Iron Fist or Kid Gloves?

Illustration by Michael Glenwood

Research by psychologist Michele Gelfand ’89 looks at whether countries are culturally “tight” or “loose” and how those distinctions factor into the ways they manage a crisis. 

In Saudi Arabia, drinking alcohol is punishable by imprisonment, fines, and even public flogging. Meanwhile, in the United States, alcohol is not only legal, but it’s also often celebrated, and some cities allow public consumption on the streets. 

Cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand ’89 studies how countries can be classified as “tight” or “loose” — measured by how strictly people abide by social norms — and how those categorizations play a role in times of crises. 

Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and China are examples of tight countries that enforce order with strict punishments, whereas the United States, New Zealand, and Brazil are  considered loose countries that are more permissible.

Gelfand wrote a book on her research, titled Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World (Simon & Schuster, 2018). Recently, she’s been featured in several media outlets for her analysis of the ways in which different countries have been handling COVID-19. 

When facing a longer-term threat like COVID-19, the tightening instinct has “short- circuited in many loose nations.” 

As the lead author, Gelfand published a paper with other researchers in Lancet Planetary Health in early 2021 that showed “the liability of looseness.” In their paper comparing 57 countries, the researchers found that in countries with more looseness, “there were five times the number of COVID-19 cases, and they had almost nine times the deaths,” explains Gelfand, who is the John H. Scully Professor of cross-cultural management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and professor of psychology by courtesy.  

How countries have become tight or loose is generally based on how much chronic threat they’ve historically faced, Gelfand has found through data collection that she published in Science. Cultures that have continuously been threatened by events like invasion from other countries, natural disasters, pathogen outbreaks, and population density have needed to enforce order and strict rules. “Of course, all countries have experienced threat, but some have faced it chronically — to a degree that required an evolved tightening response,” she wrote in “A Failure of Fear: Why Certain Nations Flunked the COVID-19 Threat Test,” in Behavioral Scientist. 

In the United States, Americans banded together after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and were “willing to sacrifice some freedom for constraint,” Gelfand noted in a Boston Globe op-ed. But when facing a longer-term threat like COVID-19, the tightening instinct has “short-circuited in many loose nations.” Americans today, for example, are not used to coordinating their social action toward a common goal, compared with other nations, and “we’re more ambivalent about sacrificing our freedom for strict rules that constrain our choices.”

Gelfand is quick to point out that both tight and loose cultures have strengths and liabilities. In America, looseness promotes traits like optimism and creativity, which are culturally valuable. On the other hand, optimism is what she calls an “evolutionary mismatch” when there’s a collective threat, because people are less fearful of a danger like COVID-19 and are therefore less likely to curtail their behavior.   

Still, not all tight cultures have handled the pandemic well and not all loose cultures have done poorly. “It’s just a correlation,” she says. “Places like New Zealand were more ambidextrous, where people tighten under threat and then loosen when it’s safe. The goal is to be able to understand the context and shift cultural gears as needed.”

One type of culture is not superior to the other, she emphasizes. There are advantages and drawbacks to both. Tight cultures have more severe punishments but less crime. Loose cultures are more lenient with the rules, but people are more tolerant of others’ differences and more open to change. It’s what she calls the “tight-loose trade-off.”

Striking a balance is the takeaway, says Gelfand, who also applies this research to organizations, households, and individuals. Through a grant, she has been contracted by the U.S. military, which is “dealing with a lot of threat, [but] it also has a lot of coordination issues,” she says. “Maybe they can insert some looseness into some non-safety domains,” she proposes. “The question would be, does everyone really need to wear the same socks or have a certain type of haircut? Is that serving a function?” In the book, she calls this “flexible tightness — where leaders might want to insert some latitude.”

She’s also working with some companies’ social media platforms, exploring the question: “How do we make a place that has freedom, but also has some civility and norms like we would have in everyday conversations because people feel a sense of accountability and they restrict the range of their behavior?”

For Gelfand, the silver lining of the pandemic is that people are paying more attention to her field. “When COVID hit, people suddenly realized that culture matters,” Gelfand says. 

She’s been doing this work since becoming inspired at Colgate by Professor of Psychology Carrie Keating, whose department is now housed under the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. “She taught a class on cross-cultural human development, and it changed my life,” Gelfand says. “I couldn’t believe people were studying things in psychology, like basic visual illusions, and seeing whether they replicate in Africa, for example. I was like, ‘Maybe I can make a career out of this.’” Keating recommended other scholars for Gelfand to talk to, leading her to earn a PhD at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, mentored by Harry Triandis, the “father of modern cross-cultural psychology.”

Colgate also set the trajectory of her life because it’s where she met her husband of 27 years, Todd Betke ’89. “I veer, truth be told, moderately loose,” Gelfand says. “Todd veers moderately tight. He’s a lawyer — he has to be.” The couple, along with their two daughters, “are constantly negotiating tight-loose in our household,” she quips.

In 2021, Gelfand was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She also recently co-founded the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution, bringing together experts from the different sciences — psychology, biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and computer science. “Culture really matters, so we need to have more conversations about it,” Gelfand says, “and we have to have leaders who understand the dynamics of culture.”