CriminologyPub Date : 2026-03-11Epub Date: 2025-11-30DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.70024
Amy E. Nivette, Isabelle van der Vegt
{"title":"Evaluating the causal mechanisms from procedural justice to police legitimacy and compliance in the United States: An in-depth mixed-methods approach","authors":"Amy E. Nivette, Isabelle van der Vegt","doi":"10.1111/1745-9125.70024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.70024","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Procedural justice theory states that when police treat people in a fair, respectful, and neutral manner, individuals are more likely to perceive the police as legitimate and obey the law. To test this perspective, researchers often use experimental vignettes that depict police–citizen interactions and measure subsequent attitudes. However, it is not straightforward to determine causal effects from these designs, as one must assess whether the effect runs only through the intended theoretical pathways. This paper advances beyond “traditional” experimental designs to evaluate the mechanisms linking police–citizen interactions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. The data consist of a representative sample of 2003 adults residing in the United States. We use a mixed-methods approach combining a pre-registered 3 × 2 × 2 experimental vignette depicting a traffic stop by police with follow-up closed- and open-ended questions, allowing respondents to explain their reasoning. We found that the quality of treatment was statistically related to subsequent perceptions of police legitimacy, but not compliance. However, follow-up placebo tests and open-text responses revealed several issues limiting the strength of causal and theoretical claims. Research using (quasi-)experimental designs should not rely only on statistical significance and should incorporate methods that can better assess intermediate processes and causal assumptions more rigorously when theory testing.</p>","PeriodicalId":48385,"journal":{"name":"Criminology","volume":"64 1","pages":"113-145"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1745-9125.70024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147570272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CriminologyPub Date : 2026-03-11Epub Date: 2025-11-17DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.70016
Andrew Thompson, Theodore Wilson, Brandon Behlendorf
{"title":"Is updating racialized? Differential effects of (dis)respectful police contact on perceptions of police legitimacy","authors":"Andrew Thompson, Theodore Wilson, Brandon Behlendorf","doi":"10.1111/1745-9125.70016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.70016","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding the updating process of police legitimacy in adolescence is crucial, as it is a formative period where early encounters with law enforcement form the foundation of legal orientations, particularly in a racially stratified society where such interactions can confirm or defy expectations of respect by ethnoracial group membership. The current study explores how (dis)respectful police contacts during adolescence and early adulthood update perceptions of police legitimacy, and whether this process is racialized. We utilize 11 waves of the Pathways to Desistance study, applying fixed effects modeling to capture how police respect updates posterior legitimacy perceptions. Additionally, we examine how ethnoracial identity, a largely time-invariant factor, contours the dynamic and time-varying process of legal socialization. Our findings suggest that although disrespectful police encounters uniformly hinder legitimacy evaluations, respectful treatment has varied effects: It improves legitimacy for Hispanic respondents but is not statistically influential among Black and White respondents. These findings are consistent with loss aversion, where negative experiences disproportionately impact legal orientations, but also highlight the racialized nature of the police legitimacy updating process. Our findings highlight the importance of minimizing disrespectful treatment by police and suggest that building trust among Black Americans through procedural justice is inhibited by accumulated experiences.</p>","PeriodicalId":48385,"journal":{"name":"Criminology","volume":"64 1","pages":"28-58"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147566700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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