Education Increases Ideological Prejudice

Sean Stevens of Heterodox Academy has written a summary of  a study, which appears in the December 2017 (81:4) issue of Public Opinion Quarterly,  by PJ Henry and Jaime Napier of NYU.  The study finds that while education reduces ethnic, racial, and anti-immigrant prejudice, it increases ideological prejudice.  Stevens suggests that the results require rethinking about why education reduces prejudice in some areas but increases it in others.

The study is based on data in the American National Elections Studies survey. The authors study a 40-year period, from 1972 to 2012.  Henry and Napier base the study on self-reports of ideology and measures of feelings toward people with left- and right-wing ideologies.  They find that education is weakly associated with left orientation, and the effect comes mostly from college graduation.  In other words, people who are able to see through four years of college tend to be more left oriented, either because they are better able to stand the environment or because they learn to be left oriented in college.

Increased education is found to correlate with increased ideological prejudice for both left and right, but the effect is stronger for leftists. When the authors control for time, they find that the effect has significantly increased over time for leftists but not for conservatives.

Stevens notes that the results call into question the notion that education promotes tolerance toward those who are different.  Rather, it seems to promote certain patterns of tolerance in specific areas, often called politically correct.  In other areas, which are not within the rote, left-wing, politically correct catechism, education does not improve tolerance of others' beliefs.