A new international study reveals wide variations in the degree to which various societies impose social norms, enforce conformity and punish anti-social behaviour. It also shows that the more threats a society has been exposed to, the more likely they are to be a restrictive society.

“We can now reliably show which societies are generally tight versus loose, and the specific factors that constitute tight versus loose cultural systems,” said Queen’s School of Business associate professor of organizational behaviour Jana Raver, the second of 44 authors on the study.

The researchers surveyed 6,823 respondents from a wide range of occupations, as well as university students, in 33 nations. They found that countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore and Pakistan are much tighter, whereas countries such as the Ukraine, Israel, Brazil, and the U.S. are looser.

Their research further showed that a nation's tightness or looseness is in part determined by the ecological and human factors that have shaped its history – including wars, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, population density and scarcity of natural resources. Tight and loose societies also vary in their institutions—with tight societies having more autocratic governments, more closed media, and criminal justice systems that had more monitoring and greater deterrence of crime as compared to loose societies.

The study found that the situations that people encounter differ in tight and loose societies. For example, everyday situations—like being in park, a classroom, the movies, a bus, at job interviews, restaurants, and even one’s bedroom—constrain behavior much more in tight societies and afford a wider range of behavior in loose societies.

University of Maryland psychology professor Michele Gelfand is the first author on the study. The results are published in the May 27 issue of the journal Science.

For more details, please visit the School of Business website.