Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts

Part II. Societal Orientations and Personal Experiences

PART III SOCIETAL ORIENTATIONS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES INTERVIEWS in the California study focused on people's personal experiences with legal authorities. In our discussions up to this point we have been concerned with understanding the factors that shape peopIe 's willingness to accept decisions within the context of their own personal encounterswith police officers and judges. We recognize, however, that such personal experiences occur within a broader framework. That framework encompasses two types of societal orientations: people 's general views about the legitimacy of legal authorities and institutions , and people's connections to others in their communities and to American society. In our study these connections reflect the degree to which the respondents identified with their neighbors, with residents of their city, and, more generally, with other Americans. We are interested in determining whether societal orientations influence people's willingness to defer to the decisions of police officers and judges during their personal encounters with these authorities. It is possible thatboth positive and negative societal orientations have an influence. We expectthose who have a more favorable societalorientation tobemore willing to defer tolegal authorities. Weexpectthis tobe true bothfor views about the general legitimacy of legal authorities and for the degree to which people identify with society. Further, we expect people with more favorable societal orientations to rely more strongly on their judgments about procedural justice and motive-based trust when deciding whether to defer to authorities. We expectthose who do not have favorable societal 98 Trust in the Law orientations to rely more stronglyontheirjudgments aboutthe fairness or favorability oftheir outcomes. Societalorientations, we predict, shape the basis on which people decide whether to defer to legal authorities. In examining these two kinds of influence, we are concerned with goingfrom thegeneralto the particular. Thatis, how do general socialorientations influence decisions about what to do in a particular situation? Conversely, we are also concerned with determining how personal experience influences general societal orientations. If people have a good or bad encounter with a police officer or a judge, to what extent does that shape their views about the general legitimacy of the law and the legal system, and does it influence their identification with their neighbors, with their city, or with the United States? Finally, to the degree that personal experience does influence more general orientations, what factors in personal experience are at work? Are people influenced by social motives such as procedural justice and motive-based trust, or are they influencedby the favorability or fairness of their outcomes? The issue ofgeneralization from personal experience is importantbecause it addresses the long-term impact ofa personal experience, as well as its generalizationbeyond one type of experience to others. For example , if a person is rudely treated by a police officer during a traffic stop, does that experience influence whether he defers to another police officer in the future, and does it shape his deference to the decisions made by judges? The first part of this question involves a similar experience, with a similar type of authority, that occurs in the future. The second part involves a future experience with a legal authority different from the one previously encountered.! The question of the degree to which people generalize from their particular personal experiences to their general societalviewshaspreviously been addressed by Tyler (1990). The results of that study suggested that general views about the legitimacy of the law and legal institutions are shaped by people's personal experiences with individual legal authorities .1talso suggests that the keyexperientialelement shapingtheir views is the proceduraljusticethey experience during their personal encounter with the police or the courts. Our evaluation here expands on that analysis in several ways. It considers the potential influence of both procedural justice and motivebased trust, and it examines generalization from personal experience to both views about the legitimacy of legal authorities and identification with society-in this case, one's neighborhood, city, and country. Based on the prior work of Tyler (1990), we expect that what happens during a personal experience generalizes to these broader views, but the degree of that generalization is unknown. Societal Orientations and Personal Experiences 99 Our analysis of the California data here focuses on two aspects of people's general societal orientations-their views about the legitimacy of the law and legal authorities and their connections with their community, their city, and the United States. Chapter 7examines these societal orientations and discusses how they are measured in this study. Chapter...