Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Mar;3(3):244-250. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0516-z. Epub 2019 Jan 28.
For many years, scientists have studied culture by comparing societies, regions or social groups within a single point in time. However, culture is always changing, and this change affects the evolution of cognitive processes and behavioural practices across and within societies. Studies have now documented historical changes in sexism, individualism, language use and music preferences within the United States and around the world. Here we build on these efforts by examining changes in cultural tightness-looseness (the strength of cultural norms and tolerance for deviance) over time, using the United States as a case study. We first develop a new linguistic measure to measure historical changes in tightness-looseness. Analyses show that America grew progressively less tight (i.e., looser) from 1800 to 2000. We next examine how changes in tightness-looseness relate to four indicators of societal order: debt (adjusted for inflation), adolescent pregnancies and crime, and high school attendance, as well as four indicators of creative output: registered patents, trademarks, feature films produced, and baby-naming conformity. We find that cultural tightness correlates negatively with each measure of creativity, and correlates positively with three out of four measures of societal order (fewer adolescent pregnancies, less debt and higher levels of school attendance). These findings imply that the historical loosening of American culture was associated with a trade-off between higher creativity but lower order.
多年来，科学家们通过比较不同社会、地区或同一时间点内的社会群体来研究文化。然而，文化一直在变化，这种变化会影响认知过程和行为实践在社会内部和社会之间的演变。研究已经记录了在美国和世界各地的性别歧视、个人主义、语言使用和音乐偏好的历史变化。在这里，我们通过以美国为案例研究，来考察文化紧密度（文化规范的强度和对偏差的容忍度）随时间的变化。我们首先开发了一种新的语言测量方法来衡量紧密度的历史变化。分析表明，从 1800 年到 2000 年，美国的紧密度逐渐降低（即宽松度增加）。接下来，我们考察了紧密度的变化与社会秩序的四个指标（通货膨胀调整后的债务、青少年怀孕和犯罪以及高中出勤率）以及创意产出的四个指标（注册专利、商标、制作的故事片和婴儿命名的一致性）之间的关系。我们发现，文化紧密度与每个创造力指标都呈负相关，与社会秩序的四个指标中的三个呈正相关（青少年怀孕率降低、债务减少和出勤率提高）。这些发现表明，美国文化的历史放松与更高的创造力但更低的秩序之间存在权衡。
