UC Merced

Political tolerance, which is the willingness to extend civil liberties, is a core principle in a democracy. In the study of tolerance, scholars use some variation of the tolerance scale, which gives us individual and aggregated willingness to extend civil liberties, such as free speech to disliked groups. There are potential issues with the way tolerance is measured, particularly with regard to different social groups. Through a series of experimental studies using student and internet samples, I examine whether political tolerance is susceptible to social concerns. Given that the measure of tolerance may be susceptible to social concerns, estimates of political tolerance may not fully capture actual tolerance.