The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

Human rights are claimed to be innate and based on moral principles. Human rights attitudes have been shown to be related to political ideology, but there have been few studies investigating their relationship with morality. Using moral foundations theory, we examine whether morals can predict human rights attitudes across two studies. The first study used questionnaires to show that human rights are based exclusively on individualizing moral foundations; however, increases in individualizing and decreases in binding foundations predict increases in human rights endorsement. Moral foundations also mediated the relationship between political identification and human rights. Both individualizing and binding foundations performed a role in explaining the lower endorsement of human rights by conservatives as compared to liberals. The second study used textual analysis of newspaper articles to show that human-rights-related articles contained more moral language than other articles, in particular for the individualizing foundations. Conservative newspapers had a greater use of binding foundations in human rights articles than liberal newspapers.     

Broken Promises: Equity Sensitivity as a Moderator Between Psychological Contract Breach and Employee Attitudes and Behavior

This study examined the moderating role of equity sensitivity in determining the relationship between psychological contract breach and employees' attitudes and behaviors. Entitled individuals were expected to have greater increases in negative affect toward their organization and greater decreases in job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior than benevolent individuals following a breach of extrinsic outcomes (i.e., pay, benefits). Conversely, benevolents were expected to respond more negatively than their entitled counterparts following a breach of intrinsic outcomes (i.e., autonomy, growth). Results supported most of the study's propositions. Practical implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

Human Rights Attitudes: Dimensionality and Psychological Correlates

This study assesses the dimensionality and correlates of individuals' attitudes toward human rights. In previous research, the Attitudes Toward Human Rights Inventory (ATHRI) was assumed to measure a unidimensional phenomenon and, as such, was used as an omnibus measure of human rights attitudes. In this study, factor analysis revealed the presence of 3 factors accounting for the variance in the measure, Personal Liberties, Civilian Constraint, and Social Security. This finding provided partial replication of results obtained by Diaz-Veizades, Widaman, Little, and Gibbs (1995) with their Human Rights Questionnaire and supports the contention that human rights attitudes should be considered multidimensional in nature. Correlation and regression analyses suggested that attitudes toward personal liberties are associated with political identification, whereas attitudes toward civilian constraint are related to moral judgment development and need for cognitive closure. Implications for ethics research and education are discussed.     

History, Human Rights, and Globalization

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross‐cultural dialogue).     

Behavior, Attitudes, and Cognitions of Anger-Prone Individuals

This research explored facets of anger based on a multidimensional-associationistic conceptualization (Berkowitz, 1994) that includes antecedents, behavior, cognitions, and experiential response dimensions. High and low anger-prone individuals responded to six audiotaped situations validated in previous work to be anger provoking. Participants evaluated their own audiotaped responses, as did peer judges. Participants also completed the Social Problem Solving Inventory (SPSI) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and they reported on the effect of anger experiences in their lives. Neither self nor peer ratings of the audiotaped responses differentiated the behavior of anger groups. High and low anger-prone individuals, however, differed in the way that they viewed the consequences of their behavior and how anger affected them in general. Furthermore, high anger-prone individuals had elevated levels of pathology on eight of the nine scales of the BSI and scored significantly lower on the SPSI. Results are discussed in terms of assessment of anger proneness, its relationship to psychopathology and implications for future work.     

Predictors of Employee Deviance: The Relationship Between Bad Attitudes and Bad Behavior

Employee deviance is a serious problem for business owners. To reduce this problem, researchers have attempted to predict which employees are more likely to exhibit deviant behavior based on their attitudes. Although many researchers have successfully predicted various types of employee deviance from attitudes, very little information is available detailing which attitudes are more useful in predicting each type of deviant employee behavior. In the present study, four attitude variables (theft approval, company contempt, intent to quit, and dissatisfaction) were used to predict four types of deviant employee behavior (absenteeism, substance abuse, privilege abuse, and theft). Results show that each attitude has a specific and stable pattern of relationships with the four types of deviance.     

Asylum Seekers and Human Rights

Asylum seekers, by their very circumstances, test our common assumptions and practice in relation to human rights. The treatment of asylum seekers in many European countries has become harsher, more restrictive and less tolerant in recent years, raising questions about the violation of their rights. The article examines the bases of the rights that asylum seekers do have and whether these are best supported as human rights or more limited rights that attach to the place of their temporary residence and to obligations made by their country of temporary residence. Given the propensity of receiving countries to afford increasingly limited rights, the article identifies a limited set of rights that should take priority in a hierarchy of rights and which might claim widespread acceptance as those which asylum seekers must enjoy. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论当代生命伦理学与人权

生命伦理学面临诸多的伦理问题,其中最为凸显的是人权困境,生命伦理学与人权有着内在的本质联系和契合点,人权是生命伦理的核心和生长点,人权的基本理论和原则使生命伦理学的存在与发展成为可能,并且成为活生生的伦理现实。生命伦理学饱含丰富的人权意蕴,成为人权理论合理性的印证。要科学审视当代生命伦理学和人权关系,化解人权困境,推动生命伦理学的发展。     

On the (In)Compatibility of Attitudes Toward Peace and War

Although attitudes toward peace and war are usually treated as two opposite poles of one dimension, in this article we argue that they may represent two distinct dimensions. To investigate this idea, we developed and tested a new balanced measure, the Attitudes Toward Peace and War (APW) Scale, in three studies (N = 4,742) in the United States and Denmark. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that attitudes toward peace and war formed two distinct, though negatively related, factors. Structural equation modeling showed that antecedents of attitudes toward peace included egalitarian ideological beliefs, the values of international harmony and equality, and empathic concern for others, and consequences included intentions to engage in peace‐related activities. On the other hand, antecedents of attitudes toward war included authoritarian ideological beliefs, the values of national strength and order, and less personal distress, and consequences included intentions to engage in warlike activities. Results also showed that political affiliation had an impact on the relationship between peace and war attitudes, with conservatives less likely to find the attitudes incompatible. The findings support the view that attitudes toward peace and war represent two distinct dimensions.     

Rawls on Human Rights: A Review Essay

In this essay, I first evaluate the conceptual analysis of human rights by Wilfried Hinsch and Markus Stepanians. Next I criticize Allen Buchanan’s claim that Rawls did not address basic human interests/capabilities theories of human nature. I argue Buchanan is doubly mistaken when he claims that John Rawls sought to avoid such theories because they are comprehensive doctrines. Then I evaluate David Reidy’s defense of Rawls, while questioning his efforts to show how Rawls’s list of human rights could be expanded. Finally, I accept James Nickel’s argument that Rawls has tied human rights too closely to intervention on their behalf. However, I reject his, and by implication Rawls’s, refusal to accept a two-tiered approach to human rights.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Human Rights Act: Two Cheers for Incorporation

This paper considers feministperspectives on the Human Rights Act. Itdiscusses the reasons why many feminists aresceptical regarding the impact the Act willhave on women's lives, including theimplications for anti-discrimination law,problems with the framework of rights in theEuropean Convention and deeper difficulties facingfeminism in negotiating rights discourse. Whileacknowledging these problems, it is argued thatthere are grounds for a more positiveinterpretation of incorporation. Questions arethen raised about the nature and scope of rightsand the role of the state in challenging genderinequality.     

Welfare Rights and Conflicts of Rights

The fact that welfare rights – rights to food, shelter and medical care – will conflict with one another is often taken to be good reason to exclude welfare rights from the catalogue of genuine rights. Rather than respond to this objection by pointing out that all rights conflict, welfare rights proponents need to take the conflicts objection seriously. The existence of potentially conflicting and more weighty normative considerations counts against a claim’s status as a genuine right. To think otherwise would be to threaten the peremptory force – and hence the analytical integrity – of rights. The conflicts objection is made more pressing once we have conceded that welfare rights give people entitlements to what are potentially scarce goods. I argue that welfare rights can survive the conflicts objection if, and only if, we take scarcity into account in the framing of a given welfare right. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop in Oxford and the Canadian Philosophical Association Congress 2006 at York University. I am grateful to Adam Swift, David Miller, Idil Boran, Sarah McCallum and two anonymous referees for their comments, and to the Economic and Social Research Council for research funding.     

Rethinking Human Rights A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters

In reviewing five edited collections and one monograph from the 1990s, the article summarizes the present status of the human rights revolution that was signaled by the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . It goes on to elaborate and evaluate some of the attempts contained in these books to deal with theoretical and practical controversies surrounding the subject of human rights, particularly the discussion of what to make of cultural relativism as far as human rights are concerned. Finally, the article summarizes some recent thinking and research on a neglected area, namely compliance with human rights standards protecting freedom of religion or belief.     

Toward the 'Rights of the Poor' Human Rights in Liberation Theology

In this article, the author traces the response of liberation theologians to human rights initiatives through three distinct stages over the past thirty years: from an initial avoidance of the concept, to an early critique, and then to a nuanced theological appropriation. He contends that liberation theology brings a thoroughgoing concern for the poor and an innovative methodology of historicization to the discussion of human rights. In clarifying the treatment of human rights within a specific religious movement, the author also addresses larger questions about the specific role of human rights language. To this end, the article shows how liberation theologians have grappled concretely with the divisions among different 'generations' of rights, various rights discourses, and diverse options for rights advocacy.     

Experiments on the Automaticity of Political Beliefs and Attitudes

Political science has long relied on explicit responses in order to understand what and how people think. New research in the cognitive sciences suggests that this reliance on conscious considerations provides but a partial picture of how citizens think and reason. Given the limitations of conscious working memory and the growing evidence that much of human cognition occurs outside of awareness, the defining empirical assumption of modern public opinion research—that citizens can tell us what is on their minds—seems increasingly suspect. Moreover, social science is particularly challenged by the sensitivity of their topics, which in turn raises social and personal desirability concerns about self-report data. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose an implicit experimental approach. We contend that implicit measures enable us to measure some of the automatic and affective responses and predispositions that influence thoughts and behaviors outside of conscious awareness.     

International Justice,Human Rights and Neutrality

A number of theorists have tried to resolve the tension between a western-oriented liberal scheme of human rights and an account that accommodates different political systems and constitutional ideals than the liberal one. One important way the tension has been addressed is through a “neutral” or tolerant, notion of human rights, as present in the work of Rawls, Scanlon and Buchanan. In this paper I argue that neutrality cannot by itself explain the difference between rights considered appropriate for liberal states and rights considered to be human rights proper. The central arguments used by neutralist theorists presuppose, rather than justify, this differential treatment. Instead, that difference can be understood only by reference to the purpose of human rights as distinct from the constitutional rights of a liberal state. This requires us to reassess the point and purpose of a theory of international justice, in contrast to justice for a domestic and politically separate society. In the case of a theorist like Rawls, human rights represent guides to the foreign policy of a liberal state, rather than to principles by which all states are expected to abide. That is because of Rawls’ acceptance that no common, authoritative, third-party, institutions capable of imposing duties on all agents uniformly exist or can exist. This also makes his theory inherently conservative about human rights, given that they are simply to act as a guide to which states can be treated as legitimate when it comes to liberal foreign policy: those that possess institutions that can be said to represent a peoples, rather than being imposed through violence. This standard is lower than the ideal set of rights extended to all in a liberal society. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Understanding the Determinants of Political Ideology: Implications of Structural Complexity

There has been a substantial increase in research on the determinants and consequences of political ideology among political scientists and social psychologists. In psychology, researchers have examined the effects of personality and motivational factors on ideological orientations as well as differences in moral reasoning and brain functioning between liberals and conservatives. In political science, studies have investigated possible genetic influences on ideology as well as the role of personality factors. Virtually all of this research begins with the assumption that it is possible to understand the determinants and consequences of ideology via a unidimensional conceptualization. We argue that a unidimensional model of ideology provides an incomplete basis for the study of political ideology. We show that two dimensions—economic and social ideology—are the minimum needed to account for domestic policy preferences. More importantly, we demonstrate that the determinants of these two ideological dimensions are vastly different across a wide range of variables. Focusing on a single ideological dimension obscures these differences and, in some cases, makes it difficult to observe important determinants of ideology. We also show that this multidimensionality leads to a significant amount of heterogeneity in the structure of ideology that must be modeled to fully understand the structure and determinants of political attitudes.     

Social Representations of Human Rights Amongst Czech University Students

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a general legislative framework for democratic societies. Studying the social representations of these basic human rights helps to explain how people understand and assess the basic rights and how these rights relate to everyday life. Over 400 Czech university students rated the 30 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights on various scales (degree of understanding, personal relevance, consequences for individual responsibility, for government, political parties, etc.). A semantic space was identified in which concepts (i.e. the Articles of the Declaration) could be located. A typology (clusters) of articles was then established within that semantic space. A factor analysis of the scales resulted in a two-dimensional solution (‘positive attitude’ and ‘personal influence’). Five clusters of assessed articles were identified within this semantic space. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Linking Genetics and Political Attitudes: Reconceptualizing Political Ideology

In this paper, we trace the route by which genetics could ultimately connect to issue attitudes and suggest that central to this connection are chronic dispositional preferences for mass‐scale social rules, order, and conduct—what we label political ideology. The need to resolve bedrock social dilemmas concerning such matters as leadership style, protection from outgroups, and the degree to which norms of conduct are malleable, is present in any large‐scale social unit at any time. This universality is important in that it leaves open the possibility that genetics could influence stances on issues of the day. Here, we measure orientation to these bedrock principles in two ways—a survey of conscious, self‐reported positions and an implicit association test (IAT) of latent orientations toward fixed or flexible rules of social conduct. In an initial test, both measures were predictive of stances on issues of the day as well as of ideological self‐labeling, thereby suggesting that the heritability of specific issue attitudes could be the result of the heritability of general orientations toward bedrock principles of mass‐scale group life.     

Predicting the Vote through Implicit and Explicit Attitudes: A Field Research

Using the data collected by Itanes on a sample of the Italian population, representative according to the main sociodemographic variables, we analyzed the relations between voting intention, explicit and implicit political attitudes, and voting behavior. Participants (N = 1,377) were interviewed twice, both before and after the 2006 Italian National Election. The implicit attitudes (measured using the IAT) were substantially as effective as voting intention, and more effective than the explicit attitudes towards the main Italian political leaders, in forecasting the Election official results. When used to predict participants' voting behavior, the IAT added a significant, although slight, power to voting intention and explicit attitude. Inconsistency between explicit and implicit attitudes exerted a negative influence on the probability of having decided one's voting behavior in the preelectoral poll; however, among undecided participants, it did not significantly influence the probability of delaying one's voting decision and that of actually casting a valid vote. Limits and possible developments of this research are discussed.