Events

Across the millennia, human groups have evolved specific cultural and psychological adaptations to cope with collective threats, from terrorism to natural disasters to pathogens. In particular, research has identified cultural tightness, characterized by strict social norms and punishments, as one key adaptation that helps groups coordinate to survive collective threats. However, interference with the threat signals that facilitate tightening can lead to cultural mismatches—either too much or not enough tightening. In this seminar, Gelfand will discuss two examples of cultural mismatches: the COVID-19 pandemic (a case in which collective threat is real, but there is a resistance to tightening) and the rise of populist movements (a case in which exaggerated threat leads to unnecessary tightening). 

Michele Gelfand is the John H. Scully Professor of Cross-Cultural Management and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business School and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy. She was formerly a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Her work has been published in outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, Nature, Human Behavior, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Academy of Management Journal, among others. Gelfand is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press). Her book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World was published by Scribner in 2018. She is the Past President of the International Association for Conflict Management and co-founder of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution. She received the 2016 Diener award from SPSP, the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, the 2019 Outstanding Cultural Psychology Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2020 Rubin Theory-to-Practice award from the International Association of Conflict Management, the 2021 Contributions to Society award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation. Gelfand is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

This seminar was made possible thanks to the generous support of the DeSouza family.