Development of a Scale to Measure Tolerance Toward Diverse Others1

Abstract

AbstractOpportunities to interact with people from different cultures and languages have increased as society has become more globalized. Hence, it has become increasingly important for people living in today's international society to accept and try to build trusting relationships with those who may perceive the world differently. This study aimed to develop a scale to measure people's tolerant attitudes toward diverse others (hereafter, tolerance toward diverse others). Furthermore, after confirming the newly developed scale's reliability and validity, we used it to examine its associations with general trust and cultural interdependent self‐construal. Albeit exploratively, we then discuss the relationships among these variables. Our results showed that scores on the newly developed Tolerance of Diverse Others Scale were positively correlated with scores on the General Trust Scale and also with scores on tolerance‐related items in the World Values Survey. Furthermore, the harmony‐seeking aspect of cultural interdependent self‐construal was positively correlated with tolerance toward diverse others, while the rejection‐avoidance aspect was negatively correlated, although the positive correlation between harmony seeking and rejection avoidance was shown. We discuss what the results suggest about Japanese individuals' perceptions of diverse others.