Representation of human rights across different national contexts: the role of democratic and non-democratic populations and governments

Abstract

This research studied judgements and inferences on human rights across democratic and non-democratic national contexts. It is argued that when judging different countries, lay perceivers make use of representations of the country's inhabitants. Stereotypically democratic and non-democratic characteristics of national populations are employed as a basis of political judgements, especially in democratic contexts. In three studies the bases of representations of human rights' respect and violations are investigated. In the first study 76 subjects drew inferences on the human rights situation from formal descriptions of countries. These are either described with a type of government (democratic or authoritarian) or with national characteristics associated to the population (orderly and discussing or disorderly and clashing). In Study 2 (117 subjects), political and population information are crossed. In Study 3, 126 subjects evaluated the responsibility of the government and of the inhabitants in explaining the general situation in two positively and two negatively described national contexts. The results show the pervasive impact of population information on political judgements. Moreover members of non-democratic countries are viewed as accepting more human rights violations than members of democratic countries. This attitude inference is used by people to account for violations of human rights. Results are discussed in terms of common sense transformation of classical political theories which are grounded on universalism and essentialism. It is suggested that philosophical knowledge, much like scientific knowledge, is altered when penetrating common sense, thereby receiving specific social and ideological functions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.