NCJ Number
87886
Date Published
1981
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines several different theoretical approaches to legal issues, discusses the merits of laboratory simulations on legal decisionmaking, and proposes an alternative theoretical/methodological approach.
Abstract
Most of the currently popular social-psychological and personality theory approaches to legal issues have in common the explicit assumption that legal decisions are highly discretionary. According to this view, the operation of the legal system cannot be understood by simply examining laws, policies, and procedural guidelines, mainly because the actual operation of the system consists of the behavior of the participants. Several theoretical approaches have characterized attempts to understand the discretionary actions of participants in the legal system. A somewhat different theoretical approach attempts to explain the participants' decisions by postulating the operation of global individual-difference factors. Attitudes toward law and order, liberalism or conservatism, and sex are examples of some of the factors that have been examined in recent years. These approaches to legal issues have important consequences for research. Examination of the literature reveals that a large proportion of all research studies fall into very few categories, and over 90 percent of these research studies have been conducted in a laboratory. However, laboratory studies can cause serious problems regarding the generalizability of findings. In a young discipline such as legal psychology, research first should focus on theoretical conceptualizations primarily concerned with the system's operation. In situ, naturalistic research and archival methodology seem to be superior to other research approaches. About 100 references are given.