Michele Gelfand’s Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World dedicates a section on defining the US through tight and loose states. She identifies New York, Massachusetts and California on the looser end, while the South and some parts of the Midwest, like Kansas, on the tighter end. Tighter states have more self-control, orderliness, and greater social organizations. Gelfand gives reasons for explaining tight states as sharing more natural disasters (think Kansas and Wizard of Oz), food insecurity, and greater perceptions of external threats. However, she gives limited explanation for looser states, except that they are more ethnically diverse. I find this inadequate analysis of looser states as a serious flaw in her study. If Gelfand further asserts that this cultural divide between loose and tight states matches blue and red divide, electoral maps of past decades, having such huge political relevance as determining the future of our country, then, she must bring some reasons behind the defining qualities of loose states as well. In short, if tight states possess distinguishing features, loose states cannot just be. Is it because loose states have a greater population density? Per capita income? Lower home ownership rate? Low marriage rate? There must an equal explanation for a greater variation of social norms. Without that keen insight, Gelfand’s study exhibits a strong bias and fails to convince me that tight and loose social norms–while hugely fascinating– have any bearing on explaining national politics. To read more, go to:
Tightness and Looseness: A New Way to Understand Differences across the 50 United States
by Jessica Harrington or listen to NPR podcast Playing Tight And Loose: How Rules Shape Our Lives
How accurately do you think her study explains social norms in your part of the US? Comment below.
