"Tight" and "loose" cultures...and social preference

 Sourced from the American Psychological Association, Neuroscience News.com, today, carries a piece of research gathering that warrants some further investigation. It also warrants a closer look from a lay, non-academic perspective.

Entitled, “Low Sense of Personal Control Increases People’s affinity for Tighter, Rules-Based Culture,” the piece begins with these words:

People who feel a lack of personal control in their lives are more likely to prefer a culture that imposes order, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. These ‘tighter’ cultures, in turn, perpetuate their existence by reducing individuals’ sense of personal control and increasing their sense of collective control.

And then the piece continues:

“Strong social norms-a core feature of tight cultures- help people view the world as simply and coherent. As strong norms guide people’s behaviors and allow them to predict others’ behaviors, then can provide a significant source of order and predictability in everyday social life,’ said lead author Anyi Ma, PhD, of Tulane University. (Ma continues) ‘So when people lack control and desire structure, they may come to prefer tighter cultures.’

The piece outlines some of the processes used to develop the thesis:

‘Researchers used scores for tightness on individual states (U.S. States) calculated by researchers from the University of Maryland in 2014. Scores for each state were derived using an established measure that included criteria such as strength of punishment (e.g. the legality of corporal punishment, punitiveness of laws), latitude/permissiveness (access to alcohol), diversity (as measured by the percentage of total population that if foreign) and prevalence and strength of institutions (e.g. how religious the population is).  Individuals who reported lower levels of perceived personal control were significantly more likely to express a preference for states that scored higher in societal tightness. These findings remained true, and even strengthened, after controlling for participants’ gender, age, income and education.

In organizations, like workplaces, too, ‘participants who expressed lower level of personal control were more likely to express a preference for a tighter organizational structure. Additionally,, employees who reported lower levels of personal control were more likely to express a higher need for structure and those with a higher need for structure were more likely to express a preference fo a tighter organizational culture. In another experiment, researchers found participants who expressed low levels of personal control were more likely prosocial or punish selfish behavior of an anonymous individual within a simulated computer game. Researchers also tested whether being in a tight culture reduces people’s perceptions of personal control. A total of 98 participants, recruited online, were randomly assigned to read a description of a company that either had a tight or a loose organizational culture and asked to imagine they had accepted a job there. Participants who were asked to imagine working for a company with a tight culture perceived significantly lower personal control than those asked to imagine working for a company with a loose culture. A separate but similar experiment, comprising 96 online participants, also asked individuals to imagine working for a company with tight of loose organizational cultures, but instead of asking about personal control, individuals were asked to respond to a series of statements designed to measure their sense of collective control, (e.g. ‘I would feel that employees in the company can work together to control the fate of the company.’) Results from these experiments provide evidence for the ideas that tight cultures lower people’s feelings of personal control but increase their sense of collective control, according to (Dr.) Ma. Scholars have argued that tight cultures evolved as a way for people to collectively mitigate social threats. We (says Dr. Ma) support this idea by showing that being in a tight culture increases people’s perceptions of collective control, which makes them feel more confident in overcoming external threats as a group, she said.’

In this space, without bringing empirical, scientific research data to bear, we have proceeded on the general premise that personal attitudes, perceptions, behaviours and beliefs have both an indirect and a direct impact on the social culture, in all situations.  Attempting to bridge personal and public issues, however, seems to run counter to the prevailing notion of contemporary research experiments, given that academic disciplines require that both the subject and the methods of conducting research comply with professional guidelines, and exclusive subject mandates. Hence, political scientists, in their pursuit of political policy and counsel, as well as legislation and political ideology and their respective histories, tend to defer to the social scientists and the marketing geniuses, for their ‘research’ into human behaviour, voting patterns, and predictions. The same deference is shown by corporations marketing a product or a service and the language of marketing, advertising and the decision-making it attempts to drive, indicates a strict adherence to the findings of the social psychologists.

As one who was raised in a ‘tight culture” in both my family of origin, as well as in the specific ecclesial culture, I have both consciously and unconsciously riled against the very notion of a ‘tight culture’ in my own personal and professional life. While adhering to the basic parameters of the several schools and systems in which I worked, in fulfilling such requirements as grades, testing, and attendance, as well as basic deportment expectations, I attempted to generate a more laissez-faire ‘culture’ inside the classroom. I stiffened at the title of a book, then extant, that argued education was a ‘conserving’ rather than a ‘change’ activity, in the perception that we were anticipating and working with students to get them to ‘think outside the box’ although that phrase was not as prevalent back then. Students who argued for a thesis that stretched the conventional perception, were those whose work I treasured perhaps more than others might have preferred. Studying the future, something that Canadian universities are averse to formalizing, seemed then to be a litmus test for the adventurousness/constriction of our culture, and that test also hinted if not declared our resistance to change and our level of confidence in the future.

A tight culture, in my mind, has always been a culture focused on the future, while remembering the past, and revering those aspects of the past that were worthy of  legitimate respect and preservation, I preferred a perspective that looked at “why not” rather than ‘why’ when looking at any set of circumstances. Implicit in the “why not” is an edgy and a “possibility” quotient that seems to be missing from the perspective of ‘repeating” what we have inherited. Diagnosis, and the critical examination of any situation, is essential for a mature mind and individual to take stock of who s/he is, where s/he is and what options are available. Focussing on the options, however, in this little mind, seems to hold a more loose grip on the current structure and culture, and a more magnetic perception of what comes next. Inbred, from a very early age, was the notion that “outside” of the home was a place where things were much more ‘attractive’ and supportive than inside.

And that ‘hard wiring’ has been an integral component in my psychic baggage for eight decades. Loose cultures, individual exploration of their own potential seemed to be inextricably linked, whereas, tight cultures seemed much more dependent on and feeding upon the ‘danger posed by individuals left free to explore’. Indeed, one of the measures of the mature adult has always seemed to be the freely worn attire of the innovator, the explorer, the poet, the artist, the one who eagerly presents to a situation with a confidence, and a sense of adventure, rather than the one who sees the ’dred’ and the darkness primarily in each conundrum. Does this perspective derive from another notion, the rejection of the Catechism’s focus on ‘sin’ and the need for redemption as the defining characteristic of humanity. That ‘tightness,’ at least to this scribe, has always been a snare on the ankle of the ecclesial theology, rendering its parishioners more as frightened children rather than hopeful and cheerful and adventurous energies seeking intimate relationships with God and others.

Tight culture, in my eyes, and thereby in my experience is encapsulated in such phrases as “God’s chosen frozen” about a church that not only adheres to but also enforces a cold, resistant, withdrawn, and secretive personal mask, as an emblem of not only an historic culture but also of a specific denominational faith. Attempting to graft a social conscience onto that coldness, inevitably brings about a withholding both of the altruism that is the sine qua non of all expressions of kindness, and a cultural pattern of social rigidity, rules, and political correctness that defies human nature, and the organic relations of humans to the planet and to the human race.

The attractiveness of a ‘tight culture’ to those who feel a low level of personal control, which tight culture, then fosters a perception of ‘collective control’, may seem to some to be an ideal picture of a balanced society in and through organizations, like schools, churches, families and companies and bureaucracies, which then foster a feeling of something like ‘collective control’ almost as a self-fulfilling prophecy…tightness effectively satisfying the perception of need for personal control, which then, also delivers a perception of collective control, as further justification of the ‘tightness’ from the beginning.

Erich Fromm once wrote, in 1941, about man’s “Escape from Freedom” in which he positing that human beings could not tolerate too much freedom, and sought limits to their freedom. Fromm escaped Nazi Germany, settled in the U.S. and attempts to explain humanity’s ambivalent relationship with freedom.

 Allencheng.com writes: Fromm says that it is because modern society has given them a sense of loneliness and insignificance. He explains this by comparing individuation in human societies with individual development. In both cases there is a loss of primary ties to parents or society and an increase in self-reliance and confidence. However, this independence can also lead to isolation from others if not accompanied by other opportunities for social interaction…Feudalism was a strict social order that gave its members security and purpose, while also limiting their freedom. The rise of market capitalism left individuals with more freedoms but plagued by uncertainty and insignificance. Protestant religions like Calvinism and Lutheranism arose to help people deal with those feelings, but they did so by marking them feel insignificant as compared to God’s authority (and one another). Capitalism treats people like cogs in a machine, leaving them isolated and insignificant. (Fromm) argues that Hitler was able to manipulated German citizens because they were especially susceptible to sado-masochistic tendencies and a desire for domination over others.

The most recent research, cited today in Neuroscience.com, on tight cultures, and low levels of perceptions of personal control, while not directly and immediately evocative of the Nazi period in history, are nevertheless, indicative of one of the primary continua in human history, politics, philosophy and religion. Human relationship to the abstract notion of freedom, as expressed in ‘tighter’ or ‘looser’ structures, rules, regulations and the exercise of power, including whether or not one ideology provides or offers, or promises more individual freedom than another, is one of the main intellectual, psychological, spiritual, religious, political and economic rivers that continues to flow throughout the culture and also within each of us.

Jurgen Moltmann, in the Theology of Hope, argues that each moment is intimately and inextricably linked to both the first moment and the last moment of time (another abstraction) and in that light, if we are able and willing to consider such a premise, each moment, each thought, each act and each experience is part of a much larger, more infinite and more mysterious wholeness. If such a theology were to be even somewhat embraced, along with a psychology (not a theology) that flowed in a river of polytheism, open to the influence of the many mythical gods and goddesses,  it might be feasible to imagine a world in which ‘tightness’ and “looseness” in how we relate both to ourselves and to others including God, might give way to a more elastic, creative, imaginative and even confident and courageous perspective in our perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and the need for extrinsic power.

Intrinsic power, or expressed as “the internal locus of control” is one of  the those ‘talismans’ that try to depict an individual’s capacity and opportunity to shift the focus of his/her attitude and perception to something more akin to “authorship” rather than disciplined soldier, in any situation.