How to be more tolerant: 5 practical tips

The ability to be tolerant is a fundamental psychological characteristic, in many respects. It favors our propensity to coexist in culturally rich societies, and it is also a gateway to new knowledge.

In this article we will see a series of tips on how to be more tolerant, since tolerance is a behavioral dynamic that can be learned.

• Related article: "How to socialize better? 7 useful tips"

Why is it good to be tolerant?

Getting used to being more tolerant gives us two types of benefits.

On the one hand, assuming that the human being is a social animal, it helps us to have more contacts with people of many kinds, which means have a human capital of individuals with whom we can carry out actions for mutual benefit.

It is not in vain that loneliness is linked to a greater propensity to have a poor quality of life, and on the other hand, having contact with very varied people is very useful in many aspects.

On the other hand, be tolerant with others as well exposes us to more and greater intellectual stimuli

. Being in contact with points of view different from ours makes it more difficult for us to be manipulated based on stereotypes and prejudices, and also makes us wiser.

We may not agree with a series of ideas and values ​​that others include in their lives, but knowing them first-hand and not just hearsay makes our notions about those perspectives other than our own more nuanced and more honest.

How to be more tolerant with others: 6 tips

Given the above, let us now learn about various habits and strategies that help us to be more tolerant.

1. Be aware of your own biases

First of all, it is very important to be aware that when we come across ideas that contradict us, we tend to use many intellectual traps to Assume from the start that it's just wrong beliefs and irrational.

Of course, sometimes we will be right and the ideas of others will be full of logical contradictions and explanatory gaps, but even if they are very valid and even better than ours, the fact of being seen as incompatible with our beliefs will favor that they cause us rejection.

Fortunately, the simple fact of being aware of this semi-unconscious predisposition it opens the door for us to stop and consider if those ideas are really legitimate or not. However, this is only a first step, and in itself it does not make us more tolerant, although it is necessary to undertake the strategies that we will see next.

• You may be interested: "Cognitive dissonance: the theory that explains self-deception"

2. play devil's advocate

This is one of the most useful tips on how to be more tolerant, since it consists of making a conscious effort to defend the ideas with which we do not agree and attack our own. Is about a kind of mental simulacrum to see how the other's beliefs match reality or what's right, compared to our own.

Doing this requires some time and effort, it is not enough to dedicate a few seconds to this task. Other people's points of view are usually more complex than we can imagine in a matter of fractions of a minute, so we must create a faithful mental representation of what someone who does not think like us is really thinking.

3. Find valid representatives of a collective

When we try to be more tolerant, we usually do so by focusing on our attitudes towards groups. For example, we want to be more tolerant of certain individuals as representatives of a religion or way of thinking shared by many people. Therefore, it is important to make sure that when forming a rich and nuanced opinion about these groups, we make sure that we look at people who really represent them.

Although each individual is unique, some people are more representative of a group than others; for example, someone who has been in jail for participating in terrorist activities linked to the ultra-conservative nationalism will probably not be a good representative of all the inhabitants of its country.

4. Dialogue and focus on the arguments

Dialogue and the use of arguments and ways of thinking based on rationality is a way of connecting with others based on common ideas. For this reason, it is important that the dialogue, necessary to be more tolerant, puts emphasis not mainly on feelings, but on the reasoning behind different ways of feeling and behaving of each other.

In this way, explaining in the most rational way possible why people think what they think and do what is done, we will move further away from intolerance and will be more likely to understand those who do not think like us.

5. Be willing to change your mind

Becoming more tolerant requires certain sacrifices, and this is the main one. We must not only want to internalize and accept the ways of living and reasoning of others; we must also be willing to that others show us that they are right and we are not. Assuming this is an exercise in humility that some people find difficult to do, but it is essential to open up to others and not fall into fanaticism.

Bibliographic references:

• Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive dissonance. ScientificAmerican. 207 (4): 93-107.
• Valls, R. (1994): On fundamentalisms. Keys of practical reason. 42, pp 40-48.