Origins of Tolerance: Findings from a Replication of Stouffer's Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties

This report presents findings from a nationwide replication of Stouffer's classic study of attitudes toward civil liberties. Central to Stouffer's interpretation of the origins of tolerance is his idea that exposure to social and cultural diversity encourages an appreciation of the importance of civil liberties for democracy. Trends in the 1950s suggested that Americans would increasingly be exposed to diversity with the result that the population would become more tolerant in the future. These propositions were examined using education, city size, region, exposure to mass media news, gender, and occupation as indices of exposure to diversity. With the exceptions of mass media exposure and employment for women, all of these variables were found to be significantly associated with tolerance. And, as Stouffer expected, tolerance has increased greatly over the past two decades. A recent nationwide replication of Stouffer's (1955) classic study of attitudes toward civil liberties in the United States allows us to examine a set of propositions central to his explanation of the origins of tolerance. As part of his more comprehensive social-psychological framework, Stouffer hypothesized that exposure to social and cultural diversity contributes to an understanding of the importance of protecting civil liberties for the maintenance of a democratic society. Processes such as education, urbanization, geographic mobility, exposure to mass media, and change in occupational structure bring people into contact with values, beliefs, life styles, and the like, different from their own. Hence, these processes promote tolerance. Furthermore, given a continuation of social and demographic trends exposing an ever larger proportion of the population to this diversity, the nation should become more tolerant in the future. *The research was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant GS-36754X. The data for the 1973 replication were collected by Response Analysis. The 1954 data were made available through the InterUniversity Consortium for Political Research. Clyde Z. Nunn is the principal investigator and Harry J. Crockett, Jr, and J. Allen Williams, Jr. are co-investigators of the larger study on which this paper is based. This paper is concerned only with examining one part of Stouffer's general discussion of tolerance. A more complete report will appear in a monograph now being completed. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Harry J. Crockett, Jr., who has contributed significantly to the theoretical and methodological development of the larger study from its inception to the present and who has made valuable suggestions on this paper. We also would like to thank J. Miller McPherson, David R. Johnson, Nicholas Babchuk, and Hugh P. Whitt for their useful comments on earlier versions of the paper. Of course the analysis and interpretation of the data in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors. Published in SOCIAL FORCES 55:2 (December 1976), pp. 394-408. Origins of Tolerance / 395 This paper will examine these propositions by: (1) reanalyzing Stouffer's data through an appropriate form of multiple regression analysis; (2) analyzing data from the replication using the same variables; and (3) comparing the findings from the two studies to see if there has been an increase in the level of tolerance. SOCIOCULTURAL HETEROGENEITY AND TOLERANCE Linking tolerance to the degree of social and cultural diversity in the society has an old and venerable history. Stouffer's departure from previous theories lies primarily in his notion that tolerance arises not simply out of a need to tolerate others because of the interdependence of the division of labor (cf. Durkheim) or out of selfprotection from too much contrast (cf. Simmel; Wirth), but through recognizing that a free society cannot exist unless one is willing to accept the rights of others to think and behave differently. At first, individuals exposed to sociocultural heterogeneity learn that difference per se is not necessarily harmful and that people who act differently are not always danger0us.l This is only a first step, however, because a tolerant person must be willing to accept nonconformity, within the law at least, even if it appears to be dangerous. This lesson begins to be learned when one discovers that his or her own freedom may depend on a willingness to grant the same rights to others. This, in turn, leads to the further recognition that the protection of civil liberties is necessary for the maintenance of a free society. Stouffer realized that diversity may sometimes foster intolerance. For example, a high rate of social and geographic mobility within the society could serve to raise aspirations beyond the possibility of achievement for many. Psychological strain could result from feeling relatively deprived. In addition, rapid social change could produce value conflicts within the mind of the individual. In either case, relative deprivation or value conflict, persons might react by displacing their anxiety (scapegoating) and thus trying to prevent others from exercising their civil rights. Nevertheless, while aware of these possibilities, Stouffer (222) felt that "For the long run . . . the mechanisms in American social change which are tending to facilitate tolerance are far more potent than the mechanisms which impede it."