The Psychology of Extremism by Kruglanski Arie W.;Kopetz Catalina;Szumowska Ewa; & Catalina Kopetz & Ewa Szumowska

Author:Kruglanski, Arie W.;Kopetz, Catalina;Szumowska, Ewa; & Catalina Kopetz & Ewa Szumowska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Goldilocks Principle of Innovation

‘The Goldilocks principle’ refers to the principle of moderation and has been used by previous researchers to describe phenomena ranging from teacher cognition (Kagan, 1990) to calcium release restitution in heart cells (Liu, Lederer, & Sobie, 2012). This principle is based on the title of the 19th-century children’s fairy tale about a girl named Goldilocks, who encounters the home of three bears. She enters the house and discovers that the family of bears has left three plates of oatmeal on the table. The largest plate of oatmeal is too hot, and Goldilocks burns her tongue. The smallest plate of oatmeal is too cold and she spits it out. Finally, the middle plate is found to be ‘just right’, the ideal temperature.

In astrobiology, the ‘Goldilocks zone’ describes a zone around a star that is habitable, where conditions are ‘just right’ for life to develop. In medicine, the principle refers to the perfect dose–exposure balance (Leeder, Brown, & Soden, 2014). In psychology, the Goldilocks Principle has been successfully applied to describe work stress (Hargrove, Becker, & Hargrove, 2015) and decision-making (Schwarz, 2004), among other phenomena. The idea of moderation as an optimal strategy for satisfying multiple, often contradictory goals and needs is also echoed in the psychological body of work on that links extreme behaviors to motivational imbalance (Kruglanski, Szumowska, Kopetz, Vallerand, & Pierro, 2021). According to this perspective, extremism emerges when a certain need dominates other basic concerns, often leading to suboptimal outcomes. Motivational balance, conversely, leads to moderation, which results in different needs of an individual being equitably satisfied, producing a system of checks and balances that inhibits extreme actions (Kruglanski et al., 2021).

More recently the Goldilock’s Principle has been applied to the study of social norms. Evidence suggests that a curvilinear relationship exists between TL and societal outcomes such as happiness, depression, and suicide (Harrington, Boski, & Gelfand, 2015). While cultures may need to veer tight or loose depending on their ecologies, those that get too extreme become dysfunctional. Cultures that are exceedingly loose experience what Durkheim called anomie or normlessness, whereas cultures that are exceedingly tight have high levels of repression, making both less functional for different reasons. Here, we examine the Goldilocks principle of innovation, wherein looseness is positively related to exploration outputs and tightness is beneficial for exploitation outputs, but the most optimal innovation levels are achieved by a cultural balance of TL. Accordingly, we sought to explore whether the relationship between TL and innovation is curvilinear.

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