Aisthesis 12.1 Supplement


Aisthesis 12.1 Supplement





Aisthesis 12.1 Supplement

TIFFANI SKROCH



Aisthesis 12.1 Supplement Copyright © by Tiffani Skroch. All Rights Reserved.



Political Tolerance and
Ideology: Ideology as a
Determinant of Political
Tolerance
TIFFANI SKROCH

Abstract
This study examines whether or not political ideology is a strong

determinant of political tolerance, as has been found in previous
studies. Participants of this study (N = 258) were asked to complete a
survey asking questions that would indicate their level of tolerance.
Respondents identified their least-liked group in the beginning of
the survey and answered questions about procedural rights in the
context of that group. The results showed that respondents in this
study had generally low levels of tolerance. When compared across
political ideology, there is a small difference in the tolerance levels
between those who identified themselves as conservatives,
independents/moderates, and liberals. Ultimately, political ideology
is found to be an insignificant determinant in level of political
tolerance.

Keywords: tolerance, ideology, politics

Literature Review
Since this mid-20th century, tolerance has been a pressing

matter in the research field of public opinion and political
psychology. The first major study delving into this topic was
conducted by Stouffer (1954) in order to measure tolerance levels
in terms of support for civil liberties. This survey asked
respondents if they supported extending certain civil liberties to
communists, socialists, and atheists. Stouffer (1954) found older

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generations and those who are less educated to be less tolerant of
these groups. This study did not address political ideology.
Furthermore, the majority of respondents were in favor of revoking
civil liberties from communists, with 89% saying a communist
should be fired from their job as a college teacher and 77% saying a
communist should lose their citizenship altogether. In a historical
context, these findings could make sense as the 1950s experienced
the rise of McCarthyism where paranoia about internal communist
threats plagued the country. This study was then replicated in 1973
through the General Social Survey of the National Opinion
Research Center. Many of Stouffer’s (1954) questions were included
in the survey and the results showed a substantial increase in
broad tolerance in the American public from 1954 to 1973 (Cutler
and Kaufman, 1975; Davis, 1975; Erskine and Siegel, 1975; Nunn et al.,
1978; McClosky and Brill, 1983:434-438). This phenomenon became
known as the Stouffer Shift. Although Stouffer’s (1954) contribution
to tolerance is still valued as a starting point in academics today,
this study has been challenged on methodological grounds.

Sullivan et al. (1979) have questioned these earlier studies of
political tolerance – specifically citing Stouffer (1954) and the 1973
General Social Survey. Sullivan et al. (1979) argue previous empirical
studies into the topic were methodologically flawed because
Stouffer (1954) targeted only the left-wing groups of communists,
socialists, and atheists in order to determine political tolerance as
a whole. This study fails to paint a broad picture of tolerance in
the United States and rather, merely points to tolerance of the
American public as a whole toward the communist ideology.
Political ideology, as previously stated, was considered as a
demographic by Stouffer (1954). Sullivan et al. (1979) define tolerance
as “a willingness to ‘put up with’ those things that one rejects.”
This definition led the study to take a content-controlled approach
in measuring political tolerance where respondents were asked to
identify the group in which they liked the least. This survey offered
each respondent the same list of groups to choose from while also
making it clear that they were not limited to choosing only those

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on the list. This list included many left-wing and right-wing groups.
Participants were then asked a range of agree/disagree questions
where their least-liked group was inserted into a procedural rights
scenario. For example:

(1) Members of the ________ should be banned from being
president of the United States.

The results of this study by Sullivan and colleagues showed that
tolerance of left-wing targets such as communists had increased,
but tolerance toward other groups had decreased. Simply, less
individuals were identifying left-wing targets as their least-liked
group. These two movements neutralized any change in political
tolerance in the United States and levels had not drastically changed
in the 25 years prior to this study. This contradicts the theory of
the Stouffer Shift. Expounding upon their 1979 study, Sullivan et
al. conducted another study in 1981 to determine the sources of
political tolerance rather than simply the level. This study moves
from a bivariate analysis that was previously used to a multivariate
analysis which allowed for a more detailed look at causes of
tolerance. The results of this study show that there are many major
determinants for tolerance level including social, psychological, and
political factors. The political determinants, including ideology,
political threat, and support for general norms of democracy are
the most important for the study described here as this study is
looking at the ideological factor as a determinant – not social and
psychological factors.

More recently, there has been disagreement surrounding whether
conservatism and liberalism are systematically different and can
equally predict tolerance or intolerance. Some psychologists and
social scientists argue that conservatism predicts intolerance in
individuals whereas others, such as Crawford and Pilanski (2009)
predict that both are equal predictors. Rather, both liberals and
conservatives are intolerant of those that they disagree with and
how threatening these opponents were perceived to be. Although
the study at hand discusses whether political ideology in general
is a determinant – rather than determining which ideology is more

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likely to be intolerant – it is still important to note the disagreement
in the research on tolerance and political ideology has not ended
with Sullivan et al. (1979) and Stouffer (1954).

In today’s America, political ideology has become an important
part of society’s daily life as the trend of polarization between the
two major political parties – Democrats and Republicans – has
rapidly continued to increase. While the reasons for this influx in
polarization are not at issue in this study, how these ideologies
have affected political tolerance remains an important question.
Tolerance and “political correctness” seem to have been nearing
the forefront of conversation since the Obama and Trump
administrations. Now in the year 2021, political tolerance at face-
value seems to be at an all-time low. The research conducted in this
study seeks to determine the tolerance level in the United States
across different demographics and conclude whether political
ideology is currently a strong determinant in an individual’s level
of political tolerance. Considering these goals, I hypothesize that
in the current political environment, political ideology is a strong
determinant for political tolerance.

Methodology
Experimental Design
This study was composed of 258 demographically diverse

individuals in order to determine whether or not political ideology
truly is a determinant of tolerance level. Participants were told
that participation is anonymous and completely voluntary, and
individuals can withdraw from the study at any time. The survey
that participants completed was created on Qualtrics and posted on
the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform for volunteers to complete.
Individuals who completed the survey were compensated with a
fifty-cent payment.

This experiment was modelled after Sullivan et al. (1979) and took
the content-controlled, or least-liked group, approach. This method
asks participants to identify their least-liked group at the beginning
of the survey. I provided a list of groups that participants can choose
from including: Democrats, Pro-Life Advocates, Republicans, Black

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Lives Matter Movement, Proud Boys, Pro-Choice Advocates, and
Atheists. It was made clear that participants can also enter a
different group that may not be on the given list. Qualtrics then
inputted this chosen group into nine questions surrounding
tolerance in the form of procedural rights where participants can
answer yes, maybe, no, or don’t know. Topics of these procedural
rights questions included free speech, social interaction, adoption,
and political candidacy. Participants were then asked to place
themselves on a seven-point scale of political ideology ranging from
extreme liberal, liberal, slightly liberal, moderate/independent,
slightly conservative, conservative, and extreme conservative. Do
not know/don’t want to answer was also an available option. These
categories were then condensed to the categories liberal,
independent/moderate, and conservative in order to show trends
more clearly. Following this, participants were asked questions
about the economy and demographics.

Once all data was collected, it was downloaded and loaded into
the IBM SPSS Statistics software. Each tolerance question was used
to create a new scaled variable to determine tolerance level.
Answering yes to each tolerance question was considered the
tolerant answer and was recoded as 1. Any answers of maybe, no,
or don’t know were considered the intolerant answer and recoded
as 0. Once the variable was created, it placed each individual on a
10-point scale ranging from 0-9 where zero was regarded as the
most intolerant and 9 was regarded as the most tolerant. From
there, that 10-point scale was condensed to a 3-point scale with the
categories labeled low tolerance, mid tolerance, and high tolerance.
Those who scored 0-2 were placed in the low tolerance category,
3-6 were placed in the mid tolerance category, and 7-9 were placed
in the high tolerance category. This was done in order to show
trends more clearly.

Independent and Dependent Variables
The key independent variable throughout this study is political

ideology. As previously mentioned, participants were asked to place
themselves on an 8-point scale of political ideology. Each individual

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was placed into one of these groups and their answers were
analyzed in order to find a correlation between political ideology
and the dependent variable in this study: political tolerance.

Data Analysis & Results
Figure 1 displays tolerance levels by the percent of the total

sample on the original 10-point scale. The levels of tolerance with
the highest percent of the population sample are 0 (zero) and 8
with an average tolerance level of approximately 4.2 across the
total sample. In terms of frequency, individuals who scored 0 (zero)
on the tolerance scale – the lowest level of tolerance – was the
modal group with a total of 46 individuals. Overall, Figure 1 shows
that tolerance levels are relatively low when disregarding political
ideology.

Political ideology is then factored into the analysis as shown in
Table 1 and Table 2. Table 1 shows both numerical and percentage
of individuals scoring in each category. Table 2 shows the average
tolerance score by the 3-point scale of political ideology. Using
the condensed version of ideology (liberal, independent/moderate,
conservative) and tolerance levels (low tolerance, mid tolerance,
high tolerance) average political tolerance does not differ greatly
in totals. Yet, there is significant difference between ideologies in
tolerance levels. For example, 41.2% of liberals fall under the low
tolerance category in comparison to 26.9% of conservatives.
Overall, those in the liberal category trend toward lower tolerance
more drastically than the other ideological categories. However,

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there is generally little variation between total tolerance scores
on the 3-point scale disregarding ideology. As seen in Table 1, the
percentage difference between each tolerance level in total is at
maximum 5.1% with the largest category being low tolerance and
the smallest being high tolerance.

Delving into the primary purpose of this study, a regression analysis
was conducted in order to determine whether or not political
ideology is a strong determinant of tolerance. Other significant
demographics were also included to control for other potential
explanations. Table 3 shows the regression model with political
ideology as the key independent variable and tolerance as the
dependent variable. Looking at political ideology alone, a p-value
of .065 shows that it is not statistically significant as a determinant
for tolerance level when applying the .05 significance level. When
you apply the .10 significance level as noted in Table 3, it allows for
an argument to be made that there is significance. However, this
level is more lenient in acceptance of a hypothesis and allows for an
increased chance of a false positive. A significance level of .10 has
been denoted in the regression table for observational purposes,
but this paper will continue to use the .05 significance level.

The finding that political ideology is not a significant determinant
contradicts earlier studies conducted on the topic – most
significantly Sullivan et al. (1981). The regression model also
controlled for other significant demographics such as annual

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household income, education level, and gender. Both annual
household income and education level were dramatically
insignificant as a determinant when paired with political ideology.
However, gender did have a significant effect as a determinant on
political tolerance when paired with political ideology. This further
supports the argument that political ideology alone is not a
significant determinant and contradicts the original hypothesis.

Discussion
This study has intriguing implications for societal life as it shows

that in the year 2021, political ideology is a weakening determinant
for political tolerance. Furthermore, conservatives, liberals, and
independents/moderates don’t differ greatly in their levels of
tolerance in regard to their least-liked group. In fact, liberals are
surprisingly the least tolerant group in this study. This fact in itself
contradicts the common idea of the “tolerant left” – a nickname
coined recently on social media platforms. Yet, as shown in Figure
1, tolerance levels throughout the adult population are significantly
low in general (disregarding ideology entirely). This is very prevalent
in today’s society as political parties have grown increasingly
polarized over the years with a seeming increase in hostility that can

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be seen in the reactions to today’s Black Lives Matter movement and
events such as the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.

References
Crawford, J.T. and Pilanski, J.M. (2014). Political Intolerance, Right

and Left. Political Psychology, 35, 841-851.
Danigelis, N., & Cutler, S. (1991). Cohort Trends in Attitudes About

Law and Order: Who’s Leading the Conservative Wave? The Public
Opinion Quarterly, 55(1), 24-49.

Davis, James A. (1975). Communism, conformity, cohorts, and
categories: American tolerance in 1954 and 1972-73. American
Journal of Sociology, 81, 491-513.

Erskine, Hazel, and Richard L. Siegel (1975). Civil liberties and the
American public. Journal of Social Issues, 31(2), 13-29.

McClosky, Herbert, and Alida Brill (1983). Dimensions in Tolerance.
New York: Russell Sage.

Nunn et al. (1978). Tolerance for Nonconformity. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.

Stouffer, S. A. (1955). Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties: A
Cross Section of the Nation Speaks its Mind. The Yale Law Journal,
65, 572-578.

Sullivan et al. (1979). An Alternative Conceptualization of Political
Tolerance: Illusory Increases 1950s-1970s. The American Political
Science Review, 73, 781-794.

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	Political Tolerance and Ideology: Ideology as a Determinant of Political Tolerance