Does "tightness" make the difference?
According to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, the U.S. and most of Europe has a Covid19 mortality rate of over 38 deaths per 100K people, with the U.S. at 38.6 and climbing, the U.K. at 65.7, and Belgium at 85.2. This is in stark contrast to Asian countries where the death rate in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore has been 0.7, 0.5, and 0.4, respectively.
Michele Gelfand, a cultural psychologist and author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World (Scribner, 2018), ascribes much of the discrepancy the tight-loose dimension of cultural difference. The U.S. and European countries are what Gefland refers to as loose cultures where rules are more relaxed, and where departure from the rules is more tolerated than in tight cultures. The Asian countries, on the other hand, are referred to as tight; rules are plentiful, and adherence is strictly enforced.
Gefland's studies suggest that this dimension of difference has evolved in response to the frequency and severity of threats a country has been subjected to, such as food deprivation, population density, natural disasters, territorial threats, pathogens, and so on. The more threats, the tighter the societal rules and structure. The U.S. and Japan are on opposite ends of this spectrum, and cultures at the two extremes (loose to the extent that there are almost no norms, or tight to the point where people can't think for themselves), have more suicide and more serious problems working with each other.
There are many upsides to a loose culture: there is more creativity, more room for diversity, greater acceptance of change, and more flexibility. The upsides to a tight culture are a higher degree of safety and cleanliness and more self-discipline.
A tight culture's response to a crisis is illustrated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Following the disaster, the 1,000 evacuees had organized themselves into a small working community in a junior high school gymnasium within just two weeks. They created on-the-spot "neighborhoods" with bins for recycling, a box for charged free cell phones, donations neatly folded and sorted, and teenagers providing a volunteer laundry service.
In the face of the current pandemic, the urgent but uncomfortable message seems to be, the more we tighten, the more we will lower the danger. The good news, however, is that cultures are dynamic, and a healthy culture is somewhat flexible; it can be more or less strict, depending on the severity of the threat it is facing. And the more a country tightens in response to this kind of threat, the sooner it can loosen back up.
The question is: Can the West learn from Japan, or are we too stuck in the loose mode to pivot?
by Diana Rowland, author of Japanese Business: Rules of Engagement
