An interesting axis on which to consider culture.

One of the most important aspects of culture that we take for granted is our social norms. We follow norms constantly. And we rarely recognize how much we need norms: social norms are the glue that keep us together, they give us our identity and help us to coordinate and cooperate at such a remarkable level. What’s more, social norms are the key that unlocks societal order, and even the possibility of constructing a human society. If people didn’t abide by socially expected rules, their behavior would be unbearably unpredictable. We wouldn’t be able to coordinate our actions to do most anything—from getting place-to-place to having meaningful conversations to running schools, organizations, and our governments.

But my research has shown that some groups have much stronger norms than others; they’re tight. Others have much weaker norms; they’re loose. Of course, all cultures have areas in which they are tight and loose—but cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize norms and compliance with them. Since I got my Ph.D. in cross-cultural psychology, I’ve been studying tight-loose cultures in over a hundred groups, and I’ve discovered that this distinction can help us understand differences across nations, states, organizations, and social classes, and even our own households. It’s what I call a “fractal pattern” of culture. Remarkably, tight-loose has a very similar pattern in terms of its antecedents and consequences across different levels. Tight-loose also causes a lot of conflict, but once we understand its logic, we cultivate greater cultural empathy and manage our divides more constructively.

https://behavioralscientist.org/tight-and-loose-cultures-a-conversation-with-michele-gelfand/