Michele Gelfand

About

Michele Gelfand is the John H. Scully Professor of Cross-Cultural Management and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, with a courtesy appointment in Psychology. Her research employs field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Gelfand's work has been published in prominent outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, and others. She is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series and authored the book 'Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World' published in 2018. Her contributions to the field have been recognized through numerous awards, including the Diener award from SPSP, the Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, and the Contributions to Society award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Law
• Engineering

Selected publications

• National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic

  Nature Communications · 2022 · 279 citations

  Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-Ma…

  DOI

• A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

  Nature · 2023 · 107 citations

  proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supp…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Persuading republicans and democrats to comply with mask wearing: An intervention tournament

  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · 2022 · 64 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  = 4931). Seven different conditions reflecting different moral values and factors specific to COVID-19-including protection from harm (self), protection from harm (community), patriotic duty, purity, reviving the economy, threat, and scientific evidence-were implemented to identify which framings would "win" in terms of promoting mask wearing compared to a baseline condition. We found that Republicans had significantly more negative attitudes toward masks, lower intentions to wear them, and were…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Predictors of adherence to public health behaviors for fighting COVID-19 derived from longitudinal data

  Scientific Reports · 2022 · 62 citations

  The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19, conspiracy beliefs, social norms on distancing, tightness of culture, and community punishment predict various containment-related attitudes and beha…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Importance of Cultural Tightness and Government Efficiency For Understanding COVID-19 Growth and Death Rates

  2020 · 40 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We have withdrawn this preprint as we update analyses with data on later stages of COVID-19. We will post an updated preprint as it is available. In the interim, if colleagues are interested in using the tightness-looseness scores we developed for this paper, we provide them below.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Cultural Tightness-Looseness

  NSF · $123k · 2000–2004

Frequent coauthors

• Arie W. Kruglanski

  41 shared

• Joshua Conrad Jackson

  26 shared

• Lisa M. Leslie

  New York University

  22 shared

• Ryan Fehr

  Seattle University

  18 shared

• Jocelyn J. Bélanger

  16 shared

• Chi‐yue Chiu

  15 shared

• Munqith Dagher

  15 shared

• Shihui Han

  Peking University

  15 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Maryland, College Park

Awards & honors

• 2016 Diener award from SPSP
• 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the A…
• 2019 Outstanding Cultural Psychology Award from the Society…
• 2020 Rubin Theory-to-Practice award from the International A…
• 2021 Contributions to Society award from the Organizational…

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Jordan Gerard Starckh-230
• Leanne Williamsh-140
• Carol Dweckh-122