An Examination of the Relationship between Religiosity and Intolerance (Case study: Kashan, Iran)

The main question of the current paper is whether religiosity inherently leads to intolerance. By reviewing the existing literature, the view of intergroup relations and the view of individual differences about the relationship between religiosity and intolerance were mentioned. The research method is deductive, the research design is correlational, and the data collection tools are standard and researcher-made questionnaires. The statistical population is citizens 18 years and older in Kashan and the sample size is 531 people based on Cochran's formula, which has been selected by multi-stage cluster sampling method. In order to guarantee the validity of the research criteria, the content validity method was used and in order to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used. The results of correlation analysis showed that there is a negative and significant relationship between religiosity and tolerance. However, the results of regression analysis indicated that considering the interactive effect of the authoritarianism variable, the negative relationship observed in the bivariate analysis turns into a positive relationship. The findings suggests that, in the case of the relationship between religiosity and intolerance, religion and religiosity are not the problem in themselves; rather, the problem is with the way some people are religious. Religiosity, therefore, will not inherently lead to intolerance.