Origins of Tolerance : Reply to Crockett

Professor Crockett has described portions of our article as conceptually barren and the findings are said to represent serious distortions which, if accepted, will lead to serious misunderstandings. Coming from a respected colleague, these strong words cannot be taken lightly. Nevertheless, after carefully examining his criticisms, we feel they are misplaced

Origins of Tolerance: Findings from a Replication of Stouffer\u27s Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties

This report presents findings from a nationwide replication of Stouffer\u27s classic study of attitudes toward civil liberties. Central to Stouffer\u27s interpretation of the origins of tolerance is his idea that exposure to social and cultural diversity encourages an appreciation of the importance of civil liberties for democracy. Trends in the 1950s suggested that Americans would increasingly be exposed to diversity with the result that the population would become more tolerant in the future. These propositions were examined using education, city size, region, exposure to mass media news, gender, and occupation as indices of exposure to diversity. With the exceptions of mass media exposure and employment for women, all of these variables were found to be significantly associated with tolerance. And, as Stouffer expected, tolerance has increased greatly over the past two decades