I have a couple of issues with the book.
Gelfand doesn't claim that the tightness-looseness divide is the only explanation of behaviour, but she sure seeks to use it to explain just about everything. I am not just its explanatory power is quite as strong as she believes, particularly given the nature of some of the studies she cites. Now, I haven't gone through the sources, but some of the studies have really poor samples, and many of them are merely surveys. There is a lot of work here to be done, especially given the replication crisis. Is it not possible, perhaps even likely, that something deeper is going on here?
The other issue I have is one of the four sections of the book is basically devoted to business culture. I understand the utility of this chapter for managers and owners (some of whom appear to be her clients) but, for the rest of us, it's pretty boring stuff. I actually worried the book would only be about business culture for the remaining pages and was glad when she shifted back to more universal problems.
Overall, I found the book insightful and I suspect it's pretty important. I just want to hedge my recommendation a bit because I'm not sure the studies are quite as conclusive as she makes them sound give the sample size and the likely fact that most of them have not been replicated. Still, even thinking about sociopolitical problems in this light is more helpful than not thinking about them in this light, even if the fundamental reasons for the behaviour might be slightly different than what she claims.
For anyone interested in psychology, it's a must read.
March 2, 2024
As a Poli Sci B.Sc. graduate, I do love a framework. This one boils our messy world down to “loose” (open, tolerant, creative) vs. “tight” (orderly, predictable, cohesive). During and after reading it, I couldn’t help but view the world, small and big, through this lens. It helped me recognize which parts of my own life and thinking I apply looseness or tightness, and to understand others’ perspectives in ways that previously have baffled me.
I walk away from this reading experience with the conviction that we need a balance, which is undoubtedly complex to achieve.
I walk away from this reading experience with the conviction that we need a balance, which is undoubtedly complex to achieve.
June 16, 2020
There are two types of people in the world: those who see dichotomies everywhere, and those who don't. An interesting lens for viewing cultures and social groups, but just as with all (ha) blanket statements and compartmentalizations, there's more nuance than the author lets on. Anyway, still something to think about, especially the section on class divisions (though she does ignore working class immigrant communities - like I said, lacks nuance).
November 21, 2018
Takes an interesting idea and TED talks it to death.
December 26, 2021
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Culture Wires Our Minds, Shapes Our Nations, and Drives Our Differences (Hardcover)
by Michele Gelfand
heard MG on radio Freakonomics https://freakonomics.com/podcast/amer...
SOURCES
Michele Gelfand, professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African-American studies at Duke University.
Joe Henrich, professor and chair of evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
Gert Jan Hofstede, professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University.
RESOURCES
“The Relationship Between Cultural Tightness–Looseness and COVID-19 Cases and Deaths: A Global Analysis,” by Michele J. Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, Xinyue Pan, Dana Nau, Dylan Pieper, Emmy Denison, Munqith Dagher, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Chi-Yue Chiu, and Mo Wang (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021).
“States of Emergency: The Most Disaster-Prone States in the US,” by Doug Whiteman (MoneyWise, 2021).
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joe Henrich (2020).
“A Global Analysis of Cultural Tightness in Non-Industrial Societies,” by Joshua Conrad Jackson, Michele Gelfand, and Carol R. Ember (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2020).
“Have You Tried to Help Your Pet Lose Weight? You Aren’t Alone as Most Cats and Dogs in the U.S. are Overweight,” by Marina Pitofsky (USA Today, 2019).
“The Loosening of American Culture Over 200 Years is Associated With a Creativity–Order Trade-Off,” by Joshua Conrad Jackson, Michele Gelfand, Soham De, and Amber Fox (Nature Human Behaviour, 2019).
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, by Michele Gelfand (2018).
“Speaking a Tone Language Enhances Musical Pitch Perception in 3–5-Year-Olds,” by Sarah C. Creel, Mengxing Weng, Genyue Fu, Gail D. Heyman, and Kang Lee (Developmental Science, 2017).
The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter, Joe Henrich (2015).
“Culture and R2” by Cheol S. Eun, Lingling Wang, and Steven C. Xiao (Journal of Financial Economics, 2015).
“Tightness–Looseness Across the 50 United States,” by Jesse R. Harrington and Michele J. Gelfand (PNAS, 2014).
“The Müller-Lyer Illusion in a Computational Model of Biological Object Recognition,” by Astrid Zeman, Oliver Obst, Kevin R. Brooks, and Anina N. Rich (PLOS One, 2013).
“Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types,” by Dahlia Lithwick (Slate, 2012).
“Egypt: Crime Soars 200 Per Cent Since Hosni Mubarak Was Ousted,” by Our Foreign Staff (The Telegraph, 2011).
“The Weirdest People in the World?” by Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010).
“Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance,” by Hannah Riley Bowles and Michele Gelfand (Psychological Science, 2009).
“Asch Experiment,” by Saul McLeod (CommonLit, 2008).
“The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American,” by Jeffrey J. Arnett (American Psychologist, 2008).
“Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities,” by Charles Bellemare, Sabine Kröger, and Arthur Van Soest (Econometrica, 2008).
“Westerners and Easterners See the World Differently,” by Zeeya Merali (NewScientist, 2005).
“Rethinking the Nation’s First Suburb,” by Bruce Lambert (The New York Times, 2005).
“‘Economic Man’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies,” by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Richard McElreath, Michael Alvard, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Natalie Smith Henrich, Kim Hill, Francisco Gil-White, Michael Gurven, Frank W. Marlowe, John Q. Patton, and David Tracer (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005).
“Ultimatum Game with Ethnicity Manipulation: Problems Faced Doing Field Economic Experiments and Their Solutions,” by Francisco J. Gil-White (Field Methods, 2004).
“George Bush and the Gulf War of 1991,” by H. W. Brands (Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2004).
“Homo reciprocans,” by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (Behavioural Science, 2002).
“Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon,” by Joseph Henrich (The American Economic Review, 2000).
“U.S. Student Tells of Pain Of His Caning In Singapore,” by Reuters (The New York Times, 1994).
“Singapore’s Relations With U.S. Still Sore,” by William Branigin (The Washington Post, 1994).
“Clinton Decries Planned Singapore Flogging of American,” by Ron Fournier (AP News, 1994).
“Mr. Bush’s Extra Mile for Peace,” (The New York Times, 1990).
“The Differences Between ‘Tight’ and ‘Loose’ Societies,” by Pertii J. Pelto (Trans-action, 1968).
by Michele Gelfand
heard MG on radio Freakonomics https://freakonomics.com/podcast/amer...
SOURCES
Michele Gelfand, professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African-American studies at Duke University.
Joe Henrich, professor and chair of evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
Gert Jan Hofstede, professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University.
RESOURCES
“The Relationship Between Cultural Tightness–Looseness and COVID-19 Cases and Deaths: A Global Analysis,” by Michele J. Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, Xinyue Pan, Dana Nau, Dylan Pieper, Emmy Denison, Munqith Dagher, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Chi-Yue Chiu, and Mo Wang (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021).
“States of Emergency: The Most Disaster-Prone States in the US,” by Doug Whiteman (MoneyWise, 2021).
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joe Henrich (2020).
“A Global Analysis of Cultural Tightness in Non-Industrial Societies,” by Joshua Conrad Jackson, Michele Gelfand, and Carol R. Ember (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2020).
“Have You Tried to Help Your Pet Lose Weight? You Aren’t Alone as Most Cats and Dogs in the U.S. are Overweight,” by Marina Pitofsky (USA Today, 2019).
“The Loosening of American Culture Over 200 Years is Associated With a Creativity–Order Trade-Off,” by Joshua Conrad Jackson, Michele Gelfand, Soham De, and Amber Fox (Nature Human Behaviour, 2019).
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, by Michele Gelfand (2018).
“Speaking a Tone Language Enhances Musical Pitch Perception in 3–5-Year-Olds,” by Sarah C. Creel, Mengxing Weng, Genyue Fu, Gail D. Heyman, and Kang Lee (Developmental Science, 2017).
The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter, Joe Henrich (2015).
“Culture and R2” by Cheol S. Eun, Lingling Wang, and Steven C. Xiao (Journal of Financial Economics, 2015).
“Tightness–Looseness Across the 50 United States,” by Jesse R. Harrington and Michele J. Gelfand (PNAS, 2014).
“The Müller-Lyer Illusion in a Computational Model of Biological Object Recognition,” by Astrid Zeman, Oliver Obst, Kevin R. Brooks, and Anina N. Rich (PLOS One, 2013).
“Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types,” by Dahlia Lithwick (Slate, 2012).
“Egypt: Crime Soars 200 Per Cent Since Hosni Mubarak Was Ousted,” by Our Foreign Staff (The Telegraph, 2011).
“The Weirdest People in the World?” by Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010).
“Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance,” by Hannah Riley Bowles and Michele Gelfand (Psychological Science, 2009).
“Asch Experiment,” by Saul McLeod (CommonLit, 2008).
“The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American,” by Jeffrey J. Arnett (American Psychologist, 2008).
“Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities,” by Charles Bellemare, Sabine Kröger, and Arthur Van Soest (Econometrica, 2008).
“Westerners and Easterners See the World Differently,” by Zeeya Merali (NewScientist, 2005).
“Rethinking the Nation’s First Suburb,” by Bruce Lambert (The New York Times, 2005).
“‘Economic Man’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies,” by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Richard McElreath, Michael Alvard, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Natalie Smith Henrich, Kim Hill, Francisco Gil-White, Michael Gurven, Frank W. Marlowe, John Q. Patton, and David Tracer (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005).
“Ultimatum Game with Ethnicity Manipulation: Problems Faced Doing Field Economic Experiments and Their Solutions,” by Francisco J. Gil-White (Field Methods, 2004).
“George Bush and the Gulf War of 1991,” by H. W. Brands (Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2004).
“Homo reciprocans,” by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (Behavioural Science, 2002).
“Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon,” by Joseph Henrich (The American Economic Review, 2000).
“U.S. Student Tells of Pain Of His Caning In Singapore,” by Reuters (The New York Times, 1994).
“Singapore’s Relations With U.S. Still Sore,” by William Branigin (The Washington Post, 1994).
“Clinton Decries Planned Singapore Flogging of American,” by Ron Fournier (AP News, 1994).
“Mr. Bush’s Extra Mile for Peace,” (The New York Times, 1990).
“The Differences Between ‘Tight’ and ‘Loose’ Societies,” by Pertii J. Pelto (Trans-action, 1968).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 133 reviews