Home / Lectures / Michele Gelfand, University of Maryland
Tightness-Looseness: A Fractal Pattern of Human Difference
Michele Gelfand, University of Maryland
Description
Semester:
- Winter 2019
Speakers:
Lecture Time:
Fri, March 29, 2019 @ 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Lecture Location:
R0220 Ross School of Business
Speaker Webpage(s):
No speaker websites available.
Introduced By:
Marissa Salazar
Abstract
Over the past century, we have explored the solar system, split the atom, and wired the Earth, but somehow, despite all of our technical prowess, we have struggled to understand something far more important: our own cultural differences. Using a variety of methodologies, my research has uncovered is that many cultural differences reflect a simple, but often invisible distinction: The strength of social norms. Tight cultures have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance, while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive. The tightness or looseness of social norms turns out to be a Rosetta Stone for human groups. It illuminates similar patterns of difference across nations, states, organizations, and social class, and the template also explains differences among traditional societies. It’s also a global fault line: conflicts we encounter can spring from the structural stress of tight-loose tension, and our data show that they have important implications for success in international mergers & acquisitions and expatriate adjustment, and can also help to explain some of today’s most puzzling political trends and events. An understanding of this template can help us develop more empathy and to bridge out cultural divides.
Recording & Additional Notes
Michele Gelfand is Distinguished University Professor in Psychology and the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences for human groups. Her work has been cited 20,000 times (H Index = 60) 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, Morning Joe, The Economist, the Atlantic, Time Magazine, CNN.com, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, De Standard, among other outlets. Gelfand has published 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, among others.
She is the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World (Scribner, 2018), co-editor of Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Psychology of Conflict and Conflict Management in Organizations (Taylor & Francis, 2013), and The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture (Stanford University Press, 2004), and is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology Annual Series and the Frontiers of Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press). She is the Past President of the International Association for Conflict Management, Past Division Chair of the Conflict Division of the Academy of Management, and Past Treasurer of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. She received the 2018 Outstanding Cultural Psychologist Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, the 2016 Diener award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and was elected to be an Honorary Fellow of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. She has received over 13 million dollars in funding for her research. She was invited to serve on the board of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Website: www.michelegelfand.com; Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_J._Gelfand