Belief, Motivational, and Ideological Correlates of Human Rights Attitudes

Many people believe that an informed and thoughtful citizenry is essential to the maintenance of democratic ideals within the United States and the spread of those ideals abroad. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the evidence that Americans consider issues of human dignity and rights when making judgments about the U.S. government's war on terror has been mixed. In our study, we assessed the relative contributions of ideological, belief, and cognitive-motivational factors to the prediction of human rights and civil liberties attitudes. Individuals scoring high on measures of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and the belief that the structure of knowledge is simple were the most likely to support restrictions on human rights and civil liberties as part of the war on terror. In a subsequent regression analysis, individuals scoring higher on personal need for structure or exhibiting lower levels of epistemological belief complexity tended to score higher on RWA. Additionally, men were generally more likely to support restrictions on rights and liberties and to score higher on RWA than were women.