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Analysts attempting to define the nature of human rights & criteria for assessing rights violations typically search for universalistic principles premised on legal, political, moral, &/or philosophic assumptions. The need is stressed to approach human rights in a relativistic fashion, since social science demonstrates that social judgment is subject to a variety of ethnocentrisms. Social systems consequently should be evaluated in terms of their ability to actually provide what they profess to offer their citizens by way of rights, rather than in terms of universalistic rights criteria. A realization-gap index is described that is designed to accomplish such evaluations, ie, to examine the difference between promise & reality. In addition, from a social-psychological perspective, it is important to know whether an individual is conforming, ie, behaving in a manner consistent with internal standards, or complying, ie, behaving in a manner inconsistent with internal standards. The relationship of psychological adaptation, forced compliance, level of information, & reference groups to patterns of conformity & compliance is examined with regard to human rights. It is necessary to examine the social-psychological status of individuals living in a particular society from the standpoint of conformity & compliance in order to assign a conformity-compliance index. The assumption is that quality of life is significantly enhanced if social behavior is preponderantly conformant rather than compliant. When compliant behavior is pervasive, it is argued that a rights violation has occurred. Modified AA.