The "Pictures in Our Heads" and Individual-Targeted Tolerance

This article develops a distinction between group-targeted tolerance (the focus of previous research) and individual-targeted tolerance, and proposes that individual-targeted tolerance deserves attention because, inter alia, of its important implications for group-targeted tolerance. Borrowing from recent psychological theories concerning the perception of people and groups, an argument is made and tested experimentally that the extent to which individuals of negatively stereotyped political groups will be tolerated depends not only on their group membership but also on the extent to which they fit their group's stereotype or, in Lippmann's words, the "pictures in our heads" (Lippmann 1922). The influence of group membership and fit to the group stereotype on individual-targeted tolerance are predicted to vary as a function of the activity in question and respondents' prior attitudes toward the group. Substantial support for all these hypotheses is found and discussed.