A questionnaire study using the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was conducted in 35 countries (N 6791 students). The basic assumption was that human rights can be studied as social representations following the model of Doise, CleÂmence, & Lorenzi-Cioldi (1993). The existence of a shared meaning system concerning the 30 articles in dierent countries was demonstrated. Individual attitudes toward the whole set of rights were proven to be highly consistent. However, individuals diered systematically in beliefs about their own and the government's ecacy in having human rights respected. An individual-level and a pancultural analysis (Kenny & La Voie, 1985;Leung & Bond, 1989) converged in the de®nition of four groups of respondents: advocates (most favorable responses towards human rights), sceptics (less favorable responses), personalists (high personal involvement and scepticism about governmental ecacy) and governmentalists (low personal involvement and strong belief in governmental ecacy). Analyses of anchoring started either from assessing individual positionings or from maximizing between-country dierences. Individual-level analyses show that positionings are anchored in value choices as well as in perception and experience of social con¯icts. Pancultural analyses con®rm the importance of national context concerning the attitudes of scepticism or advocacy, personalism and governmentalism.