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.
Cultural differences, Gelfand continued, “have a certain logic — a rationale that makes good sense,” noting that “cultures that have threats need rules to coordinate to survive (think about how incredibly coordinated Japan is in response to natural disasters). But cultures that don’t have a lot of threat can afford to be more permissive and loose.”
The researcher is choosing which things to inspect for tightness or looseness. What if you had to argue that California and Oregon were "tight"? You'd just identify some areas of ideology about which leftish folk are harshly disciplinarian.
The tight-loose concept, Gelfand argued, is an important framework to understand the rise of President Donald Trump and other leaders in Poland, Hungary, Italy, and France, among others. The gist is this: when people perceive threat — whether real or imagined, they want strong rules and autocratic leaders to help them survive.
I'd say we need to watch out for autocrats, but if you think they're all coming from the right, you're going to get blindsided.
My research has found that within minutes of exposing study participants to false information about terrorist incidents, overpopulation, pathogen outbreaks and natural disasters, their minds tightened. They wanted stronger rules and punishments.
"Tight" is a confusing word. It could describe orderliness and cool practicality. I think of a "tight ship." But it could imply rigidity and fear of change. Why was "tight" ever used for "drunk"? "Loose" is confusing too. Is it relaxed and creative or lazy and disorganized? I wrote that before reading this:
In her book, Gelfand writes that tightness encourages conscientiousness, social order and self-control on the plus side, along with close-mindedness, conventional thinking and cultural inertia on the minus side. Looseness, Gelfand posits, fosters tolerance, creativity and adaptability, along with such liabilities as social disorder, a lack of coordination and impulsive behavior.
So, Gelfand embraces the confusingness. We need a balance of loose and tight, apparently — like yin and yang.
Edsall poses the question:
If liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism, why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?
Psychprof Laura Niemi answered:
Unlike liberals, conservatives strongly endorse the binding moral values aimed at protecting groups and relationships. They judge transgressions involving personal and national betrayal, disobedience to authority, and disgusting or impure acts such as sexually or spiritually unchaste behavior, as morally relevant and wrong... [Liberals stress] caring, kindness, fairness and rights — known among scholars as “individualizing values” — while conservatives focus more on loyalty, hierarchy, deference to authority, sanctity and a higher standard of disgust, known as “binding values.”
The left supports individualism? The left goes for fairness and rights? I think that's only because you are choosing where to look and your choice is based on what you want to see.
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All of this is circular, ideological, and politically motivated. The terms make no sense because "loose" and "tight" can't be operationalized and the authors didn't seek out counterexamples. They should have received failing grades in school, and should now be ignored for wasting the time of their readers.
There's plenty of data-driven "Big 5" personality trait research dating back decades. Don't ignore the past and pretend you invented the wheel. But tenure. But paychecks. But ignorance.
"In her book, Gelfand writes that tightness encourages conscientiousness, social order and self-control on the plus side, along with close-mindedness, conventional thinking and cultural inertia on the minus side. Looseness, Gelfand posits, fosters tolerance, creativity and adaptability, along with such liabilities as social disorder, a lack of coordination and impulsive behavior."
You generally want close-mindedness as to what would be a suitable substance for the foundation of a building. An open-minded person might posit that popcorn would be a new and exciting foundation material for an apartment complex. Good to be closed minded, on that point. Same goes for the foundations of your life and society. If you hate the idea of families and want to replace them with government schools and fad worldviews, you might find that the foundation doesn't hold much of a functioning society.
"If liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism, why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?"
Answer: hubris; pride; a self-decided hostility toward others, before you even leave the door of your home.
"...why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now?"
Let's ask Andy Naô and take bets on how far he'll spew his coffee.
Look at my shiny new way of proving my right-thinking virtue (you potentially atavistic knuckle-dragger)!
Right tighty. Lefty loosy. In religion (i.e. morality, ethics, law), governance, community, relationships, life?
But cultures that don’t have a lot of threat can afford to be more permissive and loose.
"You're kind of loosey-goosey, you're safe with your girls..."
Tight as in drunk or tight as in tight-assed?
The gist is this: when people perceive threat — whether real or imagined, they want strong rules and autocratic leaders to help them survive.
That does more to explain Biden, Newsom, Fauci, von der Leyen than Trump. Trump's supposed charisma and outsider status frighten elites, but it's the elites who are imposing the strong rules. "Post-liberalism" is very pronounced among progressives and liberals.
[Liberals stress] caring, kindness, fairness and rights — known among scholars as “individualizing values” — while conservatives focus more on loyalty, hierarchy, deference to authority, sanctity and a higher standard of disgust, known as “binding values.
Right now, it's more that conservatives assume a society that does have "binding values" and some internal cohesion, while progressives want values imposed by governments. That's due in part to the multiculturalism that progressives value and in part to the fact that the values they want aren't accepted by a large part of the population.
From what I've seen disgust is at least as pronounced among progressives as among conservatives. Political psychology relies on concepts developed long ago and assumes they are still valid today.
Cali used to be tight, but citizens have been repeatedly EFF’d over the decades and now Cali is as loose as loose can be.
We well-rodgered out heyah, thank you very much.
"I'd say we need to watch out for autocrats, but if you think they're all coming from the right, you're going to get blindsided."
We live in a time when governors who want to return a measure of choice and autonomy to citizens instead of having top-down government are called fascistic.
Cf loose-fish and fast-fish in Ch 89 of Moby-Dick.
The problem with defining a group like that, "[Liberals stress] caring, kindness, fairness and rights" is that it is inevitably inaccurate and biased in favor of one's own group.
The only thing I've come across that can function as a definition and feels right is Chesterton's Parable of the Fence. When someone on the left sees a problem, they dive in right away with a solution. When someone on the right sees a problem, they try to find out why it's there before they start proposing solutions.
The left can be guilty of reckless action, the right can be guilty of overly deliberate inaction.
liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism
This part is right. If you want the best solutions, you need the widest input.
The loose/tight thing is incomprehensible. I don't see how it could be useful.
The article may get it wrong, but tightness and looseness seems like a good characterization of certain opposing philosophical viewpoints. It could be useful to focus on that over left vs right, which doesn’t mean much in our deadlocked political reality. David Graeber talked about caregivers vs managers, and alan watts would famously talk about the prickly people vs the gooey people. You need both of course.
I believe that academic studies can be divided between "hogwash" and "inconsequential." I am finding data collection pretty easy.
The unbearable tightness of being.
I've been to the South many times, and they are anything but tight.
Maybe it's all the mint juleps, but it's almost like being in Mexico...
A hot/cold/warm tale? tight: authoritarian. loose: libertarian. just right: conservative.
Semantic ambiguity? loose tongues, thighs, fingers, minds, etc.
It is interesting that the left has morphed into a group that says" my way or the highway" since the flower child 60's. They have become much closer to the fascists they accuse everyone else of being than many national socialists ever were.
My side good, your side bad. Tribalism is endemic to humanity and can be good or bad.
That being said, which side is demanding "obey!" and which side is saying "live and let live today?".
Which side is demanding more governmental control of our lives and which side wants to return power to the people?
Which side is using governmental agencies and federal courts to harass and persecute the other? (Ironically, those being persecuted are called the Fascists by those using the government to persecute them)
liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain...
progressivism (i.e. [unqualified] monotonic)
liberalism is divergent. conservativism is moderating.
"Cf loose-fish and fast-fish in Ch 89 of Moby-Dick."
Thanks. I was just listening to "Moby-Dick" on my sunrise run this morning. Went back to Chapter 1 again, though, so I was nowhere near 89.
I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it.
First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast, when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants,—a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other recognized symbol of possession; so long as the party wailing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
Funny how the "loose states" are also the most tyrannically governed.
"What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish."
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick: or, the White Whale (pp. 374-375). . Kindle Edition.
The problem with defining a group like that, "[Liberals stress] caring, kindness, fairness and rights" is that it is inevitably inaccurate and biased in favor of one's own group.
You also get to decide what counts as caring, kindness, etc. Is it caring and kind to amputate the breasts or the penis of a child? One side insists it is and calls it "gender affirming care." The other side calls it mutilation and says that it is vile and evil. And whose rights? When a vote was taken in California regarding making gay marriage legal it lost, the majority of people were against it. However, people who donated funds to the organizations that were campaigning against the referendum were harassed, some even losing their jobs. Wasn't it their right to donate to a political campaign that championed their view? Does the left have the ability to reflect on the fact that they are using the same tactics that the KKK used to attempt to silence proponents of racial equality? Or do they just not care because they believe themselves on the side of the angels?
"What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick: or, the White Whale (p. 375). . Kindle Edition.
How is this different than any why-my-boyfriend-looks-at-other-girls, and how-do-I-stop-him in Cosmopolitan magazine??
Feel real loose like a long-neck goose...
Ah, California is max loose. No surprise there. People migrated there in part to escape control and as a result no one cares about anyone else, causing maximum anomie and alienation.
I didn't know how real human beings lived until I left.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... So long, farewell, and thanks for all the fish.
I immediately thought of open carry. That's loose. Gun restrictions are tight. But, as you pointed out, their definitions are not empirical.
Psychoanalysis of political preferences always skews left-fascist. This stuff was popular with the Nazis and still is with communists, social scientists, loons like Bob Avakian, and other cultists.
Of course Edsall is the most despicable NYT editorialist. He's like a David Brooks with awareness of his surroundings and nasty intentions.
I'd like to see the data on Democrats being more caring, kind, and fair. That has not been my political or personal experience. I'd say more manipulative, divisive, destructive, and rigidly ordered in ambition.
Culturally, it's the difference between nailing a banana to a museum wall and a Rembrandt.
"The left supports individualism? The left goes for fairness and rights?"
The left: Kindness Inc. Just like at Stanford. Of course, all the lefty BS about kindness and tolerance is just that. But you gotta give them credit for packaging their BS much, much better than the right.
Lefty "rights" = stuff progs like.
Anyway, coming so soon after the pandemic this post puzzled me: progs wanted authoritarian lock- and crackdowns. They were as tight as could be. They loved their tightness. They reveled in it.
Subtitle of the book: The View from the Ivory Tower.
The notion that people or states should be placed in categories to explain things happens a lot.
Also -- I do think looseness in life, and tightness in work, or vice-versa, might lead to a more productive life than looseness everywhere or tightness everywhere. Contrast is a good thing.
If liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism, why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?
Because in the past, liberalism and conservatism checked each other's power in relation to external threats and events. Today, liberalism (or creeping Marxism, which these days is the same thing) is the threat.
Political sociology ought to be at war, or at least in conflict with, political psychology. It ought to point out that demographics are a more reliable predictor of political affiliation than psychological traits are. But of course, social science professors are on the same side of the political divide and support each other, rather than argue with each other.
What is Ukraine but a loose fish to Russia?
What is Russia but a loose fish to China and the West?
Right now, it looks like the US is the loose fish to Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
Kay: David Graeber also talked about burning down people's houses and businesses and participated in and encouraged mass lawbreaking and anarchist violence. He hoped the pandemic would lead to a world where we all lived under the supervision of radicals like him in massive communes, squatting in tents, crapping in buckets of straw, and snapping our fingers to his "leaderless leadership." Credit where credit is due. Thank you for illustrating every one of my points for me.
Of course, when he wasn't advocating for trust fund youth and homeless drug addicts to destroy the livelihoods and possessions of the middle and working classes and civilization itself, he lived a posh existence and expired while vacationing in Venice, thus exemplifying every nefarious hypocrisy of the Left.
"...within minutes of exposing study participants to false information about terrorist incidents, overpopulation, pathogen outbreaks and natural disasters, their minds tightened."
Why do I suspect yet another unreplicable* social science experiment.
*Unless, of course, the replication also uses only Soc.Sci. majors as subjects.
It is impossible to characterize neo-liberal, i.e., progressive, thought in accordance with general principles. Progressivism reflects a kind of situational ethicism or moral relativism that is slippery as an eel. Consequently, blue states, are loose or tight depending on the political whims of their rulers.
How is the use of confiscatory taxation to provide free services to illegal immigrants to be categorized? How does "individualizing values" ("looseness") comport with affirmative action, closed shops, etc., so cherished by the blue states.
And by comparison to Obama or Biden in what way was Trump authoritarian?
NYT crapola!
No one seemed more threatened and terrified by disaster as “loose people” during the pandemic, they were willing to believe and go along with whatever the government told them to do and believe.
Tina, Tina. Sad.
That banana was TAPED to the wall.
NOW do you see the ART?
NY Progressives are pretty tight. They are crying now about some law students meeting with Justice Kavenaugh. Give them an inch, and they steal a mile.....They aren't ever going to stop being 3 year olds having temper tantrums. YOU MUST THINK ALIKE. EXACTLY ALIKE. NO
DRIFTING OFF THE PLANTATION!!!
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/03/29/wtf-is-wrong-with-you-columbia-center-and-students-protest-meeting-with-justice-kavanaugh/#more-202867
It's a false dichotomy. Tightness and looseness coexist in the best systems.
E.G the U.S. Constitution and the U.S..
One of the most successful and innovative early Silicon Valley companies had very clear "Procedures, Policies, and Guidelines" for new product development. All written out tightly, explicitly. It was a three page document. Maximum freedom reigned there.
The U.S. Tax code is an example of what you get when you abandon this approach.
This article is literally playing fast and loose with the truth!
When a vote was taken in California regarding making gay marriage legal it lost, the majority of people were against it. However, people who donated funds to the organizations that were campaigning against the referendum were harassed, some even losing their jobs.
A minority demographic, majority Democrat vote, no less. Cancel culture. Democracy died with a trans/homosexual judge... then they stage a parade in an unrelated jurisdiction and raised their albinophobic banner with pride.
Beware the progress of the democratic/dictatorial duality.
"Appropriately titled 'Tightness-Looseness Across the 50 United States,' the study calculated a catalog of measures for each state..."
This has gone off the rails even before finishing the headline. Aggregating at the state level is far too coarse. Instead, consider county level voting patterns.
Tightness-Looseness by state explains nothing, and the concepts are far too general to make any sense at the county level. I've read enough of Thomas Edsall's twattle to be completely unsurprised at his missing the clearly apparent.
Here is a different explanation. Voting patterns can be explained by one factor: the extent to which jobs in each county can be considered "Reality Refereed". By which I mean reality is the arbiter between success and failure *and* there is accountability. All the trades, for example, are Reality Refereed.
In contrast, Grievance Studies are not Reality Refereed (RR'd). There are no criteria for determining success, and the linkage between advocacy and consequences is so tenous that no one will ever be held accountable for any outcome.
Why does this matter? Because people in RR'd occupations have to think in terms of what works, and what doesn't.
In contrast, non-RR'd occupations can engage in tribalistic self-deceiving virtue. Progressivism, in other words. Progressives engage in circular reasoning: Progressives are those who think progressive thoughts, which are good and true because progressives think them. And because progressive thoughts are good and true, anyone who disagrees is one or more of stupid, ignorant, or malevolent.
And since reality is so rarely consulted, their failures are invisible to them, leaving their drive for demonization and ostracism untroubled.
That's where polarization comes from.
Mother is permissive. Father is restrictive.
Mother is restrictive. Father is permissive.
The Constitution is individually permissive, authoritarian restrictive.
The children are genuinely confused, even rebellious. The fish are headed downstream.
Why was "tight" ever used for "drunk"?
Guess that means Wisconsin is the tightest. But what if an expert like George Thuroughgood used "loose" for drunk? It all so confusing.
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
Well I ain't seen my baby since I don't know when
I've been drinking bourbon, whiskey, scotch and gin
Gonna get high man I'm gonna get loose
Need me a triple shot of that juice
Gonna get drunk don't you have no fear
I want one bourbon, one scotch and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer!
I've heard of loose change but not tight change. The dogs get loose but they don't get tight once corralled. Single cigarettes are sold as loosies, but the rest are not tighties. Is jockey underwear still called tighty-whities even if the elastic is gone and they are loose?
Remind me, which states are "tight" and which are "loose" on gun control, pandemic measures, zoning laws, and business regulation?
There are loose women and tight women. I prefer both.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... So long, farewell
No, that's The Sound of Music.
"why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?"
For the same reason it has always been polarized, because control of the Government makes people rich via corruption. The motive is not philosophy, Not even money (see the Clinton Foundation), but an extravagantly prestigious consumptive lifestyle. As said, politics is Hollywood for ugly people.
The commissariat of the USSR and Chairman Mao were all there for the lifestyle, not the Marxism.
I had a number of disagreements with the statements that you posted from the article. But, thankfully, you covered each of them with questions of your own. You see, left and right can think alike on things.
This article and many like it do make me wonder why so many on the left have such a wrongheaded idea of what goes on in the Conservative mind. I wonder sometimes if I, as a man on the right, have wrong ideas about what goes on in the heads of those on the left. But then I hear a Progressive speak and I think...Nah. They are who we thought they were.
Today on Fun With "Data".
I tight wit my paisani fromma da old 'hood, yo.
I'm trying to make sense of the tight/loose in regards to how the states viewed wearing masks - especially wearing them outside, away from other people. It seems like the "loose" states were what I would have called "tight" on that and vice versa. Perhaps it's a matter of whether you think the social norms are what have been the norm for a period of time or what the government has informed you is to be the new norm.
In listening to Jordan Peterson interview Micheal Yon and a Dutch woman on the farmers protesting again in the Netherlands: “Not all fish get along in the aquarium. Philippinos are the Type O of fish- green green green- they get along w/everyone. The Chechens, not so much- more than 6& they’re a gang.”
I understand that analogy. The whole world is an aquarium.
Or, an ocean.
Either way- tight or loose- those that make the laws rule the roost. Or, the ocean, or something.
Left-Handed and Right-Handed Fastener Threads
Most screws today use right-handed threads, and it’s rare to find a left-handed screw used in any application that doesn’t specifically call for it. However, there are some applications that specifically call for the use of left-handed fasteners.
Sorry about banana museum error, Fred.
"This article and many like it do make me wonder why so many on the left have such a wrongheaded idea of what goes on in the Conservative mind. I wonder sometimes if I, as a man on the right, have wrong ideas about what goes on in the heads of those on the left. But then I hear a Progressive speak and I think...Nah. They are who we thought they were."
How broadminded you tried to seem in wondering if those on the left might have ideas as complex and multi-faceted and misunderstood as those you unreservedly credit to Conservatives, (before immediately discarding the notion, revealing your largesse to be purely rhetorical). How "right" of you.
Is lying "tight" or "loose"?
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