Explaining Support for Violating Out-Group Human Rights in Conflict: Attitudes Toward Principles of Human Rights, Trust in the Out-Group, and Intergroup Contact

Explaining Support for Violating Out-Group Human Rightsin Conflict: Attitudes Toward Principles of Human Rights,

Trust in the Out-Group, and Intergroup Contact1

Ifat Maoz2

Department of CommunicationHebrew University of Jerusalem,

Jerusalem, Israel

Clark McCauleyDepartment of PsychologyBryn Mawr College, PA

A public atmosphere that supports violating the human rights of out-group memberscan enable or even encourage enacting such violations. We present a model thatexplains such support in terms of 2 underlying components: (a) support for violatinggeneral principles of human rights (SVHRG); and (b) lack of trust toward thespecific out-group. This model was successful (R2 = .47) in predicting Jewish-Israelisupport for violating human rights of Palestinians (SVHRP). Structural equationmodeling indicated that, consistent with our hypotheses, SVHRG and distrustof Palestinians each significantly contributed to predicting SVHRP; and contactwith Palestinians and religiosity each significantly contributed to predicting trustin Palestinians, with more contact predicting higher trust and more religiositypredicting lower trust.jasp_740 891..905

When a public atmosphere supports the violation of out-group humanrights, it can enable or even encourage the state, as well as individual citizens,to enact such violations. The spiral-of-silence theory (Noelle-Neumann, 1993)describes the silencing of minority individuals or groups who become lesslikely to voice ideas or opinions for fear of being isolated by majority society.Such fear of isolation can produce compliance with perceived majoritysupport for violation of human rights, while silencing objection and dissent.

One barrier to violating out-group human rights is the recognition thathuman rights are universal principles that should be observed and adheredto everywhere. However, previous studies dealing with the domain of social

1The first author thanks the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, Israel, for support of this research. This research was supported by the United StatesDepartment of Homeland Security through the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorismand Responses to Terrorism (START), grant number N00140510629. However, any opinions,findings, and conclusions or recommendations in this document are those of the authors and donot necessarily reflect views of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

2Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ifat Maoz, Department ofCommunication, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905 Israel.E-mail: [email protected]

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Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2011, 41, 4, pp. 891–905.© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

justice have repeatedly pointed to a principle-application gap: the gap betweenthe widespread endorsement of general legal principles, and the equallycommon tolerance of concrete violations of these principles (Staerkle &Clemence, 2004). This is particularly true for principles of human rights.

People tend to assign high importance to observing human rights prin-ciples in general, but show considerably lower support for keeping (or notviolating) human rights in specific, concrete cases. Experimental studiesconducted in Europe (Staerkle & Clemence, 2004) point to a large gapbetween respondents’ support for general principles contained in the UnitedNations’ (2002) Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their unwill-ingness to denounce concrete violations of these principles. In relatedresearch, national polls have indicated that although most Americans expressstrong agreement with the ideals of human rights, their willingness to commitAmerican resources to promote and defend human rights is much weaker(McFarland & Mathews, 2005).

We present here a model that aims to address this gap by analyzingsupport for violating out-group human rights into two underlying compo-nents: (a) support for violating general principles of human rights (SVHRG);and (b) lack of trust toward the specific out-group. In this paper, we dem-onstrate the success of this model in explaining Jewish-Israeli public-opinionsupport for violating basic human rights of Palestinians in the West Bankand Gaza, including the right to freedom of movement; and the right to life,liberty, and security of person.

Trust and Support for Violating Out-Group Human Rights

The Human Rights Treaty is an international agreement regulating rela-tionships between different national and ethnic groups (Neumayer, 2005).Thus, as with any other social contract, adherence is expected to depend, toa large extent, on trust (i.e., expectations for future reciprocity).

Trust is presented in the recent literature as an important form of socialcapital that facilitates social interaction and exchange (Kiyornari, Yamag-ishi, Cook, & Cheshire, 2006; Mutz, 2005). In general, the concept of trustreflects a belief that others will act in a reciprocal way that will benefit (ornot harm) oneself (Yuki, Maddux, Brewer & Takemura, 2007). Therefore,trust is typically called for in situations of uncertainty and high risk whereothers have the potential to gain at one’s expense, but can choose not to doso (Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994; Yuki et al., 2007). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is viewed by many Israeli Jews as a high-risk situationin which there is high potential Palestinian threat (Bar-Tal, 2001;Gordon & Arian, 2001). Trust is thought to be an important factor affect-

892 MAOZ AND MCCAULEY

ing the relationship between Jews and Palestinians (Nadler & Liviatan,2006).

We have not found prior empirical examinations of the role of trust inattitudes toward out-group human rights. However, previous research hasfound a positive association of Jewish-Israeli trust in Palestinians with sym-pathy toward Palestinians, as well as with higher support for compromiseand reconciliation with Palestinians (Maoz & McCauley, 2005, 2009;Nadler & Liviatan, 2006). On the basis of these previous findings, weexpected that Israeli Jews’ trust in Palestinians would predict lower supportfor violating Palestinian human rights.

The Social Context of Trust

Our study also seeks to increase our understanding of trust in socialcontext; in other words, to understand better the variations in levels of trust.We focus on two social contextual variables that we expect to be associatedwith out-group trust: religiosity and structured intergroup contact.

Previous research has indicated that religiosity may be related to stron-ger in-group/out-group differentiation in terms of trust (Sosis, 2005). Thus,compared with less religious individuals, more religious individuals tend toshow higher trust in the in-group and lower trust in the out-group. ForIsraeli Jews, we expect higher religiosity to be associated with lower trust inPalestinians.

In contrast, in line with previous studies (Hewstone et al., 2006; Maoz,2000), we expect that Jewish-Israeli participation in organized encounterswith Palestinians will be linked with higher trust in Palestinians. Intergroupcontact under the right circumstances has been associated with increasedtrust, not only trust in particular individuals interacted with, but trust towardthe groups that these individuals represent (Hewstone et al., 2006; Maoz,2000). In this study, we also examine the extent to which trust in Palestiniansserves as a mediator of the association of religiosity and of intergroup contactwith support for violating Palestinian human rights.

To build our measures of support for violating human rights, we iden-tified several rights that are consistently a focus of human-rights monitor-ing agencies, including the right to life, liberty, and security of person;and the right to freedom of movement. Violations of these rights havebeen cited frequently in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict(Amnesty International, 2007; B’Tselem, 2006). We developed items aboutviolation of these basic human rights based on the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights (United Nations, 2002; see the Appendix for the full list ofitems).

EXPLAINING SUPPORT FOR VIOLATING OUTGROUP HUMAN RIGHTS 893

Method

Survey Design and Participants

The results are based on a nationally representative random-digit-dialtelephone interview survey of 501 Jewish-Israeli adults (age 18 and older)conducted by the Machshov Research Institute, a professional polling agencyin Israel, in March 2005. Respondents were randomly sampled from a CDused by Israeli polling agencies that contains all of the listed phone numbersof Israeli households. The demographics of this sample are similar to those ofthe general Jewish-Israeli population. The survey was conducted in Hebrew,but the items are reproduced here in English translation.

Measures

The following measures were used in our analyses. The full wording of theitems used in this study appears in the Appendix, while Table 1 presents theintercorrelations between measures.

Support for violating general principles of human rights (SVHRG). Re-spondents were presented with four items describing basic human rights, suchas the right to life, liberty, and security for person; and the right to freedom

Table 1

Intercorrelations Among Measures

Measure 1 2 3 4

1. SVHRP (criterion) —2. SVHRG .25** —3. Trust in Palestinians -.39** -.01 —4. Religiosity .28** .06 -.39** —5. Intergroup contact -.11* .04 .21** -.14*

Note. N = 501. SVHRP = Support for Violating Human Rights of Palestinians;SVHRG = Support for Violating General Principles of Human Rights. SVHRP,SVHRG, and Trust in Palestinians are scales based on the computed average of theindicators used to measure each of these variables (see Method section). Trust inPalestinians was measured on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 to 6; SVHRP, SVHRG,religiosity and intergroup contact were measured on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 to4 (see the Appendix).*p < .05. **p < .001.


of movement. For each of the rights described, respondents were asked torate the extent to which, in their opinion, it is allowed or forbidden to violatethis right, on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (is always forbidden to violate) to4 (is allowed to violate in very many cases). Although the average of theseitems is reported in descriptive analyses, each item was used as a manifestindicator of the latent construct of SVHRG in structural equation modeling.Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this four-item scale measuring SVHRGwas .61.

Support for violating human rights of Palestinians (SVHRP). Respon-dents were presented with the same four items describing basic humanrights. For each of the rights, respondents were asked to rate on the same4-point scale the extent to which, in their opinion, it is allowed or forbiddento violate this right for Palestinians in the territories (West Bank and GazaStrip; see the Appendix for full wording of items). Although the average ofthese items is reported in descriptive analyses, each item was used as amanifest indicator of the latent construct of SVHRP in structural equationmodeling. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this four-item scale measuringspecific SVHRP was .83.

Trust toward Palestinians. Trust toward Palestinians was measured bytwo items assessing perceptions of trust (see the Appendix) that were rated ona 6-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 6 (extremely). The average ofthese items was reported in the descriptive analyses, but each item was usedseparately as a manifest variable, indicating the latent construct of trusttoward Palestinians in structural equation modeling. Cronbach’s alpha forthis measure was .55.

Religiosity. Religiosity was measured by a single self-report item of extentof religiosity (see the Appendix). This measure was reverse-scored so that ahigher rating reflects higher religiosity.

Intergroup contact. Intergroup contact was assessed by asking respon-dents if they had participated in organized intergroup encounters betweenIsraeli Jews and Palestinians in various frameworks, such as school or work(see the Appendix).

Results

Descriptive Analysis

Our descriptive analyses indicate that Israeli Jews have a medium leveltrust in Palestinians (M = 3.39 on a 6-point scale; SD = 1.40), medium levelsupport for violating Palestinian human rights (M = 2.05 on a 4-point scale;SD = 1.40), and low support for violating general principles of human


rights (M = 1.58 on a 4-point scale; SD = 1.40). Most of our respondents(59%) defined themselves as secular, with the remaining respondents indicat-ing varying levels of religiosity. Our contact measure indicates that 16% ofour respondents have participated in structured intergroup encounters withPalestinians. This percentage is consistent with findings from other surveystudies regarding encounter participation (Maoz, 2006).

Comparing Support for Violating General Principles of Human Rights WithSupport for Violating Human Rights of Palestinians

Table 2 presents the percentages of support for violating general prin-ciples of human rights versus support for violating the same rights withregard to Palestinians. These data show a consistent, substantial gap inJewish-Israeli attitudes toward human rights. Thus, for all the rights exam-ined here, Jewish-Israeli support for violating human rights in principle issignificantly lower than their support for violating the same human rightswith respect to Palestinians. For example, Jewish-Israeli support for violatingthe basic human rights to life, liberty, and security of person in principle isvery low, with less than 5% of the respondents supporting such violation. Incontrast, support for violating the right of Palestinians to life, liberty, andsecurity of person is considerably higher, with 20% of respondents support-ing such violation. In the next sections, we use structural equation modeling(Amos 6.0; see Arbuckle, 2005; Kline, 2005) to explore the sources of thisconsiderable increase in Jewish-Israeli support for violating basic humanrights when it comes to Palestinians.

Analyses of the Structural Model

To test our hypotheses, we produced a structural model (see Figure 1) inwhich religiosity and intergroup contact were entered as exogenous variables,each with a direct path to trust in Palestinians and to SVHRP. SVHRG wasalso entered as an exogenous variable with a direct path to SVHRP. Trust inPalestinians was entered as an endogenous variable, with a direct path toSVHRP. This model shows a good fit to the data (comparative fit index = .95;Tucker-Lewis Index = .92; root mean square error of approximation[RMSEA] = .05; 90% confidence interval RMSEA = .037–.063). In addition,our model shows high explanatory power for variation in SVHRP (R2 = .46)and considerable explanatory power for variation in trust in Palestinians(R2 = .33).


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Predicting SVHRP

In line with our expectations, the structural model (see Figure 1) indicatesthat trust in Palestinians and SVHRG each make a significant independentcontribution to predicting Jewish-Israeli SVHRP, with trust in Palestinianspredicting lower SVHRP (b = -.56, p = .001), and SVHRG predicting higherSVHRP (b = .39, p = .001). The zero-order correlation between the twopredictors is very small (r = -.01; see Table 1 for intercorrelations of mea-sures used in this study), thus indicating their independence from each otherin explaining SVHRP.

Predicting Trust in Palestinians

The structural model (see Figure 1) also indicates that, as expected,religiosity (b = .50, p = .001) and intergroup contact (b = .22, p = .001)each made a significant contribution to predicting Jewish-Israeli trustin Palestinians. Together, these explained a considerable amount of thevariation in trust (R2 = .33).

. 05

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Religiosity

Intergroup

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Education

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Figure 1. Structural equation model. Trust in Palestinians and support for violating generalprinciples of human rights as predictors of support for violating the human rights of Palestin-ians. Note. The figure shows the standardized values of the coefficients. To keep the figuresimple, only latent constructs are shown for Trust in Palestinians, Support for Violating HumanRights of Palestinians (SVHRP), and Support for Violating General Principles of Human Rights(SVHRG), and manifest indicators are omitted for these variables. Religiosity and IntergroupContact are manifest variables. For the sake of clarity, the figure does not include correlationsbetween the exogenous variables that can be found in Table 1. Insignificant links are shown bya dotted line. For all significant links, p < .05.


Mediation Analysis

Finally, we tested the extent to which the extent of trust in Palestiniansmediated the association of intergroup contact and of religiosity with Jewish-Israeli SVHRP. To establish mediation, three conditions must be met(Baron & Kenny, 1986). First, the predictors must be correlated with thedependent variable. As Table 1 indicates, religiosity (r = .28, p < .001) andintergroup contact (r = -.11, p < .012) were both significantly correlated withSVHRP.

The second condition for mediation is that the predictors must correlatewith the mediator. As Table 1 indicates, religiosity (r = -.39, p < .001) andintergroup contact (r = .21, p < .001) were both significantly correlated withtrust in Palestinians.

The third condition for mediation is that the mediator must affect thedependent variable when controlling for the predictors. Figure 1 indicatesthat the (negative) association between trust in Palestinians and SVHRPremains substantial when controlling for religiosity and for intergroupcontact.

To test for significance of the mediation effect, we used the Sobel test(Preacher & Hayes, 2004). Trust was found to be a significant mediator ofthe association of religiosity with SHRVP, as well as of the association ofintergroup contact with SHRVP ( ps < .001).

The magnitude of the mediation is indicated by comparing the zero-ordercorrelations between the predictors and the outcome variables to the asso-ciations between the same variables after entering a mediator to the model(Baron & Kenny, 1986). In our case, the zero-order correlations betweenour predictors and the outcome variable were all significant (see Table 1).However, the direct links of religiosity with SVHRP (b = .05, ns), and ofintergroup contact with SVHRP (b = .03, ns) became insignificant and closeto 0 when trust in Palestinians was entered as a mediator indicating that trustin Palestinians mediated a large part of the association of religiosity and ofintergroup contact with SVHRP (see Figure 1 and Table 1).

Discussion

Although the current literature views trust as a major facilitator of socialrelations, exchanges, and contracts (Kiyonari et al., 2006; Mutz, 2005), wehave not found prior empirical examinations of the role of trust in supportfor violating human rights. Our study points to the importance of trust inexplaining the principle-application gap (Staerkle & Clemence, 2004)between low support for violating general principles of human rights and


the higher support for violating human rights in concrete cases of specificout-groups. Specifically, trust in Palestinians predicted lower Jewish-IsraeliSVHRP, beyond and independent of the predictive value of SVHRG.

These results imply that abstract, general concern for human rightsviolation is not a sufficient predictor of attitudes toward observingthe human rights of actual specific out-groups. Public application of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 2002) seems todepend, to a significant degree, on a more specific attitude of trust in theout-group whose rights are in question.

Social trust has become one of the most widely studied forms of publicopinion (Mutz, 2005). However, there seems to be relatively less research onthe social-contextual correlates of interethnic trust. Our findings indicate thatboth religiosity and intergroup contact have a considerable ability to predictIsraeli Jews’ trust in Palestinians.

Religiosity has been found to be related to increased political intoler-ance (Gibson, 1992; Shamir & Sagiv-Schifter, 2006), as well as to lessdemocratic attitudes, and to more extreme and negative attitudes towardout-groups (Canetti-Nisim, 2004; Pedhazur & Canetti-Nisim, 2004). Thus,it may seem unsurprising that religiosity was, in our study, highly related toincreased support for violating the human rights of Palestinians. However,this association was highly mediated by (lower) trust in Palestinians.These results show that perceptions of the relationship with Palestiniansas less cooperative explains a large part of the tendency of our more reli-gious respondents to show higher support for violating Palestinian basichuman rights. Further research will be required to explicate the associa-tions among religiosity, trust, and support for punitive policies towardsout-groups.

Our study also adds to the considerable literature that explores the cor-relates of intergroup contact (Hewstone et al., 2006; Pettigrew & Tropp,2000). Even in the high-risk context of the protracted conflict between Israelisand the Palestinians, we found contact to be associated with trust in theout-group and, through increased trust, with lower support for violatingout-group human rights.

On the practical level, our study points to possible interventions that candecrease the gap between abstract support for human rights and reactions tospecific violations of human rights. Increasing trust in the out-group candecrease support for violating out-group human rights. One way to increaseintergroup trust may be to encourage the kind of structured contact with theout-group that is often referred to as contact-based peace education (Maoz,2000). Thus, social interventions aimed at decreasing public support forhuman rights violations might usefully include both of these elements: cre-ating positive intergroup contact, and increasing intergroup trust.


Increased trust may also be a result of public and symbolic initiatives takenby individuals perceived as legitimate political leaders. A relevant examplefrom the Israeli-Arab conflict is the visit of Sadat—then president ofEgypt—to Israel in 1978. This surprising initiative led to the establishment ofpeaceful, albeit cold, but still mostly nonviolent relations between Israel andEgypt. Similarly powerful was the handshake between PLO Chairman YasserArafat and Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin when they signed the Osloagreement in 1993. Mass-media distribution of the picture of this historicoccasion opened a phase of peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestin-ians that lasted until the break of the second intifada in late September 2000.Such concrete and dramatic substantive steps by political leaders produce atop–down effect on the dynamics of conflict that can be distinguished fromthe bottom–up effects sought by programs of contact-based peace education.Although we are not aware of any research specifically comparing trustperceptions before and after these top–down initiatives, we believe it is likelythat such initiatives can produce a significant increase in trust. The relationbetween top–down and bottom–up trust building remains to be elucidated,but we suspect that the effects may be more interactive than additive.

Human behavior is about tradeoffs. We suspect that when facing a per-ceived tradeoff between out-group human rights and in-group security, thereis a powerful tendency to sacrifice their rights for our security. The impor-tance of trust in our results suggests that if we can imagine a future ofcooperative and non-zero-sum relations, then the need to choose betweenrights and security can be diminished. But developing trust is only a firststep against the tendency to sacrifice the rights of those who threaten us.Discovering further ways to reduce this tendency is an important researchagenda for the future.

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Appendix

Survey Items

Support for Violating General Principles of Human Rights

1. The right to life, liberty, and security of person is the right of a personthat his life and physical integrity will not be hurt. In your opinion,the right to life, liberty and security of person is a right that:

2. The right to freedom of movement is the right of a person to movefreely from place to place without restriction or disturbance. Inyour opinion, the right to freedom of movement is a right that:


3. The right to own property is the right of a person to hold andcontrol his/her property without others damaging it or taking itfrom his hands. In your opinion, the right to own property is a rightthat:

4. The right for due process is meant to enable a person to defendhimself in court before being found guilty of a penal offence. Inyour opinion, the right for due process is a right that:

These items were rated on the following 4-point scale: 1 = is always forbiddento violate; 2 = is allowed to violate only rarely; 3 = is allowed to violate in manycases; 4 = is allowed to violate in very many cases.

Support for Violating Human Rights of Palestinians

1. The right to life, liberty, and security of person is the right of aperson that his life and physical integrity will not be hurt. In youropinion, the right to life, liberty, and security of person of Pales-tinians in the territories is a right that:

2. The right to freedom of movement is the right of a person to movefreely from place to place without restriction or disturbance. Inyour opinion, the right to freedom of movement of Palestinians inthe territories is a right that:

3. The right to own property is the right of a person to hold andcontrol his/her property without others damaging it or taking itfrom his hands. In your opinion, the right to own property ofPalestinians in the territories is a right that:

4. The right for due process is meant to enable a person to defendhimself in court before being found guilty of a penal offence. Inyour opinion, the right for due process of Palestinians in theterritories a right that:

These four items were rated on the same scale as the items assessing supportfor violating general principles of human rights.

Trust in Palestinians

1. It is possible to trust Palestinians.2. It is possible to think of a future in which both Israelis and Pales-

tinians will gain from the cooperation between them.

These items were rated on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 6(extremely).


Religiosity

How do you define yourself in terms of religiosity?This item was rated on the following 4-point scale: 1 = secular; 2 = tradi-

tional (keeps major religious traditions, but is not fully religious); 3 = religious;4 = ultra-Orthodox.

Intergroup Contact

Have you ever participated in an organized encounter between Jewish andArab citizens of Israel (e.g., coexistence workshops, encounters of Jewish andArab schools, organized meetings between students, teachers or other Jewishand Arab professionals)?

This item was rated on the following 5-point scale: 1 = I haven’t partici-pated; 2 = I have participated in 1 meeting; 3 = I have participated in 2 or 3meetings; 4 = I have participated in 4 to 10 meetings; 5 = I have participated inmore than 10 meetings.


Documents

Explaining Support for Violating Out-Group Human Rights in Conflict: Attitudes Toward Principles of Human Rights, Trust in the Out-Group, and Intergroup Contact