ABOUT MICHELE
Professor of Organizational Behavior | Stanford Graduate School of Business
Professor of Psychology by Courtesy | Stanford University
I’m a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Professor of Psychology and Faculty Affiliate of the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Relations by Courtesy at Stanford University. Under my direction, the Culture Lab studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, trust, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity. My philosophy is to incorporate as many interdisciplinary perspectives as possible into my research. We work with computer scientists, linguists, neuroscientists, economists, political scientists, and--increasingly--biologists to understand all things cultural. I’m currently the Deputy Editor at PNAS Nexus, the new sibling journal of PNAS, and I’m a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Check out the group here, and find out how to get involved here.
FEATURED WORK
Select Papers
Gelfand, M. J., et al. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science, 332(6033), 1100-1104. PDF.
Dimant, E., Gelfand, M., Hochleitner, A., & Sonderegger, S. (2025). Strategic behavior with tight, loose, and polarized norms. Management Science, 71(3), 2245-2263. PDF.
Choi, V.K., Shrestha, S., Gelfand, M.J. (2022). When danger strikes: A linguistic tool for tracking America’s collective response to threats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PDF.
Gelfand, M. J., Jackson, J. C., Pan, X., Nau, D., Pieper, D., Denison, E., ... & Wang, M. (2021). The relationship between cultural tightness–looseness and COVID-19 cases and deaths: a global analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health. PDF.
Harrington, J. R., & Gelfand, M. J. (2014). Tightness–looseness across the 50 united states. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201317937. PDF.
Mu, Y., Han, S., & Gelfand, M. J. (2017). The role of gamma interbrain synchrony in social coordination when humans face territorial threats. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 12(10), 1614-1623. PDF.
Gelfand, M. J., Aycan, Z., Erez, M., & Leung, K. (2017). Cross-cultural industrial organizational psychology and organizational behavior: A hundred-year journey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 514. PDF.
Gelfand, et al. (2015). Culture and getting to yes: The linguistic signature of creative agreements in the United States and Egypt. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(7), 967-989. PDF.
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CONTACT
Feel free to contact me with the provided form. I will do my best to reply in a timely manner:
Stanford Graduate School of Business
655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305