The Effects of Police Compliance with the Social Contract: Findings from a Two-Stage Vignette Experiment

• In Event: Advancing Legitimacy Theory VIII

Abstract

The present study set out to test the effects of police compliance with the restrictions on their authority embedded in Social Contract Theory (SCT) on police legitimacy, satisfaction, and willingness to obey police officers. We conducted a two-stage vignette experiment, in which participants were presented with different versions of a newspaper article describing police responses to a property crime. In the first, 1356 participants were randomly assigned to either a control, procedural justice (PJ), police performance (PP), or compliance with the social contract (SC) condition. In the second, 660 participants were assigned to either a control or proportionality/least restrictive alternative (PL) condition. We find that compared to the control condition, the SC manipulation improved evaluations of all three DVs. The second stage revealed that the two unique components of the SC model (PL) also significantly improved the scores of all three DVs. We conclude that police adherence to the SC, and particularly to its two unique components, is an important determinant of police legitimacy and other outcomes, and should thus be acknowledged by researchers and practitioners. Future research is encouraged to disentangle the relative effects of the “building blocks” making up PJ, PP, and compliance with the SC.

Authors

• Tal Jonathan-Zamir, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Gali Perry, The Hebrew University

• Naomi Kaplan-Damary, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• David Weisburd, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem