Tolerance is an issue for everyone
Interested to read a thread by Matthew Godwin on twitter about who is more tolerant of people with opposing views.
He referred to some recent research in the US summarised in an article
"Liberals aren't as tolerant as they think"
which I will come back to in a moment, and to some research in the UK about whether Leavers or Remainers were more tolerant of the other group.
The US research debunked the idea that liberals are more tolerant than Conservatives and concluded that intolerance is fairly evenly spread as between right and left and between those who are religious and atheists. The UK research found some intolerance on both sides and that if anything Remain supporters were less tolerant than Leave ones.
In the absence of published references and details, (which were available for the US study but not the UK one) I would be careful about being too quick to accept the conclusion that Remainers are less tolerant than Leavers but the suggestion that there are worrying levels of intolerance on both sides certainly fits with the picture of those who are politically engaged that you would get from my Twitter feed and Facebook page.
However, it is only fair to add that there is much less sign of ideological intolerance among the people I actually meet in person. Certainly the ordinary citizens of Copeland appear to be retaining their sense of humour about the mess in parliament over Brexit and have not started to be nasty about people just because they voted differently. Perhaps this may be because they are less interested in politics!
The article about the US research, which can be read here, struck me as interesting and powerful.
After describing the expectations that some groups would be more tolerant, the author goes on to write that
"Recent psychological research, some of it presented in January at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), shows that it’s not so simple. These findings confirm that conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. But surprisingly, each group is about equally prejudiced.
While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are. Political understanding might finally stand a chance if we could first put aside the argument over who has that bigger problem. The truth is that we all do."
A particularly interesting finding was that when controlled for participants’ demographics and traditionalism, intelligence didn’t correlate with overall levels of prejudice. Clever people can be prejudiced too.
He referred to some recent research in the US summarised in an article
"Liberals aren't as tolerant as they think"
which I will come back to in a moment, and to some research in the UK about whether Leavers or Remainers were more tolerant of the other group.
The US research debunked the idea that liberals are more tolerant than Conservatives and concluded that intolerance is fairly evenly spread as between right and left and between those who are religious and atheists. The UK research found some intolerance on both sides and that if anything Remain supporters were less tolerant than Leave ones.
In the absence of published references and details, (which were available for the US study but not the UK one) I would be careful about being too quick to accept the conclusion that Remainers are less tolerant than Leavers but the suggestion that there are worrying levels of intolerance on both sides certainly fits with the picture of those who are politically engaged that you would get from my Twitter feed and Facebook page.
However, it is only fair to add that there is much less sign of ideological intolerance among the people I actually meet in person. Certainly the ordinary citizens of Copeland appear to be retaining their sense of humour about the mess in parliament over Brexit and have not started to be nasty about people just because they voted differently. Perhaps this may be because they are less interested in politics!
The article about the US research, which can be read here, struck me as interesting and powerful.
After describing the expectations that some groups would be more tolerant, the author goes on to write that
"Recent psychological research, some of it presented in January at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), shows that it’s not so simple. These findings confirm that conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. But surprisingly, each group is about equally prejudiced.
While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are. Political understanding might finally stand a chance if we could first put aside the argument over who has that bigger problem. The truth is that we all do."
A particularly interesting finding was that when controlled for participants’ demographics and traditionalism, intelligence didn’t correlate with overall levels of prejudice. Clever people can be prejudiced too.
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