Beyond group engagement : multiple pathways from encounters with the police to cooperation and compliance in Northern Ireland
Date
07/09/2017Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In a sample of young people in Northern Ireland (N=819), we examine the relationships between the quality of experience with police officers and police legitimacy. We examine potential pathways through which experiences may either support or undermine the legitimacy of the police, and thus cooperation and compliance with them. We find evidence that perceptions of the police as having goals that align with those of wider society, and as being fair in general, mediate relations between the quality of encounters and legitimacy, which in turn mediates the relation with cooperation and compliance. Identification with wider society was not a reliable mediator, contrary to our predictions based on the Group Engagement Model. Moreover, our analysis of the structure of police fairness perceptions finds no support for the distinction between procedural and distributive police fairness as usually conceived. Implications for the social psychological understanding of legitimate authority are discussed.
Citation
Pehrson , S , Devaney , L , Bryan , D & Blaylock , D L 2017 , ' Beyond group engagement : multiple pathways from encounters with the police to cooperation and compliance in Northern Ireland ' , PLoS ONE , vol. 12 , no. 9 , e0184436 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184436
Publication
PLoS ONE
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 Pehrson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
The survey was funded by a grant from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.Collections
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