Threats to human rights: A general review

Abstract

It has been seventy years since signing the Declaration of Human Rights, yet human right violations are still happening across the globe. This review asks the question – what is the impact of perceived threat on changing support for human rights into support for not-all-humans’ rights? In approaching human rights violations with a four-level model – institutions, cultures, groups, and individuals –, issues of capabilities, historical emotions, connectedness, and personality emerge. At the heart of these is the impact perceived threat has at each level within each issue. Limitations of current work, disagreements across the literature, and future directions are discussed.

The acceptance of Covid-19 tracking technologies: The role of perceived threat, lack of control, and ideological beliefs

“…In line with previous studies, which have shown that those who appreciate freedom are particularly guided by that value in assessing moral issues [55], high endorsement of liberty predicted less positive attitudes towards the implementation of surveillance technologies. In turn, RWA was a positive predictor of acceptance of these technologies as in previous studies on the possible trade-off between civil rights and security under terrorist threats [51]. Moreover, as previous research has shown that RWA is particularly related to the need for safety and risk minimisation [43,44], we examined whether RWA moderated the relationship between both perceived threat and lack of control and acceptance of surveillance technologies.…”

“…We should stress some limitations of this research. First, both our studies were correlational, so they do not establish causal relationships between the variables; however, it seems more plausible that lack of control, personal threat, RWA and endorsement of liberty predicted support for radical measures counteracting the pandemic than the reverse (see e.g., Carriere, 2019). Second, we did not measure the perceived efficacy of these surveillance technologies, and it would be worth examining directly whether the introduction of such solutions would, in fact, restore the sense of personal control and reduce the sense of threat.…”

“…It is defined as a submission to authority, adherence to traditional views and hostile behaviour towards groups that violate legitimised rules. Previous research has shown that RWA is positively related to acceptance of human rights restrictions and counterterrorism surveillance measures [ 45 – 50 ]; for a review see [ 51 ].…”

Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research

“…Political economy and law research explaining how people react and accept human rights 'violations' (e.g. surveillance measures, freedom of speech, lockdowns) under conditions of 'state of exception' like terrorism or the COVID-19 (Carriere, 2019;Bozzoli & Müller, 2011;Scheppele, 2003) can provide a new lenses for studying adoption of the COVID-19 controversial technologies and restrictions Research on political ideologies could further enlighten why people's ideologies and political values may further perplex their reactions and behaviours to such interventions in their human rights.…”

Sophisticated but Scared: The Effects of Political Sophistication, Right‐Wing Authoritarianism, and Threat on Civil Liberty Restrictions

“…Individuals express support for human rights, but then drop their support in the next instant (Drolet, Hafer, & Heuer, 2016), subjugate subgroups to only marginal access to liberty (Abrams, Houston, Vyver, & Vasiljevic, 2015), and staunchly support their in-group while condemning an out-group for the same activity (Tarrant, Branscombe, Warner, & Weston, 2012). The threat of the "other" pervades the discussion of who deserves rights (Beck & Plant, 2018;Carriere, 2019;Huddy & Feldman, 2011;Huddy, Feldman, & Weber, 2007;Welch, 2016). This experience of threat and restriction of liberties has a wide range of negative implications for free societies (Carriere, Garney, & Moghaddam, 2018;Jaspal, Carriere, & Moghaddam, 2016;Lauderdale, 2006), including reduced support for freedom of religion (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2015), increased support for surveillance (Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, & Moschner, 2005), and increased reports of hate crimes and discrimination (Disha, Cavendish, & King, 2011).…”