You think you’re open-minded? What if the North American Man-Boy Love Association wanted to distribute a newsletter in your town? What if they wanted to hold a local parade celebrating pederasty?
I am currently studying social psychology in graduate school, and I’m particularly interested in political psychology. One of my present research interests is political tolerance. “Political tolerance” refers to individuals’ willingness to extend equal civil liberties to unpopular groups.
When political scientists and psychologists measure political tolerance, they often probe individuals for their ability to withstand the most offensive, outlandish groups and speech possible. For example, a liberal-minded person may be asked whether they would be willing to allow a rally for the Klu Klux Klan or some extremist, militaristic group. Paradoxically, a truly tolerant person must be willing to allow racially intolerant speech.
Political tolerance plays a cornerstone role in functioning democracies (at least, we think so). If voters can strip away the civil liberties of disliked political groups, those liberties lay on precarious ground indeed. If we cannot tolerate the words of anarchists or members of the Westboro Baptist Church, then we do not really believe in the boundlessness of speech at all.
Academics say as much. In reality, voters are not so tolerant. Social science research from the 1950s to the present reveal that average people do not want to give free speech rights [1] to atheists, communists, militarists, KKK members and other divisive groups. This prejudice is especially potent when people are asked to name their most-disliked group, and then are probed for political (in)tolerance. A right-winger may be willing to let a militarist hold a protest, for example, but he will usually come down on a lefty-pinko-communist speaker like a ton of prejudiced bricks.
But political tolerance is not so simple as that. A litany of research also suggests that political elites are more tolerant than average joes [2]. That is, people with a great deal of power or involvement in politics are far more likely to extend a friendly, civil libertarian hand to their worst enemies, regardless of party. I’ve always found this surprising. Does a stuffy, pragmatic politician really strike anyone as the type to peaceably tolerate opposition? Do high-power Republicans or Democrats really seem like patient absolute-free-speech advocates?
At the moment I’d like to answer a research question that the current literature on political tolerance has left hanging. Why are elites more tolerant? Is it because they have a greater grasp of civil liberties and their democratic import? If so, then anyone who is well-informed, educated or politically sophisticated should also be more tolerant. Is it because they have taken more time to digest the philosophical and political issues at play? If so, then people who are very ‘tolerant’ should become less so if they are asked to judge unpopular groups on the fly, as restrained prejudices often surface under time and attention constraints.
I’ve also started to consider the influence of ‘integrative complexity [3]‘ on people’s political tolerance. Integrative complexity refers to the extent to which a person considers many values, outcomes and responsibilities when drawing a conclusion. An ‘integratively complex’ person sees many wide ripples of causality, potential outcomes drifting far and wide from the decisions they make. They bring many factors into consideration when forming such decisions.
Integrative complexity could be related to political tolerance in a couple of ways. Individuals who think in a complex manner may be more prone to tolerate disliked groups, because they see the slippery slope that political intolerance creates. One day we are shutting up a NAMBLA event, the next we are telling a gay-rights group to vamoose.
On the other hand, perhaps an advocate of unfettered free speech is actually a small-minded ideologue. I have often observed myself being extremist and idealistic about free speech, opposing all forms of censorship and safety-minded restrictions. If I gave other considerations such as safety and public decency the same weight as I did civil liberties, maybe I would be politically intolerant sometimes, too. Thus, people who are politically tolerant may rank quite low on a measure of integrative complexity; they don’t consider that a Communist demonstration may incite a riot that could harm many people, so intently are they focused on the absolute import of ‘free speech’.
These are some of my tentative ideas; I’m just working on hypothesis-generation at this point and could use any and all insights. I hope to share my progress with the blog if the topic is at all interesting to a wide, nonpsychology audience. I consider political tolerance a democratic value of paramount importance (but maybe I’m just a civil libertarian ideologue). Let me know what you think.
(I’ve left academic citation out of this text to maintain a more casual, bloggy format. Relevant research articles are available upon request).
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