3
maintains that there is no real tolerance in permitting certain actions to groups which someone
likes or, at least, perceives as harmless. Sullivan et al. (1982) explained the stability of American
democratic government with the term, “pluralistic intolerance.” Americans have not become
either more tolerant or less intolerant since 1976, but they like and dislike different groups, and
these preferences may shift over time.
The plausibility of skepticism is sustained by international comparisons. The
International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) found Americans significantly less tolerant than
most West-European peoples, but more tolerant than the East-Europeans surveyed (Katnik,
2002). Yet, the ISSP asked about abstractly formulated anti-governmental manifestations,
without specifying names of groups, which can awaken immediate (knee- jerk-like) stereotypes.
I believe it is an important theoretical challenge to establish whether tolerance is an
autonomous construct, a kind of stable moral trait. For instance, Mondak and Sanders have
definitely established tolerance, at least a general “tolerant attitude,” as an individual trait whose
level may increase and decrease in society, like that of honesty or egalitarianism. The opposing
view of pluralistic intolerance constructs it rather than a contextual behavior. This is a problem
recurring in Sniderman et al.’s (2004) paper aimed at investigating the interplay of larger
structural, and narrower contextual factors in evoking political responses.
2
I think that people’s likes and dislikes of other groups (or, as Bobo and Licari, 1989, call
it: the target group affects) are social constructions rather than accidental or idiosyncratic
2
The article is entitled “Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to
Immigrant Minorities.” The predisposing factors here considered are authoritarian values, self-
esteem, national identification, and perception of treat variables, the authors did not focus on
demographics. They found that “situational triggers make a contribution above and beyond that
of predisposing factors” (p. 46).
Convention