Democratic values and mutual perceptions of human rights in four Pacific Rim nations

Popular belief generally regards Euro-American civic cultures as more democ ratic than Asian civic cultures. That belief, generally untested, is a pote ntial influence on the effectiveness and satisfactory outcome of intercultu ral relations. This study investigated first whether this belief, in regard to human rights violations. was shared by 821 university students from Aus tralia, Japan, South Korea. and the USA. Second, these students' own democr atic orientation and commitment to human rights were measured using Western concepts of liberal democracy to find if the belief could be empirically s ubstantiated. Third, influences from religious background, sex, attribution style, individualism/collectivism, dogmatism. and general trust in people on these responses were compared to find similarities and/or differences in democracy norms across groups. The result indicated that the students' perception regarding human rights p ractice conformed to the popular belief by evaluating Australia and the USA more favorably than Japan and Korea. Their own levels of democratic orient ation including commitment to human rights, however, did not support this d istinction. Some evidence of an East-West cultural divide was found in term s of factors correlating with democracy responses. Although democracy-relat ed judgments were similar across the 4 groups, there were nation acid cultu re-specific differences in how these judgments were brought about. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.