Who Cares about Human Rights?

Author(s): Sam McFarland and Melissa Mathews Source: Political Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jun., 2005), pp. 365-385 Published by: International Society of Political Psychology

 

1. At first enumerate existing impediments to human rights advancement.

 

Despite great advances in human rights since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the gaps between the UDHR's ideals and current world realities remain massive. Nondemocratic governments, ancient enmities, religious orthodoxies, and cultural traditions all impede the advance of human rights in many places. Democratic governments that avow allegiance to human rights often find that protecting human rights abroad conflicts with their national self-interests and, in situations of grave human rights abuses, risks the lives of their own citizen soldiers. In political democracies such as the United States, public support is essential if a government is to invest resources and take risks on behalf of international human rights. With that in mind, this article reviews the American public's support for human rights, discusses weaknesses in previous measures of that support, and presents the results of a study with new measures designed to overcome those weaknesses. This study focuses specifically upon individual differences that influence human rights support. Do Americans Care about Human Rights? Before the 1970s, almost no national poll probed American support for international human rights. But every four years since 1974, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR), in conjunction with The Gallup Organization, has asked both the general public and samples of opinion leaders (members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, senior administrative staff, along with leaders of business, labor, education, religion, etc.) to rate the importance of various American foreign policy goals, including the goal of "Promoting and defending human rights in other countries." Also at four-year intervals, beginning in 1976, the Foreign Policy Leadership Project (FPLP) presented the same goals to foreign policy leaders. Holsti (2000) has reviewed the results of these surveys through 1998. On the surface, Americans appear to believe that international human rights are quite important. When the goals were presented most recently (June-July 2002), 47% rated the human rights goal as "very important" and an additional 43% rated it as "somewhat important" (Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 2002). Averaging across all polls from 1974 through 2002, the percentage of Americans who rated this goal as "very important" was 42%, with an additional 22% rating it as "somewhat important." The highest support came in 1990, when 58% rated it as very important. But three considerations indicate that support for human rights is not as strong as these percentages suggest. First, the human rights goal consistently ranks lower than goals that serve national self-interests. In the 2002 survey, supporting human rights ranked just 15th among the 20 goals in this survey, far behind "protecting the jobs of American workers" (85% "very important"), "stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States" (81%), "controlling and reducing illegal immigration" (70%), and "maintaining superior military power worldwide" (68%). This relatively low ranking has been consistent across the surveys. Even at the 1990 highpoint, the human rights goal ranked just sixth of 17 goals, behind all national self-interests such as those noted above. Second, American support for human rights has proven volatile and substantially influenced by major events. The 1990 highpoint came just after the Berlin wall came down and during the euphoria of the end of communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. But the low point came in 1993, when just 28% strongly agreed with the goal; this poll was taken while American troops were deployed on an unpopular humanitarian mission in Somalia, although prior to the ambush and death of 18 soldiers there.

Attitudes Towards Human Rights Third, American willingness to support human rights abroad depends strongly upon the costs of doing so. In June 1999, against the backdrop of NATO intervention to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, The Gallup Organization asked, Now we'd like you to think about the use of the United States military in the past few years to stop human rights atrocities such as mass killings or ethnic cleansing. Do you think the United States should use the U.S. military more often than it has been, about the same, or less often to stop these kinds of atrocities? American ambiguity concerning such interventions was revealed in that 24% said "more often," 43% "about the same," and 29% "less often" (The Gallup Organization, 1999). On the other hand, Americans appear more willing to employ economic measures to advance human rights. In 1999 and in 2000, respondents were asked whether the United States should "increase trade with China NOW, because doing so will promote more economic, political, and religious freedoms in that country, or the United States should NOT increase trade with China until the Chinese government gives more economic, political, and religious freedom to its citizens?" On both occasions, better than 60% favored the latter option (The Gallup Organization, 2000a). Similarly, during and after the war in Kosovo, Gallup asked, "Do you favor or oppose the presence of U.S. ground troops, along with troops from other countries, in an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo?" In June 1999, fully 66% of the American public favored U.S. troops in Kosovo. However, when asked during the conflict, "Do you favor or oppose sending U.S. ground troops along with troops from other NATO countries to serve in a combat situation (emphasis ours) in the region?" just 40% favored and 55% opposed doing so (The Gallup Organization, 2000b). In short, public polling indicates that a majority of Americans want the United States to support human rights abroad. However, concern for human rights consistently ranks below issues of national self-interest, is substantially influenced by current events, and wanes as the costs of supporting human rights increase. College students similarly assign substantial importance but low priority to human rights. In the only nationwide college survey on this issue, Barrows (1981) found that 68% of students rated the "denial of basic human rights" around the world as a "very important" problem, but that percentage was lower than for national self-interest issues such as "inflation" (80%) or "unemployment" (73%). Who Supports Human Rights? Poll results show that human rights support is consistently related to political party, self-identified liberalism, and humanitarian concerns. In the Gallup national polls, Democrats average about 10% more likely than Republicans to agree that promoting and defending human rights is a "very important" foreign policy goal. Among opinion leaders, the gap has averaged a whopping 26%. Independents, both among the public and opinion leaders, generally fall between the two parties. Similarly, self-identified liberals in the general public average about 10% more likely than conservatives to rate this goal as "very important," a difference that swells to 33% among opinion leaders (for data, see Holsti, 2000). These differences are generally replicated when polls ask about immediate issues; for example, Democrats were consistently 8-10% more willing than Republicans to support American actions to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Support for human rights is even more strongly associated with global humanitarian concerns. Across repeated surveys, ratings of the importance of promoting human rights have correlated consistently with ratings of "supporting democracy abroad," "combating world hunger," "improving standards of living (of other nations)," and "protecting the global environment." Political leaders' support for human rights correlated on average with support for each of these other policies. For the general public, the parallel correlations were usually in the.30s. Barrows (1981) found similar correlations among college students, for whom the seriousness of denial of human rights correlated with the seriousness attributed to "malnutrition and inadequate health care," the "depletion of natural resources," and other humanitarian and environmental issues. Clearly, there is a "globalism" - a more descriptive term than liberalism - that embraces many humanitarian and ecological concerns, and expressed support for human rights is strongly associated with that orientation. Studies using smaller, ad hoc samples augment what is learned from the national polls. The results indicate the following correlates: 1) Two studies have found that concern for human rights increases with education. On Barrows's (1981) national student survey, seniors expressed significantly greater concern for human rights - and other global issues - than did freshmen. Getz (1985) found that scores on her Attitudes Toward Human Rights Inventory (ATHRI) correlated.34 with adult education level. 2) Similarly, two studies have shown that support for human rights is related to greater world knowledge. Grace and Van Velzer (1951) found that college students' agreement with the articles in the UDHR was positively related to their knowledge about 10 nations around the world. Barrows (1981) found that American students' knowledge of global affairs correlated positively with caring about human rights and related global issues, with an overall correlation of.30. 3) Two studies have found that religious faith, particularly conservative religious faith, is negatively related to human rights support. Getz (1985) found that, for samples of American Christians, ATHRI scores correlated -.47 with conservative (as opposed to liberal) religious beliefs. Moghaddam and Vuksanovic (1990) assessed Canadian students' attitudes toward a variety of human rights issues (e.g., free speech, freedom of religion, health care, etc.) as they applied to Canada, Russia, and the Third World (e.g., "Free speech Attitudes Towards Human Rights should be granted to all members of [Canadian, Russian, Third World] society without exception."). Self-ratings of "how active you are in religious practice" correlated -.30 with support for human rights in Canada and -.36 for human rights support for the Third World. However, religious and nonreligious respondents were equally concerned about human rights in Russia, where religion was actively suppressed. 4) Authoritarianism predicts less concern for human rights. For Moghaddam and Vuksanovic's (1990) Canadian samples, Altemeyer's (1981) Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) predicted consistently lower support for human rights in Canada, the Soviet Union, and the Third World. Six correlations across two studies ranged from -.42 (when applied to the Soviet Union) to -.66 (when applied to Canada). 5) Individuals with "principled" moral reasoning are more supportive of human rights. In his influential theory, Lawrence Kohlberg (1969) described a developmental course of moral reasoning from preconventional, to conventional, to postconventional moral reasoning. With postconventional reasoning, individuals recognize the limitations of their own culture's morality, understand cultural relativity, and engage in "principled" ethical reasoning that appeals to abstract principles such as justice, fairness, and human well-being. In the 1970s, Rest and his colleagues developed the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to assess the proportion of an individual's moral reasoning that is principled (Rest, 1988). A recent revision yielded the DIT2 (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999). Getz (1985) found that adults' DIT scores correlated.41 with her own ATHRI, while Rest et al. (1999) found correlations ranging from.48 to.55 between principled moral reasoning (DIT and DIT2) and ATHRI scores. Avery, using a variation of the "least-liked groups" method (Sullivan, Marcus, Pierson, & Feldman, 1978-1979), found that DIT scores predicted teenagers' political tolerance, defined as a "willingness to extend basic human rights to one's least-liked socio-political group". 6) Those who see the world as "fixed" appear less supportive of human rights than those who see it as "malleable." Chiu, Dweck, Tong, and Fu's (1997) Measure of World Theories Scale consists of three items such as "Our world has its basic and ingrained dispositions, and you really can't do much to change it." Those with a malleable view (disagreeing with this item) were more likely to believe that violations of individual rights were worse than violations of social norms, while those with a fixed view were more likely to view the latter violations as worse. Three Unexamined Individual Differences While many other individual differences may predict support for human rights, we selected three - the social dominance orientation, dispositional empathy, and ethnocentrism - that seem particularly likely to influence support. The social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) reflects a concern for maintaining in-group status and a preference for inequality-enhancing ideologies and policies. This orientation toward human relations seems essentially at odds with a concern for human rights. Previous studies have shown that SDO is negatively related to support for specific rights including tolerance, support for women's rights, and support for gay and lesbian rights (e.g., Pratto et al., 1994), but the effects of SDO upon support for universal human rights are unexamined. Dispositional empathy refers to one's willingness to view another's situation with compassion and understanding. Davis's (1983) Empathetic Concern Scale (EC), which assesses empathy for those in distress, and Perspective Taking Scale (PT), which measures the degree to which one tries to view others' situations and concerns from the others' points of view, seem likely to predict human rights support. These highly correlated facets of empathy express an inherent concern for others that seems fundamental to human rights commitment. The role of dispositional empathy upon human rights attitudes is unstudied. Finally, ethnocentrism - a tendency to reject and distrust all out-groups - seems fundamentally antithetical to support for human rights. Altemeyer's (1998) Manitoba Ethnocentrism Scale (MES), which assesses prejudice toward an array of out-groups (Russians, American Indians, Arabs, etc.), was adapted for the present study. Previous Measures of Human Rights Support Previous efforts to measure human rights support have not been numerous. The Human Rights Questionnaire by Diaz-Veizades, Widaman, Little, & Gibbs (1995) is based upon self-rated agreement with the contents of the UDHR. For example, "All children, even those born out of wedlock, shall enjoy the right to security (e.g., food, clothing, shelter)," reflects Article 25.2, which states that "Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection." Grace and Van Velzer (1951) used a similar method. Across several studies, Doise and colleagues (e.g., Doise, Spini, Jesuino, Ng, & Emler, 1994) have presented the 30 articles of the UDHR and asked respondents eight questions on each article. These included how well the respondents understood each article, whether they agreed or disagreed, relevance for the rights of private individuals, the extent to which an individual can influence its implementation, willingness to join with others in defending it, implications of each article for individual responsibility toward others, the feasibility of endorsement by the government, and feasibility of endorsement by political parties. This questionnaire has been administered to a sample of Swiss (Doise et al., 1994) and Czech students (Macek, Osecka, & Kostro, 1997), and two large international samples of students (Clemence, Devos, & Doise, 2001; Doise, Spini, & Clemence, 1999). Spini and Doise (1998) assessed Swiss students' perceptions of their own and their government's commitment to and responsibility for human rights. Two items each were used to measure these four perceptions. Example items included "I am sufficiently committed to the enforcement of human rights" (personal commitment); and "The Swiss government has a share of responsibility for the enforcement of human rights" (governmental responsibility). Other published human rights measures include those cited above by Barrows (1981), Getz (1985), Avery (1988), and Moghaddam and Vuksanovic (1990). With the exception of the first scale by Doise and associates (Doise et al., 1994) and Getz's (1986) ATHRI, each scale has been used in only one published study (Avery, 1998; Barrows, 1981; Moghaddam & Vuksanovic, 1990). So while there have been several sporadic efforts to study human rights attitudes, only the work of Doise and his associates constitutes a sustained research endeavor. These scales present several concerns. While some were based upon the UDHR, others do not specify the source of rights on which they are based and contain inappropriate items: Moghaddam and Vuksanovic's (1990) Human Rights Scale includes items on legalized prostitution, drug use, age-based forced retirement, conscientious objection, guaranteed income even if refusing to work, and unlimited land ownership, none of which are recognized by the UDHR or elsewhere as basic human rights. Similarly, 11 of the 40 items in Getz's (1985) ATHRI assess attitudes toward issues that are not accepted human rights (e.g., granting autonomy to teenagers, requiring bilingual education, making birth control readily available, permitting euthanasia). These items uniformly reflect a concern for individual liberty and nondiscrimination, but their inclusion converts these scales into measures of libertarianism rather than of support for human rights. The issue of greater concern, however, is the possible impact of social desirability upon the endorsement of rights in attitude scales. Because many rights (freedom of speech, religion, etc.) are a vital part of the American creed, responses to statements reflecting these values are likely influenced by their strong social desirability and may reflect an endorsement of these ideals that is quite superficial. Zellman and Sears (1971) found, for example, that 60% of children agreed with the statement, "I believe in free speech for all no matter what their views might be," but just 21% would allow a communist to speak in their city. Getz (1985) and Avery (1988) both addressed this issue, but in different ways. Getz matched 10 "platitudinous" items, with which virtually all Americans would agree (i.e., "Our nation should work toward liberty and justice for all.") with 30 "controversial" items on the same topics (i.e., "If the Equal Rights Amendment were adopted, it would disrupt society with its emphasis on treating women and girls like men and boys."). Agreement with both statements indicates a discrepancy between stated acceptance of the American ideal of justice and a willingness to apply it to women's rights, thereby also showing the superficiality of the response to the platitudinous items. Avery adapted Sullivan et al.'s (1978-1979) "least-liked group method," which allows participants to name their own least-liked group and then respond to questions concerning political tolerance for that group. Avery listed 13 groups (e.g., communists, Ku Klux Klan) and asked the respondents to select the group they liked least, although students could write in an unnamed group if they wished. Participants then responded to 12 items, based on the UDHR, designed to assess political tolerance toward the selected group (e.g., "A member of this group should NOT be allowed to vote" [reverse scored]). Gibson (1998) used the Sullivan et al. method to study political tolerance in Russia and Sotelo (2000) used it in Spain. New Measures of Human Rights Attitudes All existing measures appear to us to possess at least one of three problems. First, some reflect facile endorsement of human rights and are replete with social desirability concerns. Others include items on issues not recognized as human rights. Third, while political tolerance is an important facet of human rights support, it alone is too narrow in scope. We wanted to assess commitment to human rights as a national political goal, even when costs to the nation may be substantial, and none of the available instruments appeared to do so adequately. The best method for assessing this commitment is unclear, so three methods were used in the current study. In the first, participants read five historical scenarios of major human rights abuses and selected among U.S. policy alternatives, which ranged from substantial and costly support to no involvement. One scenario read as follows: In the central African country of Rwanda, rival tribal groups, Hutu and Tutsi, had a growing hatred. In 1994, the Hutu extremists began killing all Tutsi, including women, children and babies. It quickly became evident that a deliberate genocide was beginning. United Nations personnel in the country urged the UN to send troops to stop the genocide and said that such a mission could succeed. However, the mission would be dangerous and costly. Do you think the President of the United States should have A. sent American troops as part of the UN mission to stop the genocide? B. offered supplies and transportation to troops from other nations, but not sent American troops? C. not become involved if no vital American interest was at stake? This method is similar to that of Harff (1987), who also presented scenarios of atrocities and asked students to judge which of several cases was most severe and to recommend remedies from the least severe (i.e., negotiation, conciliation) to most severe (i.e., military intervention, warfare). Harff was interested in factors that influenced students' judgments of severity (e.g., number of victims, ethnic or religious category of victims) rather than individuals' commitment to human rights and thus did not form a scale from the scenarios. Other scenarios asked whether the United States should have risked trying to arrest accused Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic, ratified the International Criminal Court, based trade with China upon improvement in its human rights policies, and cut off military aid to the anticommunist government of El Salvador in the 1980s for its human rights abuses. A sixth item, adopted from the Gallup national survey cited earlier, asked whether the United States military should be used to stop mass killings and ethnic cleansing, with five options ranging from "much more often" to "much less often" than it is doing now. A second method required participants to rate the relative importance of pairs of goals, one of which championed a human right while the other focused on a national self-interest. The format and sample items are as follows: On the following scale, please rate what you feel is the relative importance of the two items. A Item a is much more important than item b. B Item a is somewhat more important than item b. C Items a and b are of equal importance. D Item b is somewhat more important than item a. E Item b is much more important than item a. 1. a. Freedom of press and information for every country. b. Keeping undesirable people out of America. 2. a. Ending child prostitution worldwide. b. A strong American military. Twenty-eight such pairs were included in the original scale. Finally, participants were asked to both rate and rank order a Gallup list of 15 foreign policy goals that included "Promoting and defending human rights in other countries." This rank order procedure was used so that participants were forced to select between this goal and others such as "Reducing our trade deficit with foreign countries," "Maintaining superior military power worldwide," and "Protecting the jobs of American workers." The Human Rights Questionnaire, which we judged the best Likert scale measure of human rights attitudes, was also used in order to examine the discriminant validity of our new measures.

Because the Barrows (1981) measure of global knowledge is dated, a new 96-item Global Knowledge Quiz (GKQ) was written and pretested. Items focused on major events of recent years, political struggles, organizations, scientific developments, and world religions. One item read: 1. The animosity that has divided Northern Ireland has been between A. Protestants and Catholics. B. Christians and Jews. C. Irish and Scots. D. Wealthy land owners and tenant farmers. A separate pilot study with 104 students was used to select the most discriminating items for a shorter scale. Reliability for the full scale was.92; the shortened 31-item scale had a mean interitem correlation of.24 and an alpha of.91. The present study had two purposes. The first was to develop new measures of human rights support that reflected a willingness to commit national resources to their defense rather than mere endorsement of human rights ideals. Given that the pilot study identified the two factors of Human Rights Endorsement and Restriction, and that our new scales reflect a Human Rights Commitment not embraced in the other factors, we anticipated that a third factor of human rights attitudes might result. The second was to incorporate all known predictors of human rights attitudes along with the three new variables of interest into a single study. To date, the predictors have been studied in a one-at-a-time fashion, and new correlates have been presented without reference to older ones. As a result, their relative importance in predicting human rights support and their power collectively to predict human rights support is unknown.

The contrast between endorsement and commitment to human rights was substantial. Our sample, like respondents to national polls, expressed strong endorsement of the abstract principles of human rights: The mean response to the 18 items assessing Human Rights Endorsement was 4.22 on a 5-point response scale, and fully 75% of the sample averaged 4 ("agree") or greater. By contrast, all measures of Human Rights Commitment indicated that commitment was weak when pitted against self-interested national goals. While 61% of the sample indicated that "Promoting and defending human rights in other countries" was an important (45%) or very important (16%) goal, that sum was just 12th among the 15 goals. Similarly, when asked to rank the 15 goals, the human rights goal again finished 12th. On the policy choices, just 26% were willing to invest American troops as part of a UN effort to prevent the Rwandan genocide, contrasted with 41% who would "not become involved." Just 15% wanted to use the American military "more often" or "much more often" to stop mass killings or ethnic cleansing, while 38% wanted to do so "less often" or "much less often."

To summarize briefly, this study has shown the following. First, attitudes of support for human rights are multi-factored. Our obtained factors of Human Rights Endorsement, Commitment, and Restriction appear to comprise a useful taxonomy of these attitudes. While this taxonomy may be incomplete, these three facets certainly represent important dimensions. Second, as the national polls have suggested, Americans strongly endorse human rights as abstract principles, but their commitment to human rights, their willingness to invest national resources and to take risks on behalf of human rights, is much weaker. Third, individual differences affect these three human rights attitudes in differing ways and to different degrees. Those with greater empathy, education, and world knowledge expressed stronger endorsement of human rights principles, whereas those high in social dominance expressed less. Commitment to human rights (versus national-focused goals), however, was directly enhanced by globalism and principled moral reasoning, but these were unnecessary for the endorsement of human rights as abstract principles. Ethnocentrism and the social dominance orientation did not retard the endorsement of human rights ideals, but did retard commitment to them when the commitment opposed national self-interests. The willingness to restrict human rights was increased by authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and seeing the world as fixed, while self-rated liberalism and principled moral reasoning reduced this willingness. To our minds, endorsing the principles of human rights without commitment to them seems inconsequential and a reflection of socially desirable norms. Because human rights are so much a part of the American creed, it is not surprising that more time spent in American education strengthens endorsement of that creed. But if our results are representative, it is only this endorsement that is so strengthened. Greater education in America, in itself, appears to neither enhance commitment to human rights nor reduce the willingness to restrict the rights of undesirable groups and individuals. The correlation between items reflecting empathy (e.g., "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.") and Human Rights Endorsement ("Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion.") may substantially reflect the fact that both express ideas that are highly socially desirable. Surprisingly, we could not locate any study that examined the relationship between Davis's (1985) measure of empathy and social desirability, or between human rights attitudes and social desirability. In retrospect, we regret not including a measure of social desirability in this study. Ethnocentrism and principled moral reasoning were unrelated to endorsing human rights ideals but significantly affected both human rights attitudes of consequence. Ethnocentrism reduced commitment to human rights that subordinated national interests, and it increased the willingness to restrict the human rights of undesirable groups and individuals. These effects are clearly consistent with the construct of ethnocentrism. On the first, ethnocentrism naturally led to greater concern for the welfare of one's own nation than for the rights of mankind. On the second, the restrictions of human rights often involved the maltreatment of members of other ethnic groups (e.g., "It is alright for the United States to detain Chinese people if the United States feels that they might be spies, even if there is not concrete evidence."), and the upholding of in-group symbols (e.g., "Flag burning should not be allowed."), both of which are characteristic expressions of ethnocentrism. According to Kohlberg's (1969) theory, individuals who have achieved principled moral reasoning have transcended both egocentrism and conventional norms in their moral reasoning. Having done so, they are able to apply principles of justice and human equality in judging moral issues without biasing their judgments in favor of oneself or one's in-group. As a consequence, they consider the injustice of human rights abuses more important than national-focused interests and express a commitment to human rights over competing national concerns. Because justice guides their moral judgments, they also oppose unjustly restricting the rights of unpopular individuals or groups. The specific effects of globalism on Human Rights Commitment and of liberalism on Human Rights Restriction are also interpretable, as is the failure to replicate the finding that religion affected human rights attitudes. Globalism expresses a fundamental concern for the welfare of all humanity, and human rights commitment is consistent with that concern. When asked to rate their own conservatism-liberalism, however, Americans likely focus more on domestic issues and civil liberties. In that context, liberals are less likely to want to restrict the rights of unpopular groups than are conservatives, but these domestic concerns are not necessarily associated with global and humanitarian concerns. Both studies that earlier reported negative relationships between religiousness and support for human rights (Getz, 1985; Moghaddam & Vuksanovic, 1990) used human rights measures that assessed libertarian attitudes on several issues not recognized as basic human rights, and these libertarian issues are condemned by many religions, especially conservative ones. Only issues that reflect universal human rights as expressed in the UDHR were included in our measures. The results of our study suggest that American religion and religious conservatism have neither a negative nor a positive influence upon support for human rights. The differing effects of authoritarianism and social dominance upon Human Rights Commitment and Restriction also merit comment. First, these differences are statistically significant.

Previous work on the differences between authoritarianism and social dominance helps explain their differences. Authoritarianism, unlike social dominance, is strongly related to extrapunitiveness toward those regarded as unconventional or immoral (Altemeyer, 1998). Wanting to withhold rights from those who violate conventional values seems a natural expression of that extrapunitiveness. Authoritarianism rather than social dominance would appear to predict approving of the rights restrictions that have occurred following 9/11 (e.g., holding individuals indefinitely without charges or access to council). Social dominance, on the other hand, correlates with valuing power, dominance, and a lack of universal concerns (Altemeyer, 1998). These qualities are consistent with a weakened commitment to universal rights but peripheral to wanting to take rights away from those who are unpopular. Two caveats need mentioning. Undoubtedly, the total set of results reported here would not replicate precisely on a new sample. Nevertheless, the strongest effects, those which are largest and logical, would seem likely to do so. Second, regressions were run on each of the specific measures that loaded on Human Rights Commitment. While these largely replicated the regression on the factor score, they did not do so entirely. Specifically, social dominance did not contribute significantly to the ranking of national goals or to the scenarios measure after globalism and ethnocentrism were entered. Principled moral reasoning did not contribute significantly to the scenarios after globalism and ethnocentrism were entered. And ethnocentrism did contribute to the ratings of the human rights goal. These differences may be chance variations, which seem to us most likely, or they may be due to the fact that each measure of Human Rights Commitment contains nuances not found in the others. The scenarios measure directly suggests military action to end human rights abuses while the other measures do not. The choices measure requires several choices between specific human rights goals and specific national goals, while in ranking the human rights goal versus other goals, participants had to consider the merits of both national and other global goals. However, because all measures loaded strongly on the Human Rights Commitment factor, the factor score is statistically the more reliable than the individual measures and represents the most comprehensive index of commitment to human rights. A path model of how the various predictors interrelate in predicting human rights support would be desirable. We attempted such models in previous versions of this paper. Our logic suggested that authoritarianism, social dominance, and empathy should be posited as exogenous, distal predictors of human rights because their origins appear rooted in genetics and early socialization. Both authoritarianism (McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999) and empathy (Davis, Luce, & Kraus, 1994) have substantial heritability coefficients. Duckitt (2001) has found that authoritarianism and social dominance are associated with harsh and affectionless childrearing, respectively. Several factors, including paternal involvement (Koestner, Franz, & Weinberger, 1990) and induction (i.e., reasoning) as a form of discipline (Krevans & Gibbs, 1996) appear to contribute to the development of empathy. The effects of these distal variables upon human rights support were expected to be mediated variously by ethnocentrism, globalism, moral reasoning, a fixed world view, principled moral reasoning, liberalism, and world knowledge, all of which were positioned as endogenous variables. One anonymous reviewer admired our "heroic effort" to construct a plausible causal ordering, but was "not compelled by its logic." In retrospect, neither are we. To obtain adequate goodness-of-fit, a number of hypothesized paths had to be deleted. And countless alternate models could be constructed from the large set of predictors, some of which might fit the data as well as the one we proposed. Perhaps a comprehensive causal model is unobtainable; in any case, it is beyond the reach of the current study. At this point we regard it sufficient to show that support for human rights is multi-factored and that the individual differences that influence attitudes on these factors are not identical.

 

1. enmity – вражда, неприязнь, враждебность

2. to impede – препятствовать, мешать, затруднять

3. to avow – открыто признавать

4. allegiance – верность, преданность, лояльность

5. to probe – исследовать

6. volatile – изменчивый

7. to deploy – использовать

8. ambush – засада

9. atrocity – жестокость, зверство

10. to wane – падать, уменьшаться, ослабевать

11. whopping – огромный

12. malnutrition – недоедание

13. ad hoc – специальный, устроенный для данной цели

14. to augment – увеличивать, прибавлять

15. malleable – податливый, уступчивый

16. empathy – сочувствие, сопереживание

17. at odds with – не соответствовать, не сочетаться с

18. antithetical – прямо противоположный

19. wedlock – брак

20. feasibility – вероятность, возможность, осуществимость

21. endorsement – подтверждение, поддержка

22. platitudinous – плоский, пошлый, банальный

23. facile – лёгкий, поверхностный

24. to be replete with – изобиловать

25. animosity – враждебность, злоба

26. taxonomy – создание классификации, систематика

27. to retard – задерживать, замедлять

28. maltreatment – дурное обращение

29. extrapunitiveness – карательность высшей степени

30. caveat – предостережение, протест

31. distal – периферический