There's an assumption of causality that might not hold. It may very well be that more tolerant majors simply attract students who sre already more tolerant, rather than teach them to be more tolerant.
That much is acknowledged in the piece. The author is explicit that the study designs aren’t capable of proving causation. They merely “suggest” that philosophy might make students more tolerant, for example.
I think a more ideal comparison for estimating a causal effect would be looking at people who barely get into a major vs people who barely don’t get in at a competitive school. At the limit, these are essentially the same people. However, I don’t know if this is a group that actually exists.
At my school, Purdue, you could compare students who barely qualify for Mechanical Engineering vs students who barely don’t, but at that point you’re already looking at 2 different types of engineering anyway
And speaking of school, this study measures only college students. What about farmers, trades people, factory workers, etc. As usual, they are ignored.
I have master's in educational administration, and taught in public school for six years. Then I started a business and went into the skilled trades (mostly construction). I can say with confidence that the great unwashed of this country are generally more tolerant and better informed on issues than are college students.
It's not for nothing that they call college the Ivory Tower.
Marketing, including the marketing of politicians and political parties, is the science of convincing people that they should like and want what the marketers tell them to like and want. Marketers need not concern themselves with principles and ethics. So, yeah, pretty close to soulless.
Is tolerance really the average of the two scores of what you would allow on campus, or is the lower of the two scores more relevant? The hypothetical 100% left with 0% right doesn't strike me as tolerant at all.
I agree that average tolerance isn't a perfect measure. That said, minimum tolerance isn't perfect either--100% and 50% should be better than 50% and 50%. For evaluating a campus climate, my preference is the minimum plus 10% of the difference, but I'm not sure whether I'd prefer that for evaluating individuals. One of the reasons for using average tolerance here is that, controlling for gender, most ideologies have similar average tolerance in our (2025) data, though they of course have fairly different tolerance biases (see gender tolerance graph in the article mentioned at the top).
If you measure by the lower of left and right tolerance rather than the average, it does, with theater students having the lowest level of tolerance.
The average measures something I suppose, but I'm far more interested in the lowest of the two (actual tolerance of the other tribe) or the difference between the two tolerances (political bias)
Philosophy grad here, I score very highly on open-mindedness, especially to ideas rather than experiences.
One drawback I’ve noticed among philosophy professors and graduate students is that it often encourages people to take seriously ideas that are highly implausible or even a bit absurd. You can see this in some of the so‑called “problems” in metaphysics, many of which are barely intelligible. The same issue shows up in the endless disputes over which moral theory is supposedly the “correct” or “superior” one.
Some critical (empirically informed) thinking could be used in the field!
Idk if this is possible based on the data you collected, but wouldn’t one (at least facially valid) way of measuring “tolerance” involve weighting differences of opinion relative to each individual’s own views and then evaluating the extent to which each individual tolerates those relative differences? So, for example, if an individual is 10% left wing (based on your measure) then you’d weight their toleration of people that are 5% and 15% left wing by 0.05, then their toleration of people who are 0% and 20% left wing by 0.1%, then their toleration of people that are 5% right wing and 25% left wing by 0.15%, and so on.
Something *like* this (forgive me if I’m being stupid or missing something obvious) would, to my mind, yield a reasonable tolerance measure, since it accounts for the fact that it’s (generally speaking) easier to tolerate small differences in ideology than large ones. … The only other thing you might want to do would be to check and potentially control for the possibility that people are naturally more tolerant of difference on their own side of the ideological aisle than the opposite.
If that kind of analysis is possible, I’d love to see the results!
Are we controlling for IQ? I’d bet my bottom dollar there are significant differences in average IQ between some of these more-tolerant major groups and some of these less-tolerant major groups…
Looks like you're just pooling all of the data together, but e.g. gender studies students are not spread evenly across schools. If the elite privates that have more of these students also draw more tolerant students (by your metric) on average, then you end up with a spurious relationship between majoring in gender studies and tolerance.
It looks like controlling for school pulls the majors a bit closer on left-wing tolerance, but doesn't otherwise affect the shape of the scatterplot (or where gender studies sits) much. So some schools are tied to higher/lower tolerance, but the relationship isn't spurious.
Also worth noting that gender studies scores well below average, even controlling for gender and ideology and using average tolerance. It just does better than the least tolerant majors (marketing, finance, fashion, etc.). Though African-American studies, for instance, has above-average tolerance for both sides, whether you control for gender and ideology (and school) or not.
I think you're in a no win situation here, at least if you're trying to be precise. Either you control for confounding factors to try and isolate the effect of major on tolerance, in which case you run into all kinds of problems related to Angrist/Pischke bad controls (you should not control for ideology for example). Or you can not control for anything and compare raw numbers, but selection is so extreme that you don't even have the option to do gender studies at a place like Montana State. Of these, I prefer the latter as it is more transparent what the limitations are.
What then do you think should be the standard for philosophy education? Should it be an individual-level ordeal where students get to pick the topic(s) that they’re interested in?
I see, thanks for elaborating. That seems like the undergraduate program I went through in my BA. I’m very sorry yours seemed like it was only geared towards historical surveys. That is extremely unfortunate and sadly one of the reasons why the humanities are deteriorating—a combined lack of post-grad hirability and also capitulating to standardization
There's an assumption of causality that might not hold. It may very well be that more tolerant majors simply attract students who sre already more tolerant, rather than teach them to be more tolerant.
That much is acknowledged in the piece. The author is explicit that the study designs aren’t capable of proving causation. They merely “suggest” that philosophy might make students more tolerant, for example.
I think a more ideal comparison for estimating a causal effect would be looking at people who barely get into a major vs people who barely don’t get in at a competitive school. At the limit, these are essentially the same people. However, I don’t know if this is a group that actually exists.
At my school, Purdue, you could compare students who barely qualify for Mechanical Engineering vs students who barely don’t, but at that point you’re already looking at 2 different types of engineering anyway
And speaking of school, this study measures only college students. What about farmers, trades people, factory workers, etc. As usual, they are ignored.
I have master's in educational administration, and taught in public school for six years. Then I started a business and went into the skilled trades (mostly construction). I can say with confidence that the great unwashed of this country are generally more tolerant and better informed on issues than are college students.
It's not for nothing that they call college the Ivory Tower.
Isn’t this a way of saying that marketing majors don’t have souls? Because I am completely comfortable with that conclusion
Marketing, including the marketing of politicians and political parties, is the science of convincing people that they should like and want what the marketers tell them to like and want. Marketers need not concern themselves with principles and ethics. So, yeah, pretty close to soulless.
Is tolerance really the average of the two scores of what you would allow on campus, or is the lower of the two scores more relevant? The hypothetical 100% left with 0% right doesn't strike me as tolerant at all.
I agree that average tolerance isn't a perfect measure. That said, minimum tolerance isn't perfect either--100% and 50% should be better than 50% and 50%. For evaluating a campus climate, my preference is the minimum plus 10% of the difference, but I'm not sure whether I'd prefer that for evaluating individuals. One of the reasons for using average tolerance here is that, controlling for gender, most ideologies have similar average tolerance in our (2025) data, though they of course have fairly different tolerance biases (see gender tolerance graph in the article mentioned at the top).
In case you're wondering, here're all the majors with 100+ men/women, plus religion, classics, and gender studies, ranked by minimum tolerance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PMicUUs-GRdcxnYzBfkgME8x4Qv3zhuZHa-DkUoHobU/edit?tab=t.0
And if you want to test anything else, the code and data are available here:
https://github.com/chapin-lenthall-cleary/firearticles/tree/main/major_tolerance
Artists. I don’t care what this article says if it doesn’t say art majors are the least politically tolerant.
If you measure by the lower of left and right tolerance rather than the average, it does, with theater students having the lowest level of tolerance.
The average measures something I suppose, but I'm far more interested in the lowest of the two (actual tolerance of the other tribe) or the difference between the two tolerances (political bias)
I’d recommend looking into visual art. There are similarities with theater, sure, but I feel you’d be surprised by what you find there.
The idea that political tolerance should be measured by what students think about people speaking at their university is pretty stupid.
Philosophy grad here, I score very highly on open-mindedness, especially to ideas rather than experiences.
One drawback I’ve noticed among philosophy professors and graduate students is that it often encourages people to take seriously ideas that are highly implausible or even a bit absurd. You can see this in some of the so‑called “problems” in metaphysics, many of which are barely intelligible. The same issue shows up in the endless disputes over which moral theory is supposedly the “correct” or “superior” one.
Some critical (empirically informed) thinking could be used in the field!
Idk if this is possible based on the data you collected, but wouldn’t one (at least facially valid) way of measuring “tolerance” involve weighting differences of opinion relative to each individual’s own views and then evaluating the extent to which each individual tolerates those relative differences? So, for example, if an individual is 10% left wing (based on your measure) then you’d weight their toleration of people that are 5% and 15% left wing by 0.05, then their toleration of people who are 0% and 20% left wing by 0.1%, then their toleration of people that are 5% right wing and 25% left wing by 0.15%, and so on.
Something *like* this (forgive me if I’m being stupid or missing something obvious) would, to my mind, yield a reasonable tolerance measure, since it accounts for the fact that it’s (generally speaking) easier to tolerate small differences in ideology than large ones. … The only other thing you might want to do would be to check and potentially control for the possibility that people are naturally more tolerant of difference on their own side of the ideological aisle than the opposite.
If that kind of analysis is possible, I’d love to see the results!
Psychology and psychiatry are built on stigmatizing and oppressing. They win by a mile.
Are we controlling for IQ? I’d bet my bottom dollar there are significant differences in average IQ between some of these more-tolerant major groups and some of these less-tolerant major groups…
Looks like you're just pooling all of the data together, but e.g. gender studies students are not spread evenly across schools. If the elite privates that have more of these students also draw more tolerant students (by your metric) on average, then you end up with a spurious relationship between majoring in gender studies and tolerance.
It looks like controlling for school pulls the majors a bit closer on left-wing tolerance, but doesn't otherwise affect the shape of the scatterplot (or where gender studies sits) much. So some schools are tied to higher/lower tolerance, but the relationship isn't spurious.
Also worth noting that gender studies scores well below average, even controlling for gender and ideology and using average tolerance. It just does better than the least tolerant majors (marketing, finance, fashion, etc.). Though African-American studies, for instance, has above-average tolerance for both sides, whether you control for gender and ideology (and school) or not.
Plots here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A85lAr3_xqSTG6dniy89uquvJr9a7egcwTirgoCOgZM/edit?usp=sharing
I think you're in a no win situation here, at least if you're trying to be precise. Either you control for confounding factors to try and isolate the effect of major on tolerance, in which case you run into all kinds of problems related to Angrist/Pischke bad controls (you should not control for ideology for example). Or you can not control for anything and compare raw numbers, but selection is so extreme that you don't even have the option to do gender studies at a place like Montana State. Of these, I prefer the latter as it is more transparent what the limitations are.
Advanced compliance.
Wow this is fascinating! Terrific read/research!
Isn’t the study of philosophy always a study of the history of philosophy? The acquisition of knowledge is never a waste of time
What then do you think should be the standard for philosophy education? Should it be an individual-level ordeal where students get to pick the topic(s) that they’re interested in?
I see, thanks for elaborating. That seems like the undergraduate program I went through in my BA. I’m very sorry yours seemed like it was only geared towards historical surveys. That is extremely unfortunate and sadly one of the reasons why the humanities are deteriorating—a combined lack of post-grad hirability and also capitulating to standardization