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Cultural Tightness-Looseness: Ecological Affordances and Implications for Personality

Michele J. Gelfand, Jesse R. Harrington, and Jessica R. Fernandez

The relationship between culture and personality has long been a topic of interest among scholars from multiple disciplines. Well before the modern era, observers commonly noted distinct personality characteristics that differentiated people from different cultures. In Book I of his Histories (circa 440 BC), for example, Herodotus contrasted the culture and mannerisms of the Greeks and Persians. Herodotus observed that Persian culture was exceptionally receptive to the adoption of foreign ideas, a cultural value reflected in the common sight of Persians dressed in imported clothing and martial gear. By comparison, the Greeks were much more culturally insular and less open. Centuries later, early 20th century anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead began to scientifically study the link between culture and personality, postulating that cultures were “personalities writ large” that cultivated specific, stable patterns of characteristics among its adult members (Benedict, 1934). While the notion of national character eventually fell out of favor and this research decreased substantially after the 1960s (LeVine, 2001), this early work set the stage for more nuanced and multilevel research on culture and personality in the field of cross-cultural psychology (Hofstede & McCrae, 2004). Indeed, as evident in chapters in this Handbook, research examining the interface of culture and personality has once again begun to flourish (see also Church, 2016 and McCrae, 2000), providing critical understandings of cultural universals in personality as well as culture-specific, emic insights into personality structure and function (Cheung, Cheung, & Fan, 2013).

Traditionally, echoing its dominance in the broader field of culture and psychology, research has focused on the link between personality and cultural values. In this chapter, we complement this research and expand it to focus on the nexus between personality and social norms. Specifically, we present the connection between tightness-looseness—or the strength of social norms and tolerance for norm deviance in a culture—and a broad array of individual differences. In what follows, we first describe the evolution of tightness-looseness as a multilevel system wherein a broad constellation of co-varying, but ostensibly unrelated, personality characteristics is adaptive in different ecological and historical contexts. We later broaden this discussion and address new frontiers in culture and personality research that can be enriched by a tight-loose perspective, including culture and mental health, personality expression and variance, and person-culture fit, among other phenomena. In all, tightness-looseness theory makes a unique contribution to the personality and culture literature and deepens and broadens its reach.

HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON TIGHTNESS-LOOSENESS THEORY AND PERSONALITY

Tightness-looseness denotes the strength of norms and tolerance for norm deviance in a given cultural entity (Gelfand et al., 2011; Gelfand, Nishii, & Raver, 2006). More specifically, norm strength denotes the number of unwritten rules that exist as well as the degree of social pressure that individuals feel to follow them, while tolerance for norm deviance denotes the amount of punishment that results when norms are violated. By definition, tight cultural entities have high norm strength and low tolerance for deviance, while loose cultural collectives have low norm strength and high tolerance for deviance. In what follows, we briefly trace the history of tightness-looseness research, provide a broad overview of modern tightness-looseness theory and its principles, and discuss past research that highlights the connection between tightness-looseness and personality.

Tightness-Looseness in Traditional Societies

As a construct, tightness-looseness originated in the field of anthropology, where it was used to differentiate between strong versus weak social norms in primarily traditional societies (Embree, 1950; Ryan & Straus, 1954). Pelto (1968) was the first to attempt to quantify this construct. In his examination of over 20 traditional societies, Pelto quantified the presence of any of 12 structural features that reflected strong norms and rules—including norms for conscription of labor, theocratic political systems, corporate ownership of property, and hereditary recruitment to religious roles. Pelto found that this measure closely aligned with the ethnographic descriptions of these societies. For instance, the Hutterites, the Hano, and the Lugbara were found to be the tightest groups and, in the ethnographic literature, were indeed described as having strong norms and severe punishments for those that violated them. Likewise, ethnographers described the loosest scoring groups—the Kung Bushmen, the Cubeo, and the Skolt Lapps—as having weak norms, as well as greater permissiveness and fewer punishments for norm violators.

Beyond this new operational method, Pelto’s work is important for its theoretical insights into the causes of societal differences in tightness-looseness. He theorized that they arise due to the ecological realities faced by each society—specifically, population density and subsistence method. Pelto surmised that traditional societies with a reliance on agricultural subsistence methods tend to be tighter given that they require strong norms and coordination to produce crops necessary for survival. He also theorized that groups with high population density would be tighter given that strong norms are needed to organize potentially chaotic situations. On the other hand, traditional societies with lower population densities and less reliance on agriculture could afford more freedom of behavior, especially since deviance was not overly harmful to the social unit, and food production (e.g., hunting or fishing) allowed for independent and non-coordinated behavior. Researchers in many fields of social science—including anthropology, psychology, and sociology—later corroborated these hypothesized ecological-cultural relationships. In particular, traditional societies with high population density and primarily agricultural subsistence methods tended to exhibit strict child-rearing practices, strict roles and expectations for its members, and greater incidence of behavioral conformity (Barry, Child, & Bacon, 1959; Berry, 1967; Boldt, 1978a, 1978b; Boldt & Roberts, 1979; Lomax & Berkowitz, 1972; Witkin & Berry, 1975). After a hiatus of research on tightness-looseness, Triandis (1989) reintroduced the constructs in his Psychological Review paper on culture and self, noting that the construct is different from collectivism and other constructs (see also Carpenter, 2000, for a confirmation of this in traditional societies).

Tightness-Looseness in Modern Nations

Recently, Gelfand and her colleagues (Gelfand et al., 2006, 2011) developed a comprehensive multilevel theory of tightness-looseness in modern societies. At its core, modern tightness-looseness theory is about adaptation—in particular, the adaptation of societies to the characteristics of their ecological environments and the adaptation of individuals to the characteristics of their societies (see Figure 8.1). Cultural differences in the strength of social norms are hypothesized to be an adaptation to the presence of ecological and historical threat, including greater incidence of natural disasters, higher disease prevalence, greater crowding or higher population density, few natural resources, and greater threat from neighbors or external groups. This theory suggests that societies develop stronger normative rules and a lower tolerance for norm deviance in an effort to confront and cope with these threats via coordinated social action. In essence, tighter societies cultivate a stronger degree of order to confront their primary challenge: the instability caused by ecological threat. This results in stronger institutions in tighter societies and more order, control, and coordination. By contrast, societies that lack exposure to serious ecological threats can afford to have weaker norms, greater tolerance for norm deviance, and less stringent institutions, resulting in less social order but greater societal openness.

As illustrated in Figure 8.1, greater ecological and historical threats in tighter societies are predicted to foster an environment wherein institutions foster narrow socialization (Arnett, 1995) and stronger situations (Mischel, 1977). In turn, at the individual level, people exposed to chronically higher situational strength have higher felt accountability (Frink & Klimoski, 1998). In other words, individuals feel impelled to obey and conform to normative expectations, lest they face punishment or other negative outcomes. As a consequence of this, it is expected that individuals develop a particular constellation of personality characteristics adapted to the normative stringency of societal tightness. In particular, as compared to individuals in looser contexts, individuals in tighter cultures should be prone to prevention-oriented self-guides (e.g., cautiousness), stronger self-regulation of behavior (e.g., impulse control), higher needs for structure, greater conscientiousness and lower openness, and higher self-monitoring ability (Gelfand et al., 2011; Harrington & Gelfand, 2014), all of which are adaptive to stronger situations and contexts of higher threat. Notably, tightness-looseness theory focuses on different constructs at different levels of analysis, all of which are qualitatively different but dynamically interrelated. Cultural differences in social norms are adaptive to ecological and historical conditions and, in turn, make certain individual differences more or less adaptive.

In the last decade, research studies using field, experimental, computational, and neuroscientific methods have provided support for this multilevel theory. In their paper published in Science, Gelfand et al. (2011) tested the theory with a sample of 6,823 individuals from 33 different nations. They developed a measure of tightness-looseness that reflected a referent shift model, wherein individuals reported on the strength of social norms in their cultural context. For example, participants were asked whether there were many social norms that people are supposed to abide by in their country, whether others will strongly disapprove of people who act in an inappropriate way, if people have freedom to choose how they want to act, and if people in their country almost always comply with social norms, among other questions (see Table 8.1). Gelfand et al. (2011) found that this scale constituted one factor, that people within each nation shared their perceptions of the level of tightness-looseness within their nation (i.e., there were high rwg values) and there was high between-nation variability across countries (e.g., high ICC values). Loose nations included Venezuela, Australia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ukraine, and the United States, while tight nations included Germany, India, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Singapore, Norway, China, Portugal, South Korea, and Turkey.

Figure 8.1 Multilevel Theory of Cultural Tightness-Looseness Adapted from Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., … Aycan, Z. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science, 332(6033), 1100–1104. Reprinted with permission from AAAS.

The measure also had convergent and divergent validity. For example, tighter nations have greater pressures toward uniformity (e.g., a lower percentage of left-hand writers and greater accuracy of clocks in major cities), more restricted sexual practices, less tolerance for morally questionable acts (e.g., prostitution, cheating on taxes), greater preference for political systems that have a strong leader and who maintain order in the nation, and greater cultural superiority but lower openness, including the belief that a society’s way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence, the desire not to have immigrants as neighbors, and greater agreement with the idea that one’s culture is superior to others.

Tightness-looseness was also distinct from other cultural dimensions. For example, tightness-looseness was distinct from collectivism-individualism. Cultures can be collectivistic and tight (e.g., Japan, Singapore), collectivistic and loose (e.g., Brazil, Spain), individualistic and loose (e.g., the United States, New Zealand), or individualistic and tight (e.g., Germany, Austria) (see also Carpenter, 2000). Tightness-looseness was also distinct from power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance, among other cultural dimensions (see Gelfand et al., 2011, supplemental material). In addition, they found that tightness-looseness is distinct from economic wealth. Singapore and Germany, both tight, enjoy economic success, but Pakistan and India, also tight, do not. Likewise, the United States and Australia, both relatively loose, are wealthy, but the Ukraine and Brazil, also relatively loose, have comparatively lower gross domestic products (GDPs).

Table 8.1 Tightness-Looseness Rating Scale and Items

1 Strongly Disagree	2 Moderately Disagree	3 Slightly Disagree	4 Slightly Agree	5 Moderately Agree	6 Strongly Agree
1. There are many social norms that people are supposed to abide by in this country.
2. In this country, there are very clear expectations for how people should act in most situations.
3. People agree upon what behaviors are appropriate versus inappropriate in most situations in this country.
4. People in this country have a great deal of freedom in deciding how they want to behave in most situations. (reverse coded)
5. In this country, if someone acts in an inappropriate way, others will strongly disapprove.
6. People in this country almost always comply with social norms.
From Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., … Yamaguchi, S. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science, 332 (6033), 1100–1104.  Reprinted with permission from AAAS.

Beyond advancing the construct and measure of tightness-looseness, Gelfand et al. (2011) provided evidence for the multilevel theory of tightness-looseness. At the national level, they found that tight societies exhibited higher historic (1500 CE) and projected (2050) population density, greater vulnerability to natural disasters, greater food scarcity, lower food production, greater food deprivation, less farmland and arable land, lower access to safe water, poorer air quality, greater historic pathogen prevalence, higher death rates due to communicable diseases, higher rates of infant and child mortality, and more numerous territorial threats from 1918 to 2001. They also found that institutions were stronger in tighter nations. In particular, tighter nations exhibited more autocratic governing bodies, a less open and free media, lowered access to new information and technology, fewer political rights and civil liberties, retention of the death penalty, a lower percentage of people who report participating in collective action such as boycotts and strikes, a greater percentage of people stating that they would never participate in collective action, and a greater importance of God and religious attendance. Notably, the researchers found that tight nations had a lower incidence of murder, burglaries, and crime per capita, relative to loose nations. Consistent with tightness-looseness theory, this suggests that tight nations experience more societal order relative to looser societies.

The authors also demonstrated, for the first time, that everyday situations varied across nations, particularly in their strength. Using a measure adapted from Price and Bouffard (1974), they prompted participants to judge the appropriateness of 15 behaviors (e.g., curse/swear, argue, sing, and eat) across 12 different contexts (e.g., workplace, bus, classroom, and library). Individuals shared perceptions of the degree of situational constraint within their nation. And while there was a universal rank order for situational strength (e.g., funerals being stronger and parties being weaker), there was a strong relationship between the generalized tightness of a nation and the strength of situations. Put simply, there is a more narrow range of socially acceptable behavioral options in everyday situations in tight as compared to loose nations.

Finally, at the individual level, they found support for the multilevel theory connecting individual variation and situational strength. Individuals in tighter nations had higher scores on a constellation of personality traits that were broadly related to felt accountability. As compared to individuals in looser nations, they reported having a greater prevention-focus (e.g., dutifulness), more self-regulation (e.g., impulse control), higher need for structure, and higher self-monitoring ability. A multilevel structural equation analysis provided support for the entire model.

These predictions have also been borne out within nations—in particular, at the state level in the United States. Inspired by Vandello and Cohen’s (1999) archival measure of individualism-collectivism in the United States, Harrington and Gelfand (2014) used existing archival data that reflected the strength of norms and punishments at the state level to create a state-level tightness-looseness index. Their final index included 9 items, which included items related to the strength of punishments (e.g., percentage of students punished using corporal punishment in schools, the rate of executions, and the severity of punishment for violating marijuana laws), permissiveness and latitude (e.g., the ratio of dry to total counties per state, the legality of same-sex civil unions), the strength of religious institutions (i.e., which reinforce the moral order), and the amount of state diversity (e.g., total population that is foreign). The measure was found to represent a single construct, had high reliability, had high convergent validity with subjective measures of the strength of norms in states (see Harrington & Gelfand, 2014, supplemental), and was distinct from dimensions such as individualism-collectivism. Most importantly, the researchers found extensive variation in tightness-looseness at the state and regional level. The top 10 tightest states were Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and North Carolina, while the top 10 loosest states were California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Regionally, the South was the tightest, the West and the Northeast were the loosest, and the Midwest fell in the middle.

Similar to the national level of analysis, Harrington and Gelfand (2014) found that tighter states exhibited a higher incidence of natural disasters, greater environmental vulnerability, greater disease prevalence and higher health vulnerabilities, and fewer natural resources. They also found that state-level tightness was related to modern and historical variables representing perceptions of external threat. Specifically, individuals in tighter states desired greater funding for national defense and tighter states exhibited higher rates of military recruitment. It was also found that state tightness was positively predicted by the percentage of slave owning families from the 1860 U.S. Census. Such states, they argued, faced occupation by the Union Army following their defeat in the Civil War and experienced existential threat to their way of life (Woodard, 2011). Similar to the national data, the researchers also found tightness was positively associated with personality characteristics reflecting impulse control and self-regulation and negatively associated with those reflecting tolerance for other cultures and new ideas (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008; Rentfrow, Gosling, & Potter, 2008). Tighter states had higher levels of trait conscientiousness and lower levels of trait openness relative to looser states. Individuals from tighter states indicated that they were less likely to take chances, less likely to try new things at least once, and were less interested in the cultures of other countries. Finally, consistent with the notion that tight and loose societies compromise on order versus openness, tight states were found to have high levels of social organization and greater self-control, but lower creativity (e.g., patents and artists per capita), greater discrimination (e.g., higher levels of EEOC claims), lower equality (e.g., fewer minority owned businesses), and greater xenophobia.

While the above research was correlational, experimental research has demonstrated that increased ethnocentrism, lower openness, and decreased deviance tolerance arise after exposure to greater ecological threat. Lun, Gelfand, and Mohr (2012), for example, found that individuals primed with threat (e.g., in the form of a newspaper article about the overpopulation of a college campus, or the threat of terrorism on campus, or a movie about the unstoppable, global spread of a deadly infectious disease) as compared to no threat were significantly more likely to rate socially deviant behavior (e.g., taking drugs, having casual sex, littering, stealing, talking loudly) as less justifiable. Individuals primed with threat also exhibited stronger negative implicit attitudes toward marginalized groups and endorsed greater ethnocentric attitudes, including the notions that entry into the United States should be restricted and controlled, employers should give priority to American workers over immigrants, American culture is superior to others, and the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. In sum, even temporary exposure to threat provides the building blocks of a tight culture by leading individuals to adopt less tolerant attitudes toward social deviance and by enhancing individual differences that are typically found in the constellation of characteristics associated with tighter cultures.

Recent neuroscientific research has also begun to identify culture-specific neural substrates that mediate the link between societal tightness and the individual differences specified in the above model. Mu, Kitayama, Han, and Gelfand (2015) employed electroencephalography (EEG) to examine how individuals from tight and loose nations—China and the United States, respectively—differed at the neural level when exposed to social norm violations (e.g., dancing in an art museum). They examined the N400 response, which is a negative-going deflection that peaks at approximately 400 ms and occurs following exposure to unexpected semantic stimuli. Given that norms cultivate particular expectations about behavior, the researchers reasoned that social norm violations might similarly cultivate a distinct N400 response. As expected, the researchers found that only Chinese participants exhibited an N400 response to norm violation in the frontal regions, an area previously found to be associated with judgments of the appropriateness of a variety of human actions, theory of mind, and punishment (Bach, Gunter, Knoblich, Prinz, & Friederici, 2009; Gunter & Bach, 2004; Reid & Striano, 2008). More importantly, these culture-specific N400 responses mediated country-level differences in perceptions of cultural superiority, self-control, and creativity. In sum, while it is known that some cultures exhibit greater ethnocentrism, lower openness, lower creativity, and greater self-control relative to others, this study provides clear evidence demonstrating that neural differences in the detection of norm violation help in part to explain these cultural differences.

The notion that particular personality characteristics develop as an adaptive response to environmental threat is also bolstered by work examining gene-culture interaction. Mrazek, Chiao, Blizinsky, Lun, and Gelfand (2013) found a higher frequency of individuals carrying the S allele of the 5-HTTLPR length polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene SLC6A4 in cultures that are tight and have a greater propensity for ecological threat. Past research has found that individuals with this allele exhibit greater trait capacity for detecting threats in their environment (Munafò, Durrant, Lewis, & Flint, 2009). Given these findings, the researchers argued that having this allele is adaptive in areas high in ecological threat (see also, Chiao & Blizinsky, 2010), and this genetic difference should lend itself to the development of tighter cultural norms and negative evaluations of deviance. Consistent with this prediction, the authors found that greater S allele frequency was associated with more stringent attitudes toward the justifiability of morally relevant behavior and that the frequency of S allele carriers across 21 nations mediated the relationship between ecological threat and cultural tightness. In sum, this research suggests that cultural differences in individual characteristics develop in response to ecological threat. These characteristics not only are adaptive for individuals but also foster stronger social norms that provide an adaptive advantage in coordination for the group or society as a whole.

Advances in tightness-looseness theory have also been made possible by computational models that integrate evolutionary game theory insights with research in cultural psychology (Roos, Gelfand, Nau, & Lun, 2015). According to tightness-looseness theory, these individual differences that arise from threat exposure ultimately provide an adaptive advantage for both individuals and societies by fostering greater coordination and order. This helps counteract the destabilization of ecological threat. Some of the research already discussed supports this point by demonstrating that tighter nations have a lower incidence of crime (Gelfand et al., 2011), that tighter states have greater levels of social organization relative to loose states (Harrington & Gelfand, 2014), and that tighter societies demonstrate greater behavioral synchronicity (Eun, Wang, & Xiao, 2015). However, this work is cross-sectional and cannot prove the causality of this assertion.

To address this void, Roos et al. (2015) developed evolutionary game theoretic models to examine the extent to which computer agents punish and cooperate when exposed to environments high and low in threat. In these models, agents had a pool of resource points that they could contribute to a larger collective pool every round in a game. This collective pool of points would then be distributed among all agents in a matrix at the end of each round, regardless of their contribution. Agents could cooperate by contributing to the pool or defect by not contributing, as well as punish defectors or not punish them at all. Threat was operationalized as a reduction of the base payout, and agents who failed to acquire enough points “died” and were removed from the grid. The simulation showed that as threat rose, agents had to rely more on the payout from the cooperative pool in order to survive. Consequently, norms for punishing defectors and cooperating emerged as the dominant behavioral strategies. In low-threat scenarios, the extra payout from cooperation had a minimal effect on agent fitness, so cooperators and punishers flourished less. In all, as threat increased, groups of agents developed greater norm adherence and engaged in greater punishment when others violated social norms. Most importantly, from an evolutionary perspective, these developments were necessary for these agents and their groups to survive under high threat. Agents who did not cooperate and did not punish could not survive in conditions of high threat. Future models can also be developed to examine whether other personality characteristics discussed above (e.g., self-control, ethnocentrism, and creativity, among others) have an evolutionary basis in contexts of high threat as predicted by tightness-looseness theory.

Summary

In sum, modern tightness-looseness theory rests upon the ecocultural principle of adaptation (Berry, 1979) to understand societal differences in norm strength and associated individual differences in tight and loose societies. The predictions made from this theory have been borne out of research at multiple levels of analysis using a variety of methodological approaches. In particular, it has been found that individuals in tight and loose cultures exhibit a very particular personality “signature” or constellation of individual characteristics that are often discussed separately in the personality literature and ostensibly appear to be disconnected (e.g., self-control, prevention focus, self-monitoring, conscientiousness, and openness). Yet such characteristics are fundamentally related because they all are responsive to higher versus lower felt accountability and fulfill important functions in an environment with strong versus weak norms and varying levels of punishment for norm deviance. In doing so, they provide an adaptive advantage not only for individuals but also for societies. In the next section, we continue to use this approach to make predictions and highlight future directions for tightness-looseness and personality research.

Future research would benefit from examining tightness-looseness at other levels of analysis, including organizational and community levels, as well as among distinct groups. Based on tightness-looseness theory, we would predict, for example, that lower status groups would evolve to be tighter than higher status groups, which has implications for gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. In addition, as we have noted elsewhere (Gelfand, 2012), future research should develop measures of tightness-looseness in specific domains of life. All cultures have domains that are tight and domains that are loose, even if these cultures are generally tight or loose across domains. We would predict that any domain that is particularly important in a country (e.g., individual rights in the United States) would develop to be tight. As well, tightness-looseness in some domains (e.g., sexuality in the United States) can be understood in terms of founding conditions of nations (e.g., puritans). In all, having multiple measures on tightness-looseness will help to illuminate its impact across levels and domains.

FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH ON TIGHTNESS-LOOSENESS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Thus far, we have noted unique ways in which tightness-looseness contributes to the personality and culture literature. In what follows, we highlight future directions for tightness-looseness and personality research. First, we suggest ways in which researchers can expand on the current connections between tightness-looseness and personality characteristics by addressing individual differences that have yet to be formally examined. Second, we discuss how the strength of social norms and tolerance for norm deviance may cause differences in individuals’ outward expression of traits or their likelihood to compartmentalize private versus public feelings and actions. Third, we consider the implications of tightness-looseness for the overall variance of personality traits within a given culture. Fourth, we discuss the intercultural interface and how tightness-looseness might relate to issues of expatriation and personality and cultural fit. Finally, we move beyond discussing “normal” psychological adaptations and advance predictions regarding how tightness-looseness relates to the prevalence of specific clinical disorders, as well as issues related to the measurement, suppression, and stigmatization of personality in tight and loose cultures. Taken together, the following subsections provide exciting possibilities for advancing the field of tightness-looseness theory and broadening our understanding of culture and personality research.

Tightness-Looseness and Other Individual Differences

Within the intersection of personality and culture, research has begun to illustrate how individuals vary in tight and loose cultures. Below, we suggest new potential relationships between tightness-looseness and specific individual differences in motivation and self-regulation, temporal mindsets, cognitive representations, facets of the Big Five personality traits, and levels of felt accountability.

Motivation and Self-Regulation

Research indicates that individual differences exist across various types of motivation, including epistemic motivations, self-regulation, and self-control. For each of these dispositional constructs, the strength of social norms, restraints on permissible behavior, and/or sanctions for potential mistakes have potential to provide new and interesting connections between tightness-looseness, personality, and motivation. For example, researchers have determined that an individual’s need for closure, which reflects preference for firm, definitive answers, and aversion to ambiguity and uncertainty (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996), leads individuals to rely more on norms, demonstrate more in-group bias, and have a greater tendency to make decisions based on culture conformity after being primed with uncertainty (Chao, Zhang, & Chiu, 2009; Fu et al., 2007; Gelfand & Jackson, 2016). Results also suggest that experimentally increasing need for closure leads to greater normative stability across generations (Livi, Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & Kenny, 2015). Gelfand et al. (2011) showed that national-level tightness has a cross-level relationship with need for structure. Therefore, future research might formally test the role of need for closure as a mediator between threats in tighter cultures and the development of strong social norms.

Likewise, future research might explore how the strength of social norms in tight versus loose cultures influences specific self-regulation systems. For example, Regulatory Mode orientation is characterized by two dimensions: (a) the motivation to move forward and take action (“locomotion”) and (b) the motivation to be critical and evaluate options (“assessment”) (Kruglanski et al., 2000). Perhaps fewer restraints and a greater number of permissible behaviors in loose cultures may facilitate the Regulatory Mode dimension of locomotion and movement from state to state. By contrast, assessment, which emphasizes critical comparisons and evaluation, may be adaptive in tighter cultures, where individuals must think about avoiding threats and risk punishments for making “the wrong” decisions. This may be especially likely given that threats in tighter societies often take the form of a chronic potentiality rather than a brief reality. Individuals in tighter cultures should therefore be more likely to occupy a state of evaluation or assessment.

Future research should also further examine the link between tightness-looseness and self-control processes. Extending findings that individuals in tighter cultures have higher self-reported impulse control than those in loose cultures (Gelfand et al., 2011), Dugas, Van Egmond, and Gelfand (2014) reported behavioral differences in cognitive control between Americans and Germans, the latter of whom have been found to be tighter than the former, such that Americans exhibited worse interference in Stroop performance than Germans when responding to difficult, incongruent trials compared to easier neutral trials. Future research should examine the precise mechanisms that might account for self-control differences across tight and loose cultures. Research has identified several important steps in successful self-control, including the experience of weaker desires, detection of conflict between temptations and long-term goals, and recruitment of resources to resist conflicting desires (Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, & Vohs, 2012). Of particular interest is whether individuals from tight cultures simply experience less desire for temptations, perhaps as a result of situational constraints, or whether they have a greater ability to overcome desires when faced with temptation. The use of experience sampling methodology to answer these questions will offer valuable insight into the interplay of cultural constraint and personality as people face self-control dilemmas in everyday life. Furthermore, it would be of interest to see if self-control differences are amplified in tight and loose cultures in the context of goals associated with strong prescriptive norms and temptations associated with strong proscriptive norms.

Temporal Differences

Building on the notion that tightness-looseness can influence self-regulation, future research might explore connections between tightness-looseness and temporal mindsets. Researchers have demonstrated that self-regulation requires connecting desired goals and means of attaining these goals, which invariably involves the consideration of present and future rewards and/or consequences (Buhrau & Sujan, 2015). There is wide variation in individuals’ consideration of future consequences and likelihood to discount delayed rewards—termed temporal discounting—which is often deemed an indicator of impatience (Madden & Johnson, 2010; Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994). Research has indeed shown that higher conscientiousness is associated with a relatively greater preference for delayed rewards and lower short-term impatience (Manning et al., 2014). From a theoretical perspective, these findings have implications for research on tightness-looseness, since high threats and risk of punishment for norm violations likely require high self-control and careful consideration of future consequences. Research should directly test whether tightness-looseness can predict individual differences in temporal discounting. Moreover, since research suggests that individuals’ general time perspective orientations (e.g., Zimbardo & Boyd’s, 1999, Time Perspective Inventory) relate to temporal discounting, future research might examine whether tightness-looseness can also predict individual differences in time perspectives more generally, as well as predict additional temporal constructs such as consideration for future consequences (CFC) (Strathman et al., 1994).

Construal-Level Theory

Given the notion that personality is shaped by an adaptation to the strength of social norms, a promising area for future research is how individuals construe their environment across tight and loose cultures. Construal-level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) suggests that individuals differ in how they represent or process information, including the tendency to focus on broader, abstract features of an event (i.e., high-level construal) versus focusing on concrete, incidental features of an event (i.e., low-level construal) (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope, & Liberman, 2006). Though research on culture and construal-level theory is scant, we might expect variation in concrete and abstract thinking across tight and loose cultures. In tight cultures, as compared to loose cultures, where sanctions for deviating from social norms are more severe and there is high potential threat, individuals need to pay close attention to social situations and engage in greater self-monitoring to ensure their behavior aligns with social norms. As a result, focusing on the proximal details of a situation may allow individuals to recognize social cues and monitor and/or adjust behavior accordingly, whereas broader, more abstract consideration of a situation may cause individuals to pay less attention to situational factors. Accordingly, we might surmise that there will be greater tendencies toward concrete thinking in tight cultures and abstract thinking in loose cultures. Integrating research on the strength of social norms and construal-level theory is a promising research direction.

Big Five Personality Facets

Beyond differences in basic motivation, cognition, and temporal orientation, future research should continue to explore variation in the “Big Five” across tight and loose cultures. Research has already established links between tightness-looseness and the Big Five factors of conscientiousness and openness. However, these factors are each comprised of six subfactors, or facets, that comprise their construct space (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Research has already found that these lower level facets are better at predicting behavior relative to the larger factors (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001). Consequently, we suspect that incorporating these facets into future research will provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between tightness-looseness and personality. First, it is probable that some of these facets are more related to tightness-looseness than others. For example, it is arguable that the openness facet of aesthetics, which concerns one’s appreciation of art and beauty, is not highly related to social norms strength. By contrast, those facets that are more strongly associated with normative issues—for example, the facet of values concerns an individual’s readiness to re-examine self and societal values and the facet of actions concerns openness to new experiences—may be more strongly related to tightness-looseness because the expression of these individual traits should be shaped by the norm strength of a culture. This should also be the case for the facets that comprise the factor of conscientiousness. The facets of deliberation (i.e., thinking things through before acting) and dutifulness (i.e., an emphasis on the importance of fulfilling moral obligations) should be related to tightness-looseness because they influence an individual’s norm abidance behavior, something that is of critical importance in tighter societies. However, the facet of competence, or the belief in one’s own self-efficacy, may not have a very strong connection to norm strength.

Second, different facets may prove to be better mediators of cultural differences as compared to the broader personality dimensions. For example, measures on the facet of fantasy, or receptivity to the inner world of imagination, may better mediate cultural tightness-looseness differences in creativity and innovation as compared to the broader dimension of openness. Similarly, the facet of self-discipline may mediate cultural tightness-looseness differences in self-regulation. Thus, we recommend that future research on tightness-looseness and the “Big Five” focuses on measuring theoretically relevant facets that differentiate tight and loose cultures.

Felt Accountability

Finally, a promising individual difference that warrants attention is the concept of felt accountability. As proposed by Gelfand et al. (2006), felt accountability, which is the subjective experience that one’s actions are subject to evaluation and potential rewards or punishment (Frink & Klimoski, 1998, 2004; Hall et al., 2006; Tetlock, 1992), should be higher in tighter cultures, relative to loose cultures, due to stronger expectations to adhere to norms and stronger sanctions for violating these norms. This suggestion opens the door for future research addressing whether felt accountability mediates differences across tight and loose cultures. For example, differences in felt accountability may produce pronounced differences in the psychological state of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). In particular, as tighter societies foster greater constraint and higher societal monitoring, individuals in tighter societies perceive themselves to have fewer behavioral options and lower ability to control their outcomes. This should cause them to feel lower in power and associated psychological processes relative to their counterparts in looser societies (Keltner et al., 2003).

High-felt accountability in tighter societies is also predicted to increase resistance to change and reduce risk taking. For example, past research has found that higher prevention focus is related to less desire to change one’s course of action (Liberman, Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999) and fear of error is associated with higher resistance to change (Rybowiak, Garst, Frese, & Batinic, 1999). Research at the state level in the United States has also found that individuals in tighter states are less open to learning about other countries (Harrington & Gelfand, 2014). Relatedly, characteristics associated with loose societies, including greater promotion focus, positive attitudes concerning errors, and greater openness to experience, have been found to be associated with greater risk taking (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Friedman & Förster, 2001; George & Zhou, 2001; Levine, Higgins, & Choi, 2000; Rybowiak et al., 1999).

Higher felt accountability also has implications for pressures toward conformity and inhibiting deviance. For example, individuals differ in their demonstration of moral licensing, which occurs when an individual’s past moral behavior makes him or her more likely to do potentially immoral things without worrying about feeling or appearing immoral (Monin & Miller, 2001). It is possible that there is less moral licensing in tight cultures, particularly in public settings, due to heightened feelings of accountability brought about by greater interpersonal monitoring and stricter punishments for norm violation.

Tightness-Looseness and Expression of Individual Differences

Beyond examining how individual differences vary across tight and loose cultures, future research should integrate tightness-looseness and well-established theories on expression of personality, such as trait-behavior consistency, cross-cultural views of public versus private feelings (e.g., honne and tatamae in Japanese culture and Goffman’s [1959] front-stage and back-stage research in Western cultures) and compartmentalization.

Trait-Behavior Consistency

Existing cross-cultural research on traits and behavior demonstrates that individuals differ in the agreement between their personality characteristics and outward behaviors (Church et al., 2008). This is presumably due to varying needs to express traits as well as the influences of social cues. Since individuals in looser cultures are less influenced by social cues and norms, we would expect greater consistency between traits and behaviors for individuals in loose relative to tight cultures. Individuals in tighter cultures should strive to perform specific behaviors expected by their group, regardless of whether this matches their personal traits. Similar to trait-behavior consistency, we would expect tightness-looseness to influence individuals’ expression of private and public feelings. For example, Japanese culture describes two types of private and public feelings: the honne (one’s natural, real, or inner wishes) and the tatamae (the standard, principle, or rule by which one is bound) (Sugiyama-Lebra, 1976). These ideas are also found in Goffman’s (1959) work on front and back stages: front stage being where socially normative performance takes place and the back stage making relaxation outside of the public eye possible. Just as looser cultures might allow for individuals to more openly express their behaviors based on their personality traits, looser cultures may allow for more agreement between private versus public feelings. Put simply, with fewer restraints and needs to abide by normative expectations, individuals in looser cultures may be more able to publicly express their personal views, thereby creating more agreement between public and private feelings. By contrast, individuals in tighter cultures may stress the importance of monitoring public displays of their emotions and may suppress private feelings in order to abide by normative expectations. Following this line of reasoning, people in loose cultures may have different attitudes toward being authentic. Where authenticity may be seen positively and as a desired goal in loose cultures, people in tight cultures may believe that being authentic risks violating normative expectations and therefore may view it more negatively.

Compartmentalization

Related to the above arguments, individuals in tighter cultures may experience more compartmentalization of self relative to people in looser cultures. That is, tighter cultures may foster particular personality traits in very specific domains. For example, the public domains in tight societies—where monitoring and felt accountability are high—would necessitate the personality traits typically found in past research (the research reviewed previously). However, private domains are likely to afford the expression of different personality traits that may be typically suppressed in public domains. Perhaps people in tight societies can better frame-switch in and out of a public versus private personality/mode. By contrast, individuals in loose societies do not have to suppress or disavow “deviant” personality characteristics while in public—therefore, they are much less likely to compartmentalize their personality.

Tightness-Looseness and Homogeneity of Individual Differences

Tightness-looseness has implications for the relative homogeneity of personality characteristics within a society. Generally speaking, individuals in tighter societies are predicted to have more homogenous personality traits relative to individuals in looser societies. This may be because the narrower socialization in tighter societies explicitly fosters and reinforces homogeneity. It is also possible that homogeneity reinforces tightness. Regarding this latter point, Triandis (1989) predicted that tightness could be cultivated by greater initial societal homogeneity, as it fosters the expectation of similarity between individuals and makes differences appear aberrant. In other words, homogenous societies enable the development and enforcement of norms more naturally relative to heterogeneous societies. Indeed, Bartram (2012) found that the overall standard deviations of Big Five traits across 31 nations were negatively related to societal tightness. Thus, tighter nations experienced significantly less trait variability relative to looser nations, particularly in the case of conscientiousness and openness.

Although tightness and homogeneity are clearly related and potentially mutually reinforcing, future research should not equate the two (Uz, 2015). At its core, homogeneity refers to variability of individual traits, beliefs, and behaviors, while tightness-looseness refers to the strength of norms, which are shared, intersubjective perceptions about normative expectations and punishments. By definition, then, tightness and homogeneity are different constructs, although they may be interrelated. The relationship between homogeneity and tightness might also be more nuanced and complex, as discussed below.

As with our discussion of the important of facets above, future research should examine the specific domains in which there is more homogeneity in tight and loose cultures. For example, while tightness may lead to homogeneity in individual-difference domains such as moral values and self-control (i.e., which have implications for fitting into the normative environment), tightness need not impact homogeneity in other domains. Even in tight societies, people have a great variety of hobbies, leisure activities, and personal and organizational pursuits. Accordingly, specifying the precise domain in which homogeneity is expected will be important for future research on tightness-looseness.

Moreover, research should examine when tightness is actually associated with marked variability. For instance, tighter norms may actually develop as a reaction to extreme societal heterogeneity—those places that are predominantly multi-cultural, ethnically diverse, or very high in language diversity and/or tribal affiliation (e.g., Pakistan). In these cases, tight societal norms may be developed in order to avoid the chaos extreme heterogeneity can cultivate. Indeed, we found that tightness-looseness exhibited a curvilinear relationship with numerous measures of heterogeneity (Alesina, Devleeschauwer, Easterly, Kurlat, & Wacziarg, 2003; Kurian, 2001), such that those nations with the most ethnic and linguistic homogeneity and the most ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity were the tightest. Similar curvilinear effects were found with measures of tightness-looseness and measures of value consensus (Uz, 2015) (all results are available from the first author). In all, future research should investigate the nuances of the relationship between tightness-looseness and the homogeneity of individual differences.

Tightness-Looseness and Culture Fit

The interface of tightness-looseness and personality should also have an impact on issues of culture fit—that is, how well individuals adjust to their own culture or to a culture into which they are moving. Below, we review some research that speaks to these issues and address some potential directions for future research.

Expatriation

Researchers have previously investigated how tight versus loose social norms and personality traits interacted to predict the cultural adaptation of individuals moving into new cultures (Geeraert, Li, Ward, Gelfand, & Demes, 2016). Using longitudinal data from 889 exchange students traveling to 23 different countries, the researchers found that individuals studying in tighter cultures generally had poorer adaptation than those individuals studying in looser cultures. However, the negative impact of cultural tightness was moderated by individual personality. In particular, individuals with higher rates of agreeableness and honesty-humility had less issues with adaptation in countries with tighter social norms relative to individuals who were lower in these characteristics. Future research should also examine how other personality characteristics—including general motivational tendencies such as prevention-focus and need for closure—might influence adaptation of expatriates to tight and loose societies, as well as the desire for individuals to expatriate.

Person-Culture Match

Within a culture, individual personality can be noticeably different from the personality of the majority and therefore fail to match the “cultural norm.” According to the person-culture match hypothesis, when an individual’s personality matches the prevalent personalities of other people in their culture, the positive effect of personality on self-esteem and subjective well-being at the individual level are amplified. Fulmer and colleagues (2010) tested this prediction using data from more than 7,000 individuals from 28 societies. They found that when a relationship between a given personality trait and well-being or self-esteem exists at the individual level, the relationship is stronger in cultures where that personality dimension is highly prevalent. This pattern was found for the traits of extraversion, promotion focus, and locomotive regulatory mode. We predict that this person-culture match also plays an important role in the interface of tightness-looseness and personality. We would predict, for example, that person-culture mismatches should have stronger effects on well-being and self-esteem in tighter cultures. Similar issues of culture fit and person-culture match should play a role in organizations. In particular, tighter organizations should exhibit more restrictive recruitment and selection (Gelfand et al., 2006; see also Toh & Leonardelli, 2012, for a discussion on gender and organizational leadership emergence) and potentially stronger attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) processes (Schneider, 1983, 1987). Consequently, personality characteristics that are positively related to person-organization fit (e.g., agreeableness; Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005) may be particularly important for ASA models in tighter organizations. Tighter organizations may therefore yield much more homogeneous work forces relative to looser organizations.

Tightness-Looseness, Personality, and Mental Health

This chapter has thus far considered the connection between tightness-looseness and personality/individual differences that reflect “normal” psychological functioning. In this final section, we heed the call for the field of personality psychology to investigate the nature and functioning of clinical disorders (Benet-Martínez et al., 2015) and the growing body of work supporting cultural variations in psychopathology (Carpenter-Song et al., 2010). We present some exciting directions for linking tightness-looseness to the development and study of clinical disorders and stigmatization.

“Internalizing” versus “Externalizing” Disorders

In the field of psychology and psychiatry, a well-known distinction exists between “internalizing” and “externalizing” disorders (Liu, 2004). Internalizing disorders are maladaptive emotional and behavioral disorders that generally affect the internal psychological environment of an individual (e.g., excessive anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and trauma and stressor-related disorders), while externalizing disorders are maladaptive emotional and behavioral disorders that are expressed outwardly within an individual’s local environment and toward other people (e.g., hyperactivity, antisocial, or conduct disorders) (Oltmanns & Emery, 2014; Regier, Kuhl, & Kupfer, 2013). We expect that the prevalence of internalizing disorders may be greater in tight cultures, whereas some externalizing disorders may be more prevalent in loose cultures.

In particular, the pressures of ecological threat and severe sanctions may lead to greater prevalence of internalizing disorders in tight relative to loose cultures. This prediction draws on findings that war and disasters have a large impact on mental health, with rates of mental disorders tending to double after emergencies (World Health Organization, 2014). Studies also demonstrate that higher ecological threat within a culture is associated with higher levels of neuroticism among children in that culture (de Vries, 1987). Since anxiety and depression are highly correlated with neuroticism (Zinbarg et al., 2016), these findings support the notion that in tight cultures, with histories of ecological threat, there may be a higher prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders. We would also expect similar patterns for trauma and stressor-related disorders stemming from exposure to ecological threats (i.e., trauma) and the constant pressure of adhering to social norms (i.e., stressors). We would expect higher rates of internalizing disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), which is marked by a preoccupation with orderliness and perfectionism as well as restricted flexibility and openness, in tighter cultures due to higher levels of need for structure and assessment as compared to loose cultures. We note that it is also possible that the greater prevalence of internalized disorders in tighter cultures, if found, may exist because these disorders can yield an adaptive function in places of high threat and greater tightness, as long as they are not extreme. A certain degree of anxiety, for example, may produce greater vigilance and may be adaptive for individuals in these environments (Mrazek et al., 2013).

By contrast, a number of externalizing disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Antisocial Personality Disorder, might have higher prevalence rates in loose cultures. Many externalizing disorders include disruptive behaviors, low impulse control, and/or “undercontrolled” conduct that may violate social rules or even laws (Braje, Murakami-Brundage, Hall, Wang, & Ge, 2012; Oltmanns & Emery, 2014). Thus, we would expect the prevalence of externalizing disorders to be lower in tighter cultures, given the need for individuals in tight cultures to obey social norms to avoid punishment. We note that it is also theoretically possible that the general stigmatization of highly visible externalized disorders in tighter societies may cause most mental illness that might otherwise be expressed in an externalized fashion to be sublimated into internalized mental disorders.

Measurement, Suppression, and Stigmatization of Personality Disorders

There may be supporting rationale for these proposed relationships between tightness-looseness and specific personality disorders. At the same time, there are also specific issues to consider regarding the prevalence and treatment of clinical disorders and stigmatized perceptions of mental health disorders throughout many cultures. First, suppression/concealment may occur in cultures where lower tolerance for nonconformity leads to suppression of less desirable traits (e.g., left handedness is often suppressed in tighter cultures) (Gelfand et al., 2011). Especially for mental disorders that are considered less desirable and have the potential to be somewhat concealed (e.g., Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), we may see instances of these disorders being suppressed in tighter cultures (see also Kinias, Kim, Hafenbrack, & Lee, 2014, who found that nonnormative characteristics are stigmatized in tighter cultures). Indeed, future research needs to examine how stigmatized individuals—who are stigmatized for mental, physical, intellectual or other reasons—manage their identities in tight and loose cultures.

Second, in terms of measurement, the World Health Organization (2001) indicates that an ongoing problem in mental health research is the willingness of certain cultures to report on certain mental health conditions. For example, in certain parts of Asia, admitting mental health issues is still taboo, therefore self-reports for prevalence data may not be fully representative (Hendin et al., 2008). Thus, even if mental illness is not suppressed, we might find that individuals in tighter cultures will be less likely to admit that they suffer from stigmatized illnesses in general. Accordingly, until other unobtrusive measures are developed, it may be difficult to have confidence on mental health rates across cultures, thus making it difficult to test the aforementioned predictions of the relationship between tightness and internalizing disorders.

CONCLUSION

The nexus between culture and personality has long been an interest among scholars and researchers throughout history and across multiple disciplines. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, such work has had a storied history, ebbing and flowing on the tides of new theories, methods, and thinkers. At the present, the tide is surely rising. This chapter is but one component of this momentous surge. Heretofore, few researchers have examined how personality relates to the strength of social norms across cultures. This chapter fills that gap and demonstrates that tightness-looseness theory makes a unique contribution to the personality and culture literature by providing a unifying explanatory framework for a broad constellation of co-varying individual differences. There are many interesting frontiers that await investigation that further connect personality theory and research with the strength of social norms.

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