less than their belief that the morally mandated out-
come was obtained.JJuussttiiccee AApppprrooaacchheess ttoo LLeeggiittiimmaaccyy
aanndd CCoommpplliiaannccee WWiitthh tthhee LLaaww
Deterrence approaches to compliance with the law
are guided by the instrumental perspective that
people’s compliance is shaped by their estimates of
the penalties that will result from noncompliance.
According to a deterrence perspective, the likelihood
of crime decreases as the certainty and severity of
punishment for crime increase. PJ research and theory
suggests an alternative, normative approach to com-
pliance: People will voluntarily obey the law when
they believe it is the right thing to do. Morality and
beliefs about legitimacy (of the law or legal authori-
ties) are normative perspectives on compliance. A
legal authority is said to have legitimacy when people
think it is appropriate to comply with their decisions
because the authority deserves to be in power and is
entitled to obedience.
While research in legal settings has shown that
compliance with the law is influenced by beliefs about
the likelihood and severity of punishment, other
research that compares expectations about punish-
ment and beliefs about legitimacy as determinants of
compliance shows that legitimacy is more influential.
A considerable body of research in legal and other
(e.g., organizational and political) settings indicates
that authorities and institutions are perceived as more
legitimate, and elicit greater levels of compliance with
their decisions, when they enact procedures fairly. For
example, one study asked civilians about their
encounters with the police. This survey found that cit-
izen’s reports that they were treated fairly were influ-
enced by procedural criteria such as process control,
neutrality, and respect and that as beliefs about fair
treatment increased, so did citizens’ beliefs about the
legitimacy of the legal authorities and their intent to
comply with the law.Cross-Cultural Views
The question of the cross-cultural generalizability of
PJ theories has been addressed in numerous studies,
starting with the earliest work by Thibaut and Walker.
Research described above showed that European resi-
dents showed the same preference for adversarial pro-
cedures over autocratic ones evidenced by the U.S.residents, despite the fact that the adversarial proce-
dures are not institutionalized and are less familiar to
participants in these European countries. Similar find-
ings have been replicated in other countries, including
Hong Kong, Japan, and Spain. Similarly, cross-cultural
research has supported the claims of the interactional
justice and group value theories.
Whereas the earliest tests of cross-cultural general-
izability compared PJ effects in various countries, more
recent research has shifted from a country focus to a
focus on the cross-cultural variability of social values.
This work has examined the way in which the cultural
variability of social values moderates the influence of
PJ criteria such as voice, benevolence, neutrality, and
respect. Two dimensions of social values have received
considerable attention: individualism-collectivism (the
degree to which ties among individuals in society are
weak, such as in individualist societies, where people
are expected to look after themselves, or strong, as in
collectivist societies, where people are integrated into
stable, cohesive in-groups that place a high value on
harmonious social relations) and power distance (the
degree to which people expect or accept inequality in
formal power among persons, with high-power-dis-
tance individuals being the most accepting of power
differentials and low-power-distance individuals being
more in favor of equality).
Although the general pattern of findings is support-
ive of the role of voice, benevolence, neutrality, and
respect across cultures, this work has also shown that
the strength of the relationships between procedural
criteria and procedural preferences and fairness judg-
ments varies with individualism-collectivism and with
power distance. For example, people in collectivist
societies, such as China, express a greater preference
for mediation (a procedure that places greater reliance
on cooperation and interpersonal harmony than do
adversarial procedures) than people in individualist
societies, such as the United States. Similarly,
research has shown that individuals in societies high
in power distance (such as the Arab and Latin
American countries) are more tolerant of disrespectful
or unfair treatment from authorities and are less sensi-
tive to variations in opportunities for voice than indi-
viduals from low-power-distance societies (such as
the Scandinavian countries). Although this research
points to cultural variability on power distance and
individualism-collectivism, there is also considerable
variability among individuals within cultures, and the
effects shown to result from cultural variation on theseProcedural Justice——— 627P-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 627