The Palliative Function of Legality Beliefs on Mental Health

• In Event: 4244 - Engaging Social Psychology in the Pursuit of Social Justice

Abstract

Research in mental health is paying increasing attention to the role that social institutions play for subjective well-being over the life course. However, little research has considered how belief in the promise of legal institutions may have beneficial effects for well-being. Through structural equation models of longitudinal data, our findings suggest that belief in the fairness of legal institutions has salutary effects for mental health, net of social and economic status, and across individuals from a wide range of ethnic groups. By combining research in the sociology of mental health, cultural sociology, social psychology and the sociology of law, we argue that beliefs in legal fairness serve a palliative function that may be beneficial for well-being, though they may ultimately preserve the status quo. In so doing, we extend the emerging literature on the institutional determinants of mental health by including attention to law as one of the central organizing institutions of social life.

Authors

• Laura Upenieks, University of Toronto

• Ron Levi, University of Toronto

• John Hagan, Northwestern University