Who Enforces the Rules? Cultural Tightness and Norm Regulation by State and Societal Agents

Abstract: A key insight of tightness-looseness theory (Gelfand et al., 2011) is that the strictness of norms varies systematically between cultures. However, cultures also differ in how they acquire tightness. Specifically, norms vary in who creates and enforces them, regulated by state actors (governments) and/or societal agents (communities). In Study 1, participants from the USA, Colombia, Nigeria, India, and the Philippines listed five social behaviors regulated within their country. We analyzed these responses using a novel NLP technique, the BERTopic model (Grootendorst, 2020), clustering them into distinct conceptual themes. In Study 2, participants from the USA, Mexico, and Kenya rated norm enforcement by state or societal agents. Results revealed a negative relationship between state and societal regulation, suggesting norms are enforced by either state or societal agents, with the US showing the least variation. In contrast, Mexico and Kenya display a bimodal pattern: norms are either minimally or intensely regulated.

Keywords: tightness-looseness, culture and social norms, artificial intelligence, natural language processing