Abstract
AbstractIn different theoretical traditions, negative social conditions, attachments, and interactions shape the way individuals view the law and its agents. Although most researchers acknowledge the conceptual distinction between different legal attitudes such as legal cynicism and police legitimacy, it remains unclear to what extent these attitudes stem from the same social sources. In the current study, therefore, we evaluate the social and individual factors that influence trajectories of legal cynicism and police legitimacy using a diverse community sample of youths in Zurich, Switzerland. Latent growth curve models were employed to examine patterns of change in legal cynicism and police legitimacy between 13 and 20 years of age. The findings show that legal cynicism and police legitimacy both decline into early adulthood and exhibit high rank‐stability over time. Furthermore, we find that legal cynicism is closely related to individual characteristics that reflect one's inability to recognize or abide by their internal rules. By contrast, police legitimacy is shaped by socialization influences, particularly teacher bonds and police contacts. These results indicate a need to assess the measurement and interpretation of legal cynicism critically in relation to broader legitimacy beliefs and to investigate the shared and distinct sources of these different constructs.
Highlights
The goal of this article was to examine the development of legal attitudes, as measured by legal cynicism and police legitimacy, from adolescence to early adulthood, and to what extent social experiential and individual factors could be used to explain these patterns
Both legal cynicism and police legitimacy exhibited high rank-stability over time, and the results from latent growth curve models show that legal cynicism is not static during adolescence but first increases before declining into early adulthood
We find that legal cynicism is related to individual characteristics that reflect tendencies to recognize or abide by their own internal rules and boundaries, low self-control
Summary
The goal of this article was to examine the development of legal attitudes, as measured by legal cynicism and police legitimacy, from adolescence to early adulthood, and to what extent social experiential and individual factors could be used to explain these patterns
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