Tolerance and Intolerance: Children's and Adolescents' Judgments of Dissenting Beliefs, Speech, Persons, and Conduct

Tolerant and intolerant judgments of different types of dissent were examined. One hundred sixty participants (aged 7,3, 10,4, 13,6, and 20,1) made judgments about dissenting beliefs, speech, practices, and people engaged in those practices. Across all ages, participants were more tolerant (1) of the holding of dissenting beliefs than of their expression, (2) of the expression of beliefs than of the persons engaged in acts based on those beliefs, and (3) of the persons than of the acts. Tolerance of dissenting beliefs and speech increased with age. Although, at all ages, participants were intolerant of the practices, they were relatively more tolerant of practices grounded in cultural contexts. Participants were more tolerant of people espousing dissenting information than dissenting values. We concluded that tolerance and intolerance coexist at all ages and hinge on what individuals are asked to tolerate and on the sense in which they are asked to tolerate it.