 A recent and intriguing contribution along these lines is Gelfand and colleagues’ investigation of patterns in the tightness and looseness of different cultures’ norms. This work looks at differences in the general overall “strength” of norms within and across cultures: how many norms there are, how tolerant members of a culture tend to be of deviations from normatively prescribed behavior, and how severely they punish violations (Gelfand, Nishii, &amp; Raver 2006; Gelfand, Raver, et al. 2011; Gelfand, Harrington, &amp; Jackson 2017). Tighter cultures have more numerous and exacting standards, with members who are less tolerant of slight deviancies and prone to impose more severe sanctions. Cultures whose members are more lenient and accepting of wiggle room around a norm, and who are less extreme in their enforcement, fall more towards the loose end of this spectrum. Gelfand and colleagues explore the manifestations of tightness and looseness not just at the level of cultures but also across a number of other levels of description, from the communal and historical down to the behavioral, cognitive, and neural (Gelfand 2018). A central claim of this account is that a culture’s orientation towards norms—whether the norm systems of its members tend to be calibrated more tightly or more loosely—reflects the severity of the challenges faced in its past and present: 