Rules and Rule Breaking
We're going to look at how nations and individuals think about rules both in moments of crisis and in everyday interactions. Cultural attitudes about rule following and rule breaking shape our lives in all kinds of ways, from the tidiness of our homes to our political preferences to our approach to stopping the spread of a pandemic.
Rules for:
Crossing the street
Dress codes
Littering/chewing gum
Wearing Shoes in Banks/Stores/Public places
Being on time for a meeting (In Brazil, when they want people to show up at the actual listed time, they say it's on 'British Time'.)
Cleaning up the stadium after a sports match
Two Types of people?
VEDANTAM: We are so familiar with these differences between groups that we have movies and television shows that are built around these themes. These differences also show up in our domestic lives and in workplaces.
GELFAND: You can think about how strict or permissive we are from many different perspectives - from national perspective, from organizations, even our own households. In the book, I talk about how we all have our own preference for the kind of Muppet we want to be. Some people are order Muppets.
...
They really like rules. They manage their impulses. And they really like a lot of order and structure. And then on the flip side, some people are chaos Muppets.
...
They tend to not really notice rules. They are more risk taking and impulsive. And they're more tolerant of ambiguity.
It causes a lot of conflict between people. Think about parents who are trying to raise kids, and they have different ideas in terms of how strict they should be or finances. Or even how you load the dishwasher, I found in my household, can get you a little flak. So I think it's important to really look at this as a aspect of culture that affects us all the time, from our nations to our households.
