Awareness of one’s own multiple social categories predicts generalized tolerance beyond those categories

Evidence

Social identity complexity, however, limits its focus to multiple selfcategorization of individuals, and therein, we believe, lays its strength in aiding understanding of intergroup phenomena. It is assumed that cognitive complexity surrounding one’s own multiple in-groups should in and of itself evoke more differentiated intergroup perceptions. Importantly, such more differentiated intergroup perceptions should not only be limited to the corresponding out-group categories (although they are likely to be stronger for these). In other words, social identity complexity is thought to be associated with greater tolerance more generally, and not only in relation to the categories in question. … They obtained significant relationships between social identity complexity and a variety of social attitudes relating to race and religion, even when removing the category “American” from some analyses, and even for individuals who did not include race and/or religion among their three most important social categories. Thus, one may assume that mere cognitive awareness of the complexity and nonoverlapping nature of one’s own social categories translates into greater awareness of the complexity of the social world more generally. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 539

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to social psychology’s contact hypothesis and research on generalized prejudice reduction; also resonates with the intergroup contact literature. — connects to: Belief in one form of stigmatized knowledge predicts belief in unrelated others — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 545; the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”
• SEED: Angle: how cognitive awareness of one’s own identity complexity functions as a transferable tolerance training, with testable implications for designing educational interventions.