With Malice toward Some: How People Make Civil Liberties Judgments

Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology

by George E. Marcus, John L. Sullivan, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

How do citizens faced with a complex variety of considerations decide whether or not to tolerate extremist groups? Relying on several survey-experiments, the authors identify and compare the impact on decision making of contemporary information, long-standing predispositions, and enduring values and beliefs. People react most strongly to data about a group's violations of behavioral norms and the implications for democracy of the group's actions. The authors conclude that democratic citizens should have a strong baseline of tolerance yet be attentive to and thoughtful about current information.

Genres: Politics, Political Science

306 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 1995

About the author

George Emanuel Marcus is an American professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine who focuses on the anthropology of elites.