Explaining educational influences on attitudes toward homosexual relations

Despite changing attitudes toward homosexual relations in the United States, college-educated individuals remain less disapproving of homosexual sex than less-educated persons. Using recent General Social Survey data, this study considers three alternative explanations for the established association between schooling and support for same-sex relations. First, education may promote tolerance of homosexual sex by teaching support of nonconformity. Second, schooling may promote greater cognitive sophistication and complex reasoning, thus enabling individuals to better evaluate new ideas. Third, the observed relationship between education and tolerance may be the spurious result of affluence of the parental home. We find that the relation of education and attitudes is not a spurious one. Rather, the liberalizing effect of education on attitudes toward homosexual relations is due, in part, to education’s association with support for civil liberties, and in part, to schooling’s correlation with cognitive sophistication.