A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies

Abstract

<jats:p>Human groups have long faced ecological threats such as resource stress and warfare, and must also overcome strains on coordination and cooperation that are imposed by growing social complexity. Tightness–looseness (TL) theory suggests that societies react to these challenges by becoming culturally tighter, with stronger norms and harsher punishment of deviant behaviour. TL theory further predicts that tightening is associated with downstream effects on social, political and religious institutions. Here, we comprehensively test TL theory in a sample of non-industrial societies. Since previous studies of TL theory have sampled contemporary countries and American states, our analysis allows us to examine whether the theory generalizes to societies in the ethnographic record and also to explore new correlates of tightness that vary more in non-industrial societies. We find that tightness covaries across domains of social norms, such as socialization, law and gender. We also show that tightness correlates with several theorized antecedents (ecological threat, complexity, residential homogeneity) and several theorized consequences (intergroup contact, political authoritarianism, moralizing religious beliefs). We integrate these findings into a holistic model of tightness in non-industrial societies and provide metrics that can be used by future studies on cultural tightness in the ethnographic record.</jats:p>

Basic human values during the COVID-19 outbreak, perceived threat and their relationships with compliance with movement restrictions and social distancing

“…Second, this study focused on cultural values using the ten values model of Schwartz. However, other models exist and are widely used, such as the cultural dimensions model [ 54 ], and other cultural factors as cultural tightness (severity of social norms and tolerance for deviance [ 55 ]) have been found to affect the containment of COVID-19 [ 56 , 57 ]. Furthermore, the small size of the indirect effects observed in our mediation analyses suggests that other mediating variables should be considered in future studies.…”

The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony

“…Later research demonstrated that variation across the 50 United States followed a similar pattern: compared to looser states, tight states had higher death rates owing to natural disasters, greater food insecurity, and more disease prevalence [ 81 ]. Jackson et al [ 82 ] showed that non-industrial societies can also be differentiated on TL, and that ecological threats predict greater tightness. They also found that tightness is correlated with social complexity across cultures, perhaps because social complexity engenders a heightened need for the large-scale cooperation and coordination tightness can provide.…”

Mask Wearing as Cultural Behavior: An Investigation Across 45 U.S. States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Recent research on U.S. states has demonstrated the implications of tightness-looseness for infectious disease. Harrington and Gelfand ( 2014 ) reported that tighter U.S. states exhibited higher rates of influenza, pneumonia, and various sexually transmitted diseases, which the authors interpreted as support for the notion that external threats, including pathogens, foster tighter societal norms [see Jackson et al ( 2020 )]. More recent work by Gelfand et al ( 2021 ), however, has argued that tighter societies are more successful at fighting off pandemics, which are much more punctuated events requiring a societal response.…”