Examining the Links between Procedural Justice, Bounded Authority, and Legitimacy in Video-recorded Police Encounters

• In Event: Police Encounters: Examining Attitudes, Experiences, and Consequences

Abstract

One increasingly important source of public perceptions of police is through video recordings of police-civilian interactions. Framed by the literature on legitimacy, this study uses an online survey experiment to examine how pre-existing perceptions of police legitimacy and police behavior shape evaluations of police encounters captured on video. Results based on a sample of 830 adults recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk suggest that, when participants viewed the officer’s behavior as procedurally just and respectful of the limits of his rightful authority, they were more likely to view officer actions as legitimate, feeling an obligation to obey and normative alignment with the officer. When participants felt a normative alignment with the police in general, they were more likely to view the officer’s behavior as procedurally just and respecting the boundaries of his authority. This, in turn, increased the overall perceived legitimacy of the officer in the video. Similarly, when participants felt a moral duty to obey the police in general, they were more likely to view the officer’s behavior as procedurally just. The implications of these findings will be discussed.

Authors

• Jimin Pyo, California State University, Northridge

• Nerea Marteache, California State University, San Bernardino

• Michael G. Maxfield, John Jay College of Criminal Justice