Michele Gelfand on Rule Makers & Rule Breakers

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.5 • 772 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2018

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike talks to University of Maryland cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand about her new book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World. Topics Mike and Michele discuss include: the importance of culture in understanding politics why some cultures are 'tight' and others are 'loose' the advantages and disadvantages of tightness and looseness tight culture support for 'loose' Donald Trump the geography of tightness and looseness in the United States threat perception, political ideology, and tightness if the United States should be tighter or looser than it is how tight and loose cultures can better communicate and lots more Follow Michele Gelfand on Twitter Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-politics-guys/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Politics Guys interview, conversations about American politics, economics, history, and culture with authors and researchers from across the ideological spectrum.
0:09.6	I'm Michael Barronowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.
0:13.3	My guest today is University of Maryland cultural psychologist Michelle Gelfin.
0:16.9	Dr. Gelfin uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the
0:23.1	evolution of culture, as well as its multi-level consequences for human groups.
0:28.3	Her work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in numerous national outlets,
0:33.2	including The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Public Radio,
0:38.6	Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, and The Economist.
0:43.8	Her latest book and the topic of our conversation today is,
0:47.1	Rulemakers, Rule Breakers, How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World.
0:51.6	Michelle Gelfin, welcome to the show.
0:53.6	Thanks so much for having me.
0:55.0	You know, you study culture, which to me at least feels like something that we often,
1:01.6	maybe not overlook, but certainly underappreciate in my field political science. You know,
1:08.5	there's this saying that I heard recently from the business world,
1:11.3	I guess, culture eats strategy for breakfast. I've always realized right away after I heard,
1:17.4	I was like, wow, it just really resonates with me because I think it sort of gets at how
1:22.5	fundamentally important culture is. And so I think you'd be a great person to ask this question of,
1:28.7	why is culture so important? That's a great question, Michael. And I think the answer is pretty
1:36.5	simple. Culture, which humans have invented, is really key to our survival. When I think about
1:42.7	culture and my work is on social norms, we just couldn't
1:47.2	operate as societies without social norms or these unwritten standards for human behavior.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Baranowski, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Baranowski and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.