What Is Intolerance? What Are the Theories That Explain It?

Today, we live in a world that respects human rights, and there is no discrimination between genders, races, or colors. How far is that true? Have laws replaced prejudice and intolerance in society for all time, or are the aftereffects of intolerance still present in people's thinking today?

If you want to know more about intolerance and the theories that explain it, just keep reading.

What Is Intolerance? What Are Its Types?

In order to understand intolerance better, we must first become acquainted with some of the terms associated with it. A racial group, for example, is a group of individuals who can be identified by one or more of the following characteristics: “gender, religion, race, color, nationality,” and so on. Based on these characteristics, the people of a country can be divided into many racial groups.

For example, if we want to divide a country like America on the basis of these groups, we will find that about a third of its population are members of racist groups. Racist attitude is another term closely related to intolerance, as it means the attitude or opinion that we form towards an individual or a racist group to which we do not belong, knowing that this trend or opinion is greatly influenced by the common information about this group. This tendency also prompts us to respond in certain ways when dealing with members of a racist group, as our response may be positive, negative, or neutral.

So intolerance is a negative, racist attitude towards a group or one of its members, and it’s often accompanied by aggressive behavior against them. Intolerance is based on disrespecting the practices, customs, and beliefs of others, sometimes depriving them of their rights and preventing them from freely expressing their opinions. Intolerance also includes the rejection of the existence of a different group within society and dealing with it with discrimination and contempt.

Intolerance also arises because of the attitudes and experiences that the individual goes through and comes as a result of the social interactions that take place between the individual and society. The truth is that intolerance is one of the major problems that societies that are made up of multiple racial groups suffer from, whether they are based on religion, color, race, or gender. Intolerance causes corruption in existing relations within society and affects the cohesion and harmony of society.

Who among us has not heard of the severe racism that black people suffered from for many years in the United States of America, and the effects of which are still evident now? White Americans considered black people to be at a lower level than them mentally and morally. This intolerance against black people appeared in many areas of life, including political rights, housing, professions, education, and transportation. Despite the enrichment of American societies with democracy and political freedoms, manifestations of this intolerance still exist today, and in some American states, black men do not have political rights.

If we have spoken at length on the issue of black people, this is due to the fact that it is one of the most famous trends of intolerance in the world. However, intolerance is not limited to the group of black people but rather goes beyond it to be practiced against any other group that shares certain characteristics, and it is worth noting that people who have a negative racist attitude against a group are looking for justifications to prove the validity of their claims and views.

Here are some facts that confirm that their claims are wrong:

1. Pure races do not really exist in the current era, and this has been confirmed by many studies.
2. The differences that we find among the members of the same groups outweigh the differences between the different races.
3. The physical characteristics are actually shared by the members of the same group, but this cannot be generalized to the mental, social, or emotional characteristics.
4. Some of them tend to degrade the intelligence of some races, such as black people, who are closer to the animal form because of the shape of their noses. This is certainly not a criterion, as if we proceed in this way, we will find that all human beings of different races have characteristics that bring them closer to the animal form.

Intolerance Types

Intolerance has different types, namely:

1. Religious Intolerance

It is discrimination on the basis of religion, and this results in aggressive behavior, persecution, and prejudice against a different religious group. Sometimes the religious motive alone is not behind religious intolerance; rather, the motive may be cultural or political.

2. Racial Prejudice

It is intolerance on the basis of gender, whether origin, language, or nationality, and it is the most influential type of intolerance in societies. This is due to its impact on the economic, social, and political structures within society.

3. Intellectual Fanaticism

In this type, someone tries to impose their opinions and ideas on other individuals illogically and with complete disregard for their opinions and ideas.

4. Gender Intolerance

It is intolerance directed against women as they belong to an inferior race to men; this results in many problems within society, such as violence against women, exploitation of women in the workplace, failure to give them their rights, and belittling their achievements just because they are women.

5. Hooliganism

Although this intolerance may seem simpler than others, in fact, intolerance towards a particular sports team may result in many acts of violence.

6. Political Fanaticism

This intolerance may be practiced by an authority by forcing the people to follow a party or political opinion and suppressing them in the event that they refuse to obey the authority. It may also be practiced by the individual through their bias towards a political party or group and their blind drift behind it.

Why Do People Get Intolerant Against a Group?

After we get acquainted with the concept of intolerance, the form of racist relations, and the disasters it causes to humanity all over the world, it will come to our mind to ask why, then, a person becomes intolerant against a group. As we mentioned earlier, intolerance is a negative racist tendency, and in order to understand intolerance, we have to recognize the nature of this trend. Researchers in the field of attitudes agree that there are three aspects that make up intolerance, and we will get to know them as follows:

1. The Cognitive Aspect

It is the set of opinions, ideas, and beliefs that an individual has about a group. For example, in 1933, researchers conducted a study in which they asked 100 university students to choose a group of characteristics from among 48 characteristics that they believe characterize a group out of 10 groups: Americans, Chinese, Germans, English, Irish, Italians, Japanese, Turks, Jews, and black people. The study concluded that there was a high level of agreement on a set of characteristics attributed to a group, although many of the respondents did not communicate throughout their lives with a member of these groups.

The following are a number of attributes attributed to each group, which the sample agreed upon:

1. Germans: practical, serious, and unemotional.
2. Jews: love of money, seriousness, and meanness.
3. Negroes: lazy, easy to lead, and superstitious.
4. Italians: emotional, impulsive, and mostly artists.
5. Chinese: cheerful and superstitious.
6. Turks: unreliable, cruel, and religious.
7. Japanese: hardworking and smart.
8. Americans: materialistic, hardworking, and intelligent.
9. Irish: smart, but easily provoked.
10. British: traditional, smart, and athletic.

A lot of studies have been done to reveal the persistence of such popular ideas about a group, to find out why people believe and adopt them, and to investigate their validity and the extent to which there is some truth in them.

2. The Emotional Aspect

This aspect is very important, as through it the amount of hostility towards a group is measured, and even the amount of love or the acceptance of friendship with it. This aspect has attracted the attention of many studies that sought to measure the aspect through the general picture of the individual's feelings.

3. The Attributive Aspect

This aspect is related to the previous one, as if the individual is emotionally ready for intolerance against a group, this will push them to take a certain policy against it, and as a result, they put in their mind a plan for how to act against this group.

What Are the Theories That Explain Intolerance?

As a result of the psychologists’ interest in understanding and interpreting intolerance, several theories have been put forward to explain it, namely:

1. Exploitation Theory

This theory is based on the idea that intolerance against a group develops by a group of exploiters with the aim of stigmatizing this group as inferior in order to facilitate its exploitation.

The supporters of this group consider that what the Americans did against black people is the biggest proof of the validity of their words. The history of the United States of America is full of all kinds of exploitation against blacks in all economic, social, and political fields. Opponents of this theory say that it explains Americans' intolerance against blacks, but it cannot explain Americans' intolerance against Catholics, for example.

2. Urban Theory

Urban life is not as simple as rural life, but rather a life based on competition, cheating, deception, and conflict; therefore, delving into it generates a lot of fear of not being able to get along and blend into this life. This causes hatred for those who could not reach it because they remind us of the possibility of our failure, like the blacks, for example, and hatred for those who managed to reach this level because it represents urban life with its control of money, hypocrisy, and fraud, and that is why we hate black people.

3. Scapegoat Theory

Life is full of many difficulties and frustrating situations that often result in aggressive behavior, and because the individual does not direct this hostility towards the real stimuli of their frustration, which are the obstacles that stood in their way for fear of society’s rejection of them or even their fear of rejecting and hating themselves, they look for someone to direct this aggressive behavior against them, so they direct it to members of minorities so that members of these groups become scapegoats. A lot of research has confirmed that intolerance against minorities increases when groups go through crises that make them feel at risk, such as economic crises.

4. Environmental Theory

This theory says that intolerance is a tendency that the child learns from their inception, which means that they acquire it. The child is exposed to many experiences and influences that shape their personality, as they learn that they belong to a specific group and that there are other groups in society, and each group has certain characteristics. The child also learns to adopt a specific behavior towards these groups and to follow the approach of their group in its behavior in order to gain their approval and acceptance.

5. Phenomenological Theory

In this theory, intolerance is interpreted as occurring against a group or an individual who belongs to a group when we feel that it threatens us or because it has unacceptable characteristics from our point of view. This behavior directed against others may be the result of them actually having unacceptable characteristics and their actions that arouse hatred, or due to subjective factors related to the individual's intolerance that make them see things that do not exist. For example, many people avoid dealing with the Jews because they are greedy and deceitful, and the Jew may or may not be characterized by these characteristics.

In Conclusion

In the end, intolerance is one of the unacceptable practices in society, which leads to many gaps between its members and destabilizes its security and stability. As a result, states must take a serious stance towards it by enacting deterrent laws and carrying out real trials for those who practice it.