An Examination of Levels of Societal Tolerance

Abstract

In today’s world almost all acts of terror, hate crimes, crimes of passion or even protests and bans are due to the low levels of tolerance in society. The present study aimed at understanding the level of tolerance in society. The study was conducted on 400 participants from the age of 17 to 50. Of the 400 participants, 200 were females and 200 were males. Google Forms were used as a means of data collection. The methodology adopted for this research was descriptive survey method. A self-developed questionnaire consisting of 12 items with multiple options was developed. Descriptive analysis and percentage analysis were computed for comparison and to observe the general trends as indicated by the data.

Inroduction

Tolerance is sympathising or accepting beliefs, practices, behaviours or opinions that is differing or conflicting from one’s own. In today’s world almost all acts of terror, hate crimes, crimes of passion or even protests and bans are due to the low levels of tolerance in society. They may be due to low tolerance of anything that may challenge ones religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, political standing, social norms or the morals and ethics one believes to be right. Though there may have been advancements in areas such as women’s rights, racial indiscrimination, acceptance of belief systems, life style choices and scientific advancements. There have been grave setbacks in the areas of women’s safety, artistic freedom, freedom of press and need for peaceful and diplomatic solutions to everyday issues. As a result, the tolerance towards violence; verbal, physical and psychological are being accepted as an uncomfortable truth of today’s world. This brings us to a theory suggested by Philosopher Karl Popper, called the “Paradox of tolerance”, where he elaborates that, if a society is completely tolerant towards everything, then it begins to tolerate the intolerant among them. So the only possible solution suggested by Karl Popper was, 'We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.' (Karl Popper 1945) We, as a society, that is ever expanding and interacting with different cultures and beliefs of the world than ever before throughout history, must re-evaluate what we will and will not tolerate among what is being done to us, being denied to us or what should be the acceptable consequence to those that threaten the peace and harmony of a respectfully tolerant society.

Two versions of the 'persistence hypothesis' concerning the origins of social tolerance, a 'traditional' view - that preadult political socialization leaves attitudinal residues which persist through adulthood, and a 'revisionist' view - that preadult learning is supplemented by socialization that continues into early adulthood, are tested against a 'lifelong openness' view that attitudes are quite open to change in adulthood. An 'environmental change' design is used, testing whether preadult attitudes persist even when individuals are exposed to new social norms in later life. Adult levels of social tolerance are influenced by both preadult and early adult attitudinal environments, supporting the persistence hypothesis, especially in its revisionist version. Microenvironment tolerance norms normally show great continuity across most individuals' life spans, minimizing the clash of adult environments with preadult socialization. In the unusual cases when the two environments do conflict, both significantly influence the individual's ultimate level of social tolerance. Thus may be due both to the lasting power of early experience and to environmental continuity throughout the life span.

Social identity complexity refers to the way in which individuals subjectively represent the relationships among their multiple ingroup memberships. More specifically, individuals with low social identity complexity see their ingroups as highly overlapping and convergent, whereas those with high complexity see their different ingroups as distinct and cross-cutting membership groups. The present study tested the hypothesis that perceived overlap among ingroup memberships would be negatively related to ingroup inclusiveness and tolerance for outgroups, such that individuals with high overlap (low complexity) would be less tolerant and accepting of outgroups in general than those with low overlap (high complexity). Results from a telephone interview survey of adult residents of the state of Ohio supported this hypothesis. Individual differences in complexity of perception of their national, religious, occupational, political, and recreational social identities were systematically related to their attitudes toward ethnic outgroups and diversity.

This study assesses the impact of religious denominational affiliation and attendance on tolerance. In light of new findings about the group-relatedness of tolerance, we examine tolerance for least-liked groups by denomination to see whether denominational rankings on political tolerance change using that strategy. The findings demonstrate that denominational differences in political tolerance are substantial, and that frequent religious service attenders in each denomination are less tolerant than nonattenders, although the magnitude of the impact of attendance varies by denomination. These relationships remain strong even when we control for SES. Finally, we find that some religious denominations are less tolerant than others across the board—regardless of the object of intolerance. In conclusion, new questions are raised about the effects of religious preference and practice on political attributes.