Abstract

Over the last two decades, there has been an explosion of research concerning the influence of culture on social psychological phenomena. The dimension of individualism and collectivism has been the focus of much empirical investigation, as evidenced in the abundance of published articles as well as books devoted to this dimension. As a result of the immense success of research on individualism-collectivism, there has been a dearth of research on other dimensions of culture. Thus, the central goal of this research is to expand upon cultural theories in social-organizational psychology by introducing theoretical approach to and empirical evidence for another cultural dimension, cultural tightness-looseness. Tightness-looseness has been defined as the degree to which norms are clearly defined and reliably imposed within cultures (Pelto, 1968). Specifically, a multi-level theory is reviewed, which examines cultural tightness-looseness in modern and complex societies, and integrates research from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and psychology, and illustrates the dynamic interplay between ecocultural and historical factors, the structure of situations, and psychological processes in tight and loose cultural systems. Finally, empirical evidence for this theory was covered.