#248 - Order & Freedom

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Michele Gelfand about the difference between tight and loose cultures. They discuss the primacy of cultural norms in governing human behavior, the trade-offs between order and freedom, conservatism vs liberalism, sensitivity to threat, scarcity, the COVID pandemic, the Jeffrey Toobin affair, political polarization, the problem of extreme stereotypes, and other topics.</span></p> <p><strong>Michele Gelfand</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Her work has been published in outlets such as </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Science, </span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">the</span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Applied Psychology</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Gelfand is the founding co-</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">editor of the </span><a href="https://amzn.to/3xvpz13" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Advances in Culture and Psychology</span></em></a> series <span style="font-weight: 400;">(Oxford University Press). Her book </span><a href="https://amzn.to/3eEZ40t" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World</span></em></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">was published by Scribner in 2018. She is the past President of the International Association for Conflict Management and co-founder of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gelfand was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Websi