why people obey the law

In the past two days, I read the book "Why Do People Obey the Law" by American scholar Tom Tyler. The author explored the legality of the law itself through a study on "Why People Obey the Law" in the Chicago area. How much influence. The book is a bit boring because of a large number of descriptions of various experimental theories and data, and it feels like a lot of space to repeatedly explain the same points of view and conclusions. Some redundancy. However, the inspirational effect of this book is still great, why do people Will obey the law? Out of fear of punishment is only a small part, more because people believe that obeying the law is an obligation, because of people's recognition of legal authorities and legal systems. Therefore, rather than spend a lot of time researching How to impose penalties or introduce incentives to encourage people to obey the law, it is better to create a good atmosphere, so that people feel that the operation of the law is in line with fairness and justice, law enforcement agencies respect them, and their opinions can be fully expressed, Of course, the law itself is in line with people's perception of public order, good morals and ethics. When the party members highly recognize the entire legal system, they will voluntarily abide by the law, even if they have to bear certain restrictions and losses. Everyone thinks that citizens are regarded as a Everyone in the economy will carefully calculate the gains and losses and risks in all aspects. In fact, from the research of psychology, it is obvious that there are many behaviors that cannot be explained by self-interest and instrumental pragmatism. It is a pity that so far, countless lawmakers and policies Makers are more concerned with the deterrent effect of laws and policies than about making people willing to voluntarily comply with support. Laws and policies that rely on coercion and deterrence to operate in the long run will not only be costly to maintain, but also As members of society gradually lose their sense of identity with this system, social activists estimate that they will do more research on this aspect to see how to challenge the public’s recognition of the legitimacy of the authorities.

It is very interesting that the author's research was conducted in the 1980s. Judging from the data, the general public's recognition of the police was still very high at that time, and the proportion of people who recognized that obeying the law was an obligation was also very high. What would it be like to do a similar survey. I recently went back to watch the Conan Show in the 90s and saw a lot of comments saying that I miss that era. I think the social atmosphere in that era was really much better than it is now.