Photo courtesy of author.

How does a society encourage law-abiding behavior? Does it rely on the threat of punishment only? Or does the public's sense of justice and fairness suggest other, more effective, strategies? In their studies on this topic, Tom Tyler (left), professor of psychology at New York University, and others have discovered that Americans, and by extension people in general, obey the law essentially because they perceive the process as fair and unbiased and in accord with their own values.

In the United States, people often think of police officers and judges as being legal authorities who have a considerable amount of power, which they can use to enforce the law. They are considered authorities whose decisions are backed by the potential use of deterrence via punishment, and who are widely obeyed.

The reality of American legal authority, however, is quite different from this image in two ways. First, while it is true that Americans are generally law-abiding people, and that they are frequently willing to defer to the decisions of police officers and judges, compliance with the law cannot be taken for granted. American legal authorities have always struggled to promote the public's adherence to the law, and there are many suggestions that this struggle may be growing more difficult. In their dealings with particular citizens, U.S. police officers report increasing difficulty gaining public compliance, while judges report that it is harder to enforce judicial judgments and to bring citizen behavior into line with court orders. In terms of the influence of law on people's everyday lives, there is evidence that, across a broad range of behaviors ranging from paying income tax to stopping at red lights -- Americans are paying less attention to the law. The magnitude of these compliance problems should not be exaggerated, but the attention of legal authorities has been increasingly directed to the need for a better understanding of why people obey the law.

Studies show that, interestingly, the motivation underlying everyday compliance with the law is not typically the fear of punishment for ignoring or defying the law that is the basis of deterrence models. Instead, people's primary motivations for obeying the law are found to be ethical in character. Two ethical motivations are key antecedents of compliance: legitimacy and morality.

Legitimacy refers to the belief that an authority is entitled to be obeyed. Americans typically express high levels of such perceived obligations to obey the police and the courts. For example, almost all Americans agree that they should "obey the law, even when they think it is wrong." When people view legal authorities as legitimate, they voluntarily follow their directives, even if they do not think they would be caught and punished for ignoring them.

In their book entitled, Justice, Liability and Blame: Community Views and the Criminal Law, Paul Robinson and John Darley explain that personal morality involves the degree to which people think that the law accords with their own feelings about what is right and wrong. In some cases, public morality is very consistent with the law. Murder is illegal, and most people also believe that it is morally wrong. However, in other cases this may not be true. With drinking, drug use, copying software, and even following parking laws, segments of the American public do not view their behavior as morally wrong, even when those behaviors are contrary to the law.

In a 1990 study on why people obey the law, I directly compared the influence of risk judgments, views about the legitimacy of legal authorities, and judgments about the morality of the law on people's everyday compliance with the law. I found that both legitimacy and morality influenced compliance with the law independently of judgments about the risk of being caught and punished for wrongdoing. The strongest influence was that of morality, the second strongest influence that of legitimacy. Risk estimates also influenced compliance, but were the weakest influence of the three outlined. In other words, ethical judgments had the greatest influence on compliance, and risk estimates the least influence.

The Problem with Deterrence in Assuring Compliance

Other studies suggest that the threat or use of sanctions, which shapes risk estimates, also influences law-related behavior to some extent. However, as in my own study, the magnitude of that influence is usually found to be small. For example, in a review of the literature on American drug use, Robert MacCoun in an article on drugs and the law in Psychological Bulletin, found that approximately 5 percent of the variance in citizen drug use can be explained by citizen judgments of the likelihood of being caught and punished by the police and courts. This conclusion is typical of the findings of studies of compliance with the law -- deterrence is found to have, at best, a small influence on people's behavior.

The practical consequence of this finding is that the police and the courts have difficulty in effectively enforcing the law when they can only rely on their power to punish people. Without widespread legitimacy and/or when they are enforcing laws that are inconsistent with public morality, legal authorities cannot do their jobs well. This is true of both American criminal and civil law, that is, of the efforts of legal authorities to both maintain public order and resolve disputes among citizens.

The consequences of low legitimacy are illustrated by examining the impact of the lack of trust and confidence in the police and courts widely found among minority citizens. This low legitimacy leads not only to greater law-breaking behavior among minorities, but to a general unwillingness among members of the minority community to work with the police to deal with crime-related problems. Famous examples of the problems created when the law diverges from public morality, drawn from American history, include the effort to make drinking alcohol illegal (Prohibition) and ongoing efforts to enforce laws against prostitution and gambling. Whenever the police seek to enforce laws against behavior that segments of the public do not regard as morally wrong, the job of the police becomes more difficult.

How can this issue be addressed? One possible approach would be to dramatically increase the size of police forces and to give them greater power to intrude into people's everyday lives, increasing the likelihood that people who break rules would be caught and punished for their crimes. This, in turn, would increase the estimate of the risk of getting caught, and thus discourage criminal behavior. For example, in their struggle to prevent drunk driving, some countries allow the police to set up random road blocks to stop drivers, while other countries allow the police to stop and question any citizen on the street or in a car, and even to hold people in jail without charges. It is not clear how much of an effect giving legal authorities such increased powers would actually have on public behavior, but it is possible to imagine strategies that could be used to make deterrence more effective.

There are several difficulties associated with seeking to increase the effective rule of law by strengthening deterrence. One issue is that strengthening government power in America conflicts with a longstanding emphasis on individual freedom and rights that is strongly rooted in the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. This democratic tradition has been coupled with a general willingness of Americans to defer to government and law, but that deference is not automatic, and suspicion about government and defiance of laws regarded as unnecessarily intrusive is another longstanding element of American political and legal culture. Increasing government power, therefore, might have the effect of undermining legitimacy and lowering compliance with the law. Another issue is whether it is realistic to think that strategies intended to change risk judgments could effectively alter public behavior. As noted, changes in risk judgments have, at best, a minor influence on such behavior.

The Role of Procedural Fairness in Gaining Compliance

Is there an alternative approach to creating and sustaining a viable legal system? Recent studies of the basis upon which the American public reacts to laws and to the decisions of legal authorities point to one important possible approach. Because the police and the courts are social regulatory authorities, they are often forced to make decisions on outcomes that people view as undesirable or even unfair. The police, for example, tell people not to do things they want to do, and enforce those orders by threats, arrests and even physical force. Judges must often enforce laws by sentencing people to pay fines or serve time in prison. It is often assumed that such undesirable outcomes will only be accepted when legal authorities are backed by the threat or use of force.

Studies of people's reactions to personal experiences with the police and courts suggest a different and much more positive image of how citizens react to decisions made by legal authorities. These studies demonstrate that people use ethical criteria to evaluate their personal experiences. In particular, they evaluate their experiences with legal authorities through a filter of procedural justice. Research consistently finds that people's primary basis for accepting or rejecting the decisions made by police officers and judges is their evaluation of the fairness of the procedures used by the authorities to make those decisions.

Consider an example. I interviewed people who appeared before judges in traffic court in Chicago, Illinois. At the time, it was a common practice to dismiss people's cases when they appeared in court in person, based upon the assumption that coming to court was punishment enough for minor offenses. So, each litigant received no fine and had no record. We might have expected people to be happy. However, I consistently found that people were angry. Why? Because they did not experience this mode of case disposition to be fair. They wanted to have a trial in which they could present their evidence and receive a legal decision about the merits of their traffic ticket. Receiving a favorable outcome was less important to them than having their day in court.

In The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice, E. Allan Lind and I interviewed people who engaged in personal dealings with both police officers and judges. We found repeatedly that people react strongly to their evaluations of the fairness of these legal authorities. People who feel fairly treated are more willing to accept decisions, even if those decisions are unfavorable, and irrespective of whether they think they will be caught and punished if they do not accept them. Why is this the case? Experiencing fair procedures engages people's feelings of obligation to obey. It also leads people to view decisions as more consistent with their moral values. For these reasons, people accept these decisions more willingly. This finding is important because it suggests that people focus on ethical issues, rather than personal gains and losses, when they are reacting to their experiences with the police and the courts.

These findings suggest that legal authorities can gain acceptance for decisions if they pay attention to how those decisions are made. In a 1997 study done by Paternoster et al., further adherence to these decisions over time is higher, since people feel more personal responsibility for following them, and for obeying similar laws in the future. In the 1997 study, people who felt that they were fairly treated when they dealt with the police were found to be more likely to follow the law during a six-month period after their experience. Since the police were not present during most or all of this later time period, people were taking the responsibility to follow the law upon themselves. The experience of being fairly treated led them to consent to social regulation and they were personally committed to following the law.

What elements of procedures shape the judgments that people make about their fairness? Studies suggest that members of the public have complex models of procedural justice, often considering eight or more distinct justice issues when deciding how fair they think a legal procedure is. Four issues are typically found to be important.

• First, they value the opportunity to participate and give input when decisions are being made.

• Second, they want procedures to be neutral -- unbiased, based upon factual criteria and made via the consistent application of rules.

• Third, they want to be treated with dignity and respect, and to have their rights acknowledged.

• Fourth, they want to feel that the authorities have considered their needs and concerns, and have been honest in their communications with them.

In discussions about whether or not to accept a directive from a legal authority each of these concerns is typically more important in decisions than are assessments of the fairness or favorability of the decision itself.

Implications of Procedural Justice for Establishing Legal Authority

People put different weight on these different elements depending on the nature of the issue or problem involved. So, for example, opportunities for input are especially important when authorities are trying to settle a dispute among several people. On the other hand, people's ethnicity, gender and social status do not influence their views about what makes a procedure fair. This suggests that procedural fairness may be an especially valuable mechanism through which to find solutions to disputes that cross group boundaries. Studies find that people from different economic, social or ideological groups often have very different views about what constitutes a fair outcome, and have opposing views about what type of outcome is favorable to them and/or their group. These same people, however, will have much more in common when asked about the attributes of a fair decision-making procedure. Since the ability of a fair procedure to facilitate acceptance of decisions has been noted, it is encouraging that people seem to agree widely about what makes a procedure fair.

Similar procedural justice findings emerge when we examine people's everyday obedience to the law. People are more likely to obey the law when they have trust and confidence in the fairness of the procedures used by legal authorities and legal institutions. So, by making decisions fairly, legal authorities build a legal culture within which people feel a personal responsibility to abide by the law. Such a self-regulatory society is based upon people's feelings of responsibility and obligation to the law, and on their willingness to follow their own moral values. The key to creating and sustaining such a society is the use of fair procedures by legal authorities.

Back to top | Issues of Democracy, July 2001 | Other IIP E-Journals | IIP Home