Community matters : how social embeddedness influences tolerance.

The act of having tolerance has become a topic that needs reconsidering because of the discrimination and prejudiced actions performed towards certain religions, homosexuals, and various ethnic and racial groups that have occurred in America. It is known that these acts are not performed by all Americans but by small numbers in American society. Using Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis on the community level, the present study seeks to understand what makes an individual more tolerant of others through the lens of social embeddedness. Tolerance is a general measure that combines numerous types of individuals in the variable. A total of five social embeddedness measures were included in the model. Using measures of social embeddedness, the study expects employing ordinary lest square regression models that those who have more levels of social embeddedness will be more tolerant of others than those with none or little levels of social embeddedness.