The Many Faces of Education: why are people with lower education more hostile towards immigrants than people with higher education?

Research differs a great deal as to the reasons why highly educated people in many surveys express more positive views about ethnic and other minorities than the lower educated. Six main types of explanation have been put forward; (1) Tolerance and conception of rights are among the norms that the educators try to impart. The longer the education, the greater the chance of the students’ internalizing these norms. (2) Education will confer knowledge, and thus break down stereotypic beliefs about immigrants. (3) Long‐time education will increase the cognitive competence, and so make people more resistant to hostile propaganda about immigrants and more able to understand actual situations of conflict. (4) High education will lead to jobs with high social status, protected from direct competition with immigrants on the job and housing markets. (5) High education will strengthen the general ability of mastering, thus reducing the danger of situations creating conflicts and aggression. Against these hypotheses a sixth ‘critical’ hypothesis has been launched. (6) High education will create both motivation and ability to act opportunistically in this conflictladen matter. Highly educated people know that they are expected to demonstrate tolerance and open minds, and their knowledge and verbal aptitude will make it easy to disguise eventual hostility. In our empirical analysis hypotheses number four, five and six are supported. The results for the first hypothesis are more ambiguous, and those on hypothesis two and three negative.