How religious tolerance can emerge among religious people: An investigation on the roles of intellectual humility, cognitive flexibility, and trait aggressiveness

Abstract

For years, religious tolerance between religious groups has been a critical sociopolitical problem throughout the world. To date, there has been little research that investigates the psychological mechanisms underlying the emergence of tolerance in religious people. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the roles of intellectual humility and cognitive flexibility in mediating the relationship between religiosity and religious tolerance are dependent on aggressiveness. We employed mediation analyses over data collected from 226 Indonesian Muslim students to test our predictions. Results showed that intellectual humility and cognitive flexibility significantly mediated the influence of religiosity in increasing religious tolerance. As predicted, intellectual humility was the more potent mediator among religious participants who possessed a high level of aggressiveness, whereas cognitive flexibility was the more potent mediator among religious participants with a low level of aggressiveness. The aggressiveness of religious participants also determined whether intellectual humility or cognitive flexibility would increase religious tolerance. Our findings suggest the importance of developing intellectual humility and cognitive flexibility to promote tolerant behaviour among religious people.