ABSTRACT. 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.
Keywords: attitudes, authoritarianism, cognitive style, human rights and civil liberties, personality
**********
SINCE THE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, ATTACKS, considerable attention has been drawn to issues of human rights and civil liberties as the United States government has conducted its global war on terror. Arguably, the attitudes that U.S. citizens hold regarding these rights and liberties have implications for the types of government (1) policies they are willing to accept to maintain security at home while minimizing threats (e.g., nuclear, terrorist) from abroad. Some citizens are tolerant of governmental policies and actions that cause physical or psychological harm to individuals (including those who pose no apparent threat), arguing that the ends of safety and security justify certain means (e.g., war, torture, suppression of dissent). Others are less tolerant of efforts on the part of the government that result in the infringement of civil liberties or violations of human rights.
Given the importance of an informed and thoughtful citizenry to the maintenance of democratic ideals within the United States and abroad, it is important for moral and civic educators to have an understanding of the psychological and ideological factors that contribute to the adoption of the "ends justify the means" mentality that can result in violations of human rights and civil liberties. Perhaps with increased understanding of these factors, educators can begin developing interventions that will help to reduce this type of thinking in American citizens and increase their consideration of human rights and civil liberties when reasoning about sociopolitical issues, including the U.S. government's conduct during the war on terror. The purpose of our study, therefore, was to test the relationship between human rights and civil liberties attitudes and several proposed correlates--correlates that may be considered reasonable antecedents of these attitudes. In this study, we focused on three classes of proposed antecedent factors: (a) cognitive-motivational, (b) epistemological belief, and (c) ideological.
Although several of these proposed antecedent factors (e.g., political conservatism, religious conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, need for structure) have been tested in previous studies as predictors of human rights and civil liberties attitudes (e.g., Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, & Moschner, 2005; Crowson, 2004, 2007; Crowson, DeBacker, & Thoma, 2005, 2006, 2007; Narvaez, Getz, Rest, & Thoma, 1999; Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999), in the present study we build on existing research by simultaneously incorporating these variables, along with other plausible antecedents (e.g., epistemological beliefs, faith in intuition), into a single predictive model of human rights and civil liberties attitudes. We chose these newly proposed antecedent factors for inclusion in our study on the basis of their previously documented associations with shallow, as opposed to deep, approaches to information processing--approaches that we believe may lead American citizens to process arguments made in a superficial manner by governmental leaders in support of human rights and civil liberties restrictions. In the following sections, we briefly describe our predictors and our expectations regarding their proposed relationship to human rights and civil liberties attitudes.
Proposed Cognitive--Motivational Antecedents
Personal need for structure. Personal need for structure (2) refers to a motivated desire to perceive the world in simple, unambiguous terms, thereby allowing "clean, clear interpretations of new events" (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993, p. 114). According to numerous researchers (Freund, Kruglanski, & Shpitzajzen, 1985; Kruglanski & Freund, 1983; Moskowitz, 1993; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; Schaller, Boyd, Yohannes, & O'Brien, 1995), this motivation to reduce the informational complexity of the world to its simplest terms results in greater degrees of heuristic processing of social information, including overreliance on perceptual cues when making social judgments. Of particular relevance for the current study are the documented tendencies of individuals high in need for structure to exhibit greater levels of stereotyping of and prejudice against perceived out-group members and to undervalue individuals who deviate from group norms (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & De Grada, 2006).
Prior research on the association between need for structure and support for restrictions on human rights and civil liberties has generally yielded positive associations; however, the evidence for the incremental validity of need for structure has been mixed. Crowson (2004) found that, after controlling for moral judgment development and political identification, need for structure contributed significant variation to the prediction of human rights and civil liberties attitudes regarding civilian constraint, whereas Crowson et al. (2006) failed to find evidence that structure needs account for significant variation in these attitudes after controlling for right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. However, Crowson and DeBacker (2007) found that, when controlling for right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, need for structure was a significant predictor of their post-9/11 attitude index, which included many items pertaining to human rights and civil liberties. Given the tendency for individuals high in need for structure to prefer others who support group norms and their apparent willingness, at least according to some studies (e.g., Crowson, 2004; Crowson & DeBacker, 2007; Crowson et al., 2006), to support restrictions on rights and liberties of out-group members, we hypothesized that, in the present study, need for structure would be positively associated with support for restrictions on rights and liberties. However, whether need for structure adds incrementally to the prediction of rights and liberties attitudes remained an open question.
Faith in intuition. According to Epstein (1994), people process information in two primary ways: rational and experiential. Rational processing is slow, conscious, and intentional; it uses principles of logic to arrive at judgments and decisions (Denes-Raj & Epstein, 1994; Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996). In contrast, experiential processing refers to information processing that is "preconscious, rapid, automatic, holistic, primarily nonverbal, [and] intimately associated with affect" (Pacini & Epstein, 1999, p. 972). Although all human beings use both approaches …
