Finding Balance Between Tightness & Looseness with Dr. Michele Gelfand
Release Date: 11/20/2024
AMSEcast Conversations: Climate Change Science from Eisenhower to Bush
AMSEcast
Alan Lowe, Executive Director of the American Museum of Science and Energy, launches AMSEcast Conversations with a compelling discussion on Jay Hakes’ book, The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science from Eisenhower to Bush. The panel, featuring Hakes alongside energy experts David McCollum and Charles Sims, traces the origins of modern climate science to the 1950s work of Roger Revelle and Dave Keeling. The panel explores the evolution of climate science, the challenges of political resistance, and the growing urgency of action in the face of today’s visible climate impacts....
info_outline
A Theory of Everyone with Michael Muthukrishna
AMSEcast
Dr. Michael Muthukrishna, Associate Professor at LSE, joins Alan to explore his book, A Theory of Everyone. It reveals how cultural evolution—our “software” of beliefs, language, and logic—shaped humanity's unique trajectory. He explains the "laws" of energy and innovation: energy abundance fuels cooperation and progress, while innovations like the steam engine drive efficiency and competition. Michael highlights the "paradox of diversity," where fresh ideas thrive amid aligned communication and norms. He links societal challenges like division and inequality to resource scarcity and...
info_outline
AMSE Science Report The Physics of Santa
AMSEcast
A few thoughts on the 24 hour, madcap & meteoric flight across the planet
info_outline
The Hidden Lives of Ants with Susanne Foitzik
AMSEcast
Alan, an ant enthusiast since childhood, is joined by Susanne Foitzik, author of Empire of Ants: The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth’s Tiny Conquerors. She explains that while queens start colonies and lay eggs, they don’t control the colony. Worker ants take on specialized roles like brood care and foraging, with older ants handling riskier tasks. Ants communicate through pheromones and use impressive navigation skills. Some species, like the Argentine and fire ants, thrive in new environments due to human transport, forming super colonies. Susanne’s current research...
info_outline
AMSE Science Report with guest Eric Jay Dolin
AMSEcast
Following the horrific devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene, I was so heartened to see many in our community and around the nation come together to help those who had lost everything. I had spoken a while back on our podcast, AMSEcast, with Eric Jay Dolin about his book, A Furious Sky: The 500 Year History of America’s Hurricanes. We talked about some of those storms, including the Galveston, Texas, Hurricane of 1900. The people there had been encouraged to think a hurricane could not do any serious damage to their island home due to a deeply flawed understanding of how those storms work....
info_outline
A reflection of the year 2000
AMSEcast
A few thoughts about the technological development and advancement over the past 25 years.
info_outline
Finding a Lab of One’s Own with Dr. Rita Colwell
AMSEcast
Dr. Rita Colwell is a pioneering scientist and professor at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins who has made groundbreaking contributions to microbiology and public health. She joins AMSEcast to discuss her experiences being the first woman to lead the National Science Foundation as well as her advanced research on Vibrio bacteria and cholera while founding CosmosID to improve rapid pathogen detection. During the 2001 anthrax attacks, she led a cross-agency effort to identify the spores, revolutionizing DNA sequencing techniques. Overcoming sexism early in her career, Dr. Colwell's...
info_outline
AMSE Science Report with guest Camper English
AMSEcast
Whether you like to have an occasional drink or are a teetotaler, you will enjoy a conversation I had on our podcast, AMSEcast, with Camper English about his book Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails. Camper’s book is a fascinating look at how, over the centuries, many alcohols and various things we add today to cocktails originally had medicinal purposes. For example, monks in the Middle Ages were at the center of research on agriculture and the distillation of alcohol. One thing they produced for medicinal uses can be found...
info_outline
The Wonders of Psychological Science with Joel Levy
AMSEcast
Renowned author and science historian, Joel Levy, shares his expertise on consciousness, intelligence, and the delicate dance between nature and nurture. Through his latest work, "Psychology for Busy People," the discussion traverses psychology's extensive history, from its origins to contemporary challenges and applications. Joel offers captivating perspectives on thought experiments, the core of consciousness, the nature-nurture debate, and the subtleties of mental health. Tune in as Alan and Joel guide us through the intriguing and complex realm of psychology. Show Highlights...
info_outline
AMSE Science Report with guest Sam Kean Author of the Bastard Brigade
AMSEcast
Ridge, Tennessee. Our home of Oak Ridge got its start as a major part of the monumental Manhattan Project, the nation’s successful effort to build the first atomic bomb and end World War II. We talk a lot at AMSE and the K-25 Atomic History Center about the history of the Project, the science and engineering behind it, and the role of Oak Ridge and other locations in its successful outcome. But what is hard to teach is the atmosphere that surrounded that work. Our nation was at war, our soldiers and marines, our sailors and airmen, fighting and dying on the battlefields of Europe and Africa,...
info_outlineMichele Gelfand is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy at Stanford University. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture--as well as its multilevel consequences for human groups. Her work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist, De Standard, among other outlets.
Gelfand has published her work in many scientific outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Psychological Science, Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS 1, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, Annual Review of Psychology, American Psychologist, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Current Opinion in Psychology, among others. She has received over 13 million dollars in research funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and the FBI.
As a native New Yorker, Michele is now a California transplant. She is married to Todd Betke and has two daughters, Jeanette and Hannah, two birds (Bonnie and Theo) and a Portuguese water dog, Pepper.
- (1:47) What is culture?
- (4:08) The age that we start learning norms
- (10:01) What makes a person or nation a tight versus a loose culture
- (15:12) How the movement of people affect looseness and tightness dynamics
- (17:57) How changes in attitudes occur
- (20:59) Tightness doesn’t mean a lack of creativity
- (24:26) The Goldilocks Approach
- (30:49) Avoiding becoming too tight or too loose
- (32:55) Applying the Goldilocks Approach on social media
- (35:56) The disrupting force technology can have on loose and tight cultures
- (38:19) AI’s ability to understand culture
- (41:11) What’s next for Dr. Michele Gelfand
- (45:00) How to follow Michele’s work
Links Referenced
- Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring: https://www.amazon.com/Values-Political-Action-Change-Middle/dp/019026909X
- Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World: https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939
- Personal website: michelegelfand.com