Rule Makers, Rule Breakers - by Michele Gelfand
ISBN: 9781501152931Date read: 2025-11-30
How strongly I recommend it: 5/10
(See my list of 430+ books, for more.)
Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.
Asks the question I love: Why are different cultures that way? Focuses particularly on strict versus loose cultures, hence the title. Some of its answers were insightful, but others feel dead wrong and easy to disprove. Still, a worthy read for the good bits. I liked that they used New Zealand as a frequent example.
my notes
Tight cultures have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance, while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive.
The former are rule makers; the latter, rule breakers.
Groups that experience any collective painful experience reported a remarkably higher sense of bonding.
Merely following the same exact routine with others is sufficient to increase cooperation.
In New Zealand, a highly permissive culture, women have the highest number of sexual partners in the world - an average of 20.
Global average is 7.3.
Kiwis tend to become acquainted very quickly, and they eschew formal titles.
People are known to walk barefoot on city streets, in grocery stores, and in banks.
Tightest nations in our sample were Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Singapore, South Korea, Norway, Turkey, Japan, China, Portugal, and Germany.
Loosest nations were Spain, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Venezuela, Brazil, the Netherlands, Israel, Hungary, Estonia, and the Ukraine.
Based on how much freedom they had to choose what to do, whether they had clear rules for appropriate behavior, and whether they were required to monitor their own behavior and “watch what they do.”
Even tight nations have select domains where anything goes.
Takeshita Street in Tokyo, in zany costumes.
Tehran has developed a vibrant artistic culture.
Theater and musical groups put on shows for large crowds, whether in isolated fields, tunnels, or caves.
Facebook page “My Stealthy Freedom”.
Photos of Iranian women removing their hijabs in public and enjoying other forbidden moments of independence.
Collectivist and tight (Japan and Singapore)
Collectivist and loose (Brazil and Spain)
Individualist and loose (the United States and New Zealand)
Individualist and tight (Austria and Germany)
Researchers in Netherlands temporarily added graffiti to an alley near a shopping area - in essence, making it an impromptu “loose” environment.
In the other condition, they kept the alley clean, making it a spotless, tight environment.
Then they hung useless leaflets that read “We wish everybody happy holidays” on the handlebars of parked bicycles in both conditions.
Bike owners would need to remove the leaflets from their handlebars to ride their bikes, yet there were no trash cans around.
Would the riders take the leaflets with them or throw them on the ground?
70 percent in the loose, graffiti-ridden alley littered.
30 percent in the tight, clean alley did.
Loose cultures tend to be open, but they’re also much more disorderly.
Tight cultures have a comforting order and predictability, but they’re less tolerant.
Crime rates are significantly lower in tight countries.
Like Japan, China is known for its low level of crime, as are India and Turkey.
In looser countries, like New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United States, crime is much more common.
Tight cultures maintain social order through threat of serious punishments.
“Eyes are upon you” practice in fostering norm-compliant behavior.
In their university coffee room, the researchers hung a banner with an image of a large pair of eyes above the coffee maker.
Next to the machine, there was an “honesty box” as a collection receptacle for people’s payments for coffee, tea, or milk.
During weeks when the banner with eyes hung above the coffee machine, people put almost three times more money into the honesty box.
Tighter countries tend to have more cleaning personnel on city streets.
Not only keep things tidy but also a reminder to citizens about the value of doing so.
When we’re exposed to untidy environments, it creates a powerful feedback loop that facilitates more norm violations and disorder.
Singapore rail operators can be fined up to one million dollars a year for delayed performance.
Tight cultures are synchronized.
People are more likely to dress the same, buy the same things.
There are far fewer “lefties” in tight cultures.
Investors in tight cultures are more likely to make similar buying and selling decisions.
Stock price synchronicity.
Connection between social constraint and self-constraint.
The more people have to attune their conduct to others, the stronger their ability to regulate their impulses.
People weigh much more, alcohol consumption, spending habits.
German word for debt and guilt is the same.
Loose cultures tend to be cosmopolitan, and more receptive to foreigners.
Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, were the most welcoming,
People in tight cultures are more likely to believe their culture is superior and needs to be protected from foreign influences.
Tight cultures of Sparta, the Nahua, and Singapore faced a common fate:
Each had (or has) to deal with a high degree of threat.
Loose cultures of New Zealand, Athens, and the Copper Inuit, the opposite:
These groups had (or have) the luxury of facing far fewer threats.
Groups that deal with many ecological and historical threats need to do everything they can to create order in the face of chaos.
Strong norms are needed to cultivate the societal order that is necessary for surviving the most difficult circumstances.
Societies with low population density (such as Australia, Brazil, Venezuela, and New Zealand) can afford to be much looser.
Does diversity correlate with a country’s looseness?
It does, at least up to a point.
When diversity gets to be extreme, as it is in Pakistan, and India, diversity can cause conflict, which requires strict norms to manage.
Too little stress can be almost as harmful to well-being too much stress.
Nations that were extremely tight and extremely loose had the lowest levels of happiness and the highest levels of suicide.
Very tight and very loose nations had the lowest life expectancies.
Egypt’s swing from tight to loose and back to tight again:
After ousting Mubarak, the Egyptian populace was ecstatic to have escaped decades of brutal rule.
“Egypt is free!”
Stock market was down more than 40 percent.
Crime rates rose 200 percent.
Reacting to the chaos following the ousting of Mubarak, people became amenable to yet another strong ruler who promised to restore the social order.
Nationalist groups that long for tightness are fighting back against globalists who embrace looseness.