The Secret Life of Social Norms | Michele Gelfand, PhD | TEDxPaloAltoSalon

Take an epic journey through human cultures with cross-cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand, PhD as she describes how tight and loose cultures wire our world.

Gelfand's work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in The Washington Post, The NY Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist and De Standard.

She 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) and the co-author of The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture (2004, Stanford University Press), Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring (2017, Oxford University Press) and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire our World (2018, Scribner).

[StephenBrasel]

Brings a whole new meaning to "lefty loosey, righty tighty."

[ozert.]

The behavior in traffic is a great example of this mindset.

Loose mindset: rules are there to break

Tight mindset: rules are there to obey and not question

[Mozzarella-and-Tomato]

She is an amazing speaker, and this was amazingly written!

[ChessMasteryOfficial]

*I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.*

[Rojagray]

Superbly written and delivered, and like many of the best ideas, easily graspable on the surface but huge research potential. Bravo!

[rNextgen]

*WHOEVER IS READING THIS HAVE A NICE DAY*

[oldmech]

Years ago, I lived in Singapore. There was even an inspector that would come into my house to inspect for mosquitoes. Very clean country. No flys. Very strict rules, but easy to live with.

[lesmuchmore]

Balance is the first step toward harmony
Harmony is an ever-changing state of balance...

[Isuppose]

Balance is exactly what is hard to achieve.

[urwandanabanyarwanda]

Summary of the video in one word "BALANCE"

[jshir]

*Social norms are subjective “situation ‘ethics, ’” (which always leads to double “standards”), and thus relativistic as they are continually evolving and cannot be clearly defined.*

[Mhasanunal]

Extremely well done presentation! Thank you 🙏🏻

[markcaseon]

Tight versus loose - Conscientiousness versus Openness to experience.

[kotzka]

Saying the internet is normless is... not really true. It just accomodates many cultures and subcultures and they create their own communities with their own norms. It's just that these cultures aren't separated geographically.

[MvnStn]

Loved this until the end... the internet does not need tightening in my opinion. It's supposed to be normless.. we have free will to ignore or pass on anything that might be offensive, etc., on the internet. Just my 2 cents.

[ayarikiyo]

I don't know what her idea of "tightening" the internet looks like. But I feel the act of doing so would some how take away freedom of expression and speech. So I'm not too accepting of her idea in regards to the internet. But everything else, as far as social norms applies in a physical environment, makes sense. It makes sense that balance is required. However I feel like the idea of "tight" and "loose" is a little too broad of a concept to apply the many problems we face in our societies. The very idea of "tight" and "loose" can be deciphered in many different ways which potentially could be dangerous.

[ttcostadc]

This may sound like a cop-out, but I think the one that is better is the one that is responsive to your situation. If people are experiencing physical threat, I can't advise them to be more loose (thinking rules on a construction site). However often times threat can be more perceived than experienced.

[Anita.mania_]

The most important thing is to find a balance <3 greetings from Poland

[mikakorhonen]

I once read about study how natural recources and social norms have connection. If area or coutry is low on natural resources, it has tight social norms and vice versa. Bringing western values to countries low on natural resources is like waisting time. And people coming from those areas to open societys think we are living wrong in our home coutries.

[scarol]

Very interesting. I just dont agree with the working vs upper class behaviour in terms of tightness - the upper classes have always been very tight on social behavior, way of dressing, way of speaking (such as not swearing and loudness), what activities they can do. Interesting that the studies mentioned by the speaker didn't find this pattern when it's very visible in all societies