American tolerance research traditionally discusses the influence of education on political tolerance. These debates are transferred into a German context, and the article aims to complement previous research on tolerance by a combination of value-based explanations, of findings about mass belief systems and about heuristics in decision-making. It is assumed that the levels of education and political sophistication of a person determine his/her attitudes on political tolerance, because they have an impact on the relevance of values and ideological dispositions as abstract principles for individual decisions on tolerance situations. As a result of our empirical analyses, we can emphasize the separate influence of political sophistication and the contextual nature of tolerant attitudes, partly due to individual differences in the handling of abstract principles.
values; political tolerance; political sophistication; political psychology
