| Previous research has found that Americans are more likely to obey the law when they view it as a legitimate moral authority. Research has also uncovered discrepancies between current criminal laws and the average person's moral and ethical intuitions. Three experiments examined the influence of such discrepancies on attitudes toward the law and legal authorities. In each experiment, participants read newspaper accounts of cases involving criminal law whose outcomes either were in accord with or violated their intuitions. In Study 1, participants answered questions regarding their likelihood of performing actions such as supporting criminal law reform, cooperating with police, and using the law to guide their behavior in unclear situations. Participants rated themselves significantly less likely to cooperate with police and less likely to use the law to guide their behavior after reading an intuition-violating case. In Study 2, participants answered a similar self-report questionnaire as in Study 1 but imagined themselves living where the newspaper account took place. Participants who had read an unintuitive case rated themselves more likely to take steps aimed at changing the law (including replacing legislators and prosecutors and breaking the law while taking part in demonstrations), less likely to cooperate with police, more likely to join a vigilante or watch group, and less likely to use the law to guide behavior. In Study 3, participants imagined themselves on a jury (again where the newspaper account took place), read case summaries, and rated their likeliness to vote to convict in each case. Among participants who were certain of their verdicts (whether to convict or acquit), the type of article they had read produced no effect, but participants who were less sure of their decisions were more likely to nullify (acquit in a case where the defendant was guilty according to the letter of the law) after reading an intuition-violating newspaper account. Overall, participants appeared less likely to give the law the benefit of any doubt after reading cases where the law was at odds with their intuitions. Discussion includes limitations of these findings, directions for future research, and implications for drafters of legal codes. |
