Worksheet: Test your TQ – Tolerance Quotient

Friends:
Look around in your circle of friends: what percentage of them is of not of the same
religious background as you are?

Travel:
Take a map and check the distance between your house and the furthest place you
have been to in.

Lebanon:
Check the distance to places you would like to go to but haven’t still. Are they that
far? What keeps you from going there?

Friends again:
Take another look at your circle of friends. What percentage of them supports the
same political party as you do?

Truth:
Name three “truths” that you hold on to Imagine you had been adopted when you
were very young into a family with a completely different religious and political
background than you have now. Would those three “truths” still be the same? Find
an example of something you once thought to be true, but now think is false. What
led you to change your mind? Similarly, find an example of something you once
thought to be false, but now take to be true.
What changed your original opinion?

Stereotypes
How many times per day do you use stereotypes? ...You don’t? Well then, next time
you meet someone for the first time, try to capture the first thought you have – the
one based completely and entirely on your judgment of their appearance and maybe
a few words.

Openness:
Have you ever been to a place of worship not of your own religion? If so, was it in
Lebanon or abroad? If not, what’s keeping you?

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Understanding & Communicating

After filling out the worksheet above and reflecting on your answers, maybe by now
you are ready to go out and make some new friends or have a renewed interest in
your classmates that you had pushed aside as being “the other”. All of that is great,
but also a bit tricky; before you know it you may get into a heated debate that does
nothing but reinforce your stereotypes and feeling that the other is irreconcilably
different from you. The following part of the booklet is designed to give you an idea
of the psychology of communication – how things are said, how they are perceived,
the difference between how people judge themselves and how attitudes, stereotypes
and society in general can influence you and your thought-process without you
noticing.

The Behavioral Iceberg – Don’t be “The Titanic”

Words and actions are like the tip of an iceberg: it’s the only thing we observe in
others. But words and actions are always the result of underlying beliefs and values
just like the 10% of the iceberg that is visible above water is propped up by the
remaining 90% is that is hidden underneath the waves. This simple behavioral
analogy has some implications: 1. We make assumptions about
what we don’t see - about the values and beliefs of others. However, assumptions are
assumptions. They’re not always right.
2. It is easier for us to understand the actions of those who have the same belief
system as us.