Human rights: common meaning and differences in positioning

• Main Author: Doise Willem
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de Brasília 2003-01-01
• Series: Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa
• Subjects: human rights; social representations; cultures
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-37722003000300002

Human rights are defined as normative social representations embedded in institutional juridical definitions. Research findings show that human rights can be studied as normative social representations implying a degree of common understanding across cultures together with organized differences within and between cultures. Important factors in modulating individual positioning in the realm of human rights are experiences of social conflict and injustice, beliefs about the efficiency of various social actors to have rights enforced and attitudes of liberalism or collectivism. On the other hand, an ethnocentric use of human rights is well documented and has been experimentally studied. Generally, concerns about these rights expressed by citizens of Western countries become much stronger when non-Western countries are involved, whereas violations of these rights in their own country are often not severely condemned.