Culturally tight societies tend to have fewer innovations. Could asymmetric cultural policing help explain women's lower share of patents and leadership? Cultural looseness is associated with more innovations and creativity, in general In some cultures, norm deviance is punished, whereas in others it is perfectly permissible. Over the past two hundred years, America has become ‘culturally looser’. As people come to think more freely, they also seem to become more innovative, expressive and creative. The share of culturally loose terms in the enormous corpus of Google books is associated with a rise in