RÉSUMÉ

L’article explique pourquoi l’on ne peut ignorer les contextes des comportements et pourquoi l’on ne peut tenir pour acquis qu’il existe une relation directe entre raisonnement et comportement. Au plan théorique nous soutenons qu’il existe dans les hypothèses formulées à cet égard six points faibles qui font douter que le comportement découle automatiquement du raisonnement. Au plan empirique, nous apportons à l’appui de notre argumentation théorique des preuves tirées de nos recherches sur la socialisation juridique et sur le raisonnement juridique. Dans la recherche sur la socialisation juridique, les normes relatives aux comportements d’infraction aux règles et les normes relatives à la mise en œuvre de sanctions jouent un rôle médiat dans la relation entre raisonnement et comportement. Dans la recherche sur la socialisation juridique, le contexte des comportements affecte la définition donnée par les individus de la gravité du comportement ainsi que leur jugement sur le bien-fondé des accusations. Nous discutons les implications de ces résultats.

SUMMARY

This paper explains why one can not ignore the behavioral context and assume a direct relationship between reasoning and behavior. Theoretically we argue that there are six gaps that make one question whether behavior automatically follows from reasoning. Empirically we provided evidence to support the theoretical argument from the legal socialization and the legal reasoning study. In the legal socialization study, norms about rule-violating behaviors and norms about enforcement mediate the relationship between reasoning and behavior. In the legal reasoning study, the behavioral context affects people’s definition of the seriousness of the behavior and their judgment of certainty about the two charges. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Much of the literature on legal socialization (Adelson & O’Neil, 1966 ; Borucka-Arctowa & Skapska, 1989 ; Hogan, 1976 ; Jakubowska, 1984, 1986 ; Kourilsky, 1986, 1988 ; Levine & Tapp, 1977 ; Sajo, 1986 ; Tapp & Kohlberg, 1977 ; Tapp & Levine, 1974 ; Torney, 1971) has focused on reasoning or attitudes about legal concepts, but has not explored empirically how these mental activities are related to behaviors. Their relationship to contexts for action is often implicit or simply assumed, or at best discussed hypothetically. The present paper analyzes this relationship, focusing first on several reasons why the relationship is problematic and why its clarification is important to our understanding of legal socialization. We then examine some of the complexities that characterize the relationship between legal reasoning and behavioral context.

Thought and action :
A problematic relationship

The study of attitudes toward law, legal reasoning and public values has long been an important part of the study of legal socialization. It is assumed that legal consciousness, for example, shapes one’s ability to use law and, through communication, provides the social basis for a legal culture in which the individual can become personally efficacious. Habermas has been a particularly important influence by focusing on the role of discourse in social life. In our view, the scant attention paid to how, and indeed whether, reasoning and action are connected is a mistake. It is a mistake for two reasons. First, legal reasoning is necessarily focused outside the individual toward the public arena, and therefore we must always ask whether internal mental events have an impact on external events. Second, it is clear from the social science literature that the assumed relationship between an individual’s attitudes or reasoning or values and his or her actions is often non-existent. We explore this false or at least questionable assumption in the following section of the paper.

It is often assumed that actions naturally follow from the reasoning or attitudes that appear to precede them logically. Our position is that this relationship is more problematic. The social science literature suggests the existence of several gaps between thought and action that belie this assumed natural connection. We will discuss six such « gaps » :(1) the prediction gap, which assumes one can predict behavior from preceding mental acts ;(2) the specification gap, which assumes that when people believe a general principle they will also agree with its specific applications ;(3) the justification gap, in which one’s reasoning about an action may be a justification rather than a « cause » ;(4) the « reasons for » gap, in which it is assumed that people always have reasons for their actions ;(5) the morality gap, in which it is assumed that people who hold moral principles also act in accordance with them ; and(6) the political context gap, in which it is assumed that the extent and nature of political control determines whether or not people obey the laws.

What we call the prediction gap refers specifically to the many attempts in the social science literature to predict behaviors on the basis of attitudinal or perceptual data. Some of these attempts have been successful, others not. A typical example of an unsuccessful prediction can be found in the wellknown study by LaPiere (1934). LaPiere was interested in the effects of prejudicial attitudes on behaviors. He surveyed a number of restaurants and hotels in the United States, asking whether they would accept people who were Chinese. He found that many who had reported prejudicial attitudes toward Chinese and even said they would not welcome Chinese people into their establishments did in fact accept them. Other social scientists have reported mixed success in predicting recidivism (Farrington & Tarling, 1985) and violent behavior reliably (Monahan, 1978, 1981). Programs focusing on attitudinal change to rehabilitate criminal offenders have had little success (Sechrest, White and Brown, 1979), suggesting that the prediction gap has also disappointed efforts at social reform. Further, knowledge of attitudes about authority may not be sufficient to predict the level of compliance in a community (Sarat, 1977).

The fact that predictions of behavior on the basis of attitudes are often unsuccessful should lead us to question any model of legal socialization that is based solely on attitudes. It should also lead us to probe the relationship between reasoning and behaviors in the legal context. The prediction gap suggests that conventional assumptions about the relationship of reasoning and behaviors and about the real-world effects of cognition and communication cannot be relied upon to tell us how people will act. For example, we tend to assume that an individual’s ideas are a guide to her or his behavior, that beliefs and attitudes are in some sense « causes » of action. In fact, other factors may disrupt and override any causal connection. Such factors include the ambiguity inherent in general versus specific references, the tendency to muddle the ought and the is, misinterpreting the difference between rhetoric and reality and between group norms and personal preferences, and confusion between principles of action versus their behavioral consequences. The existence of the prediction gap provides a point of departure for exploring how these factors affect the reasoning-behavior relationship in legal socialization.

Our second topic is the specification gap, which assumes that when people believe a general principle they will also agree with its specific application. Studies of citizen commitment to constitutionally mandated civil rights and liberties in the United States have demonstrated that strong support for general political values often drops drastically in the specific case (McClosky & Brill, 1983 ; Stouffer, 1955). McClosky (1964) reported that the general statement « I believe in free speech for all no matter what their views might be » was agreed to by 90 % of a representative sample of citizens. When a comparable population was asked about a specific application of that general principle (« If a group asks to use a public building to hold a meeting denouncing the government, their request should be granted. »), only 23 % agreed, however. In short, when the general principle was placed in a specific behavioral context, the general principle became irrelevant for many people.

The specification gap is particularly important in the legal context. The specific decisions and actions that are of interest to legal socialization occur in the social/political/legal arena of rules and their enforcement, of opportunities for civic action through the use of law, and of rights claims and other kinds of participation in legal processes. Personal moral values may affect these decisions and actions, but the content of behaviors that are governed by laws is a public matter. The authority of the community is central in such cases, both in terms of the formal authority of laws and in terms of informal authority represented by norms of behavior. Experiences with authority guide citizen expectations and shape the meaning of legal principles. Personal efficacy for the citizen goes beyond understanding and holding general public values. Therefore, not only do specific experiences in the legal arena have an impact on cognition, but also specific opportunities to act provide a behavioral context and test how strongly the values are held.

A third problem arises with what we call the justification gap. Not only do we assume that a person’s attitudes and reasoning are guides to his or her actions, but we also assume that they are both logically and empirically prior to behavior. Work by criminologists suggests that statements of motive are often justifications elaborated after the fact (Hartung, 1965 ; Scott and Lyman, 1968). Sykes and Matza (1957) analyzed verbal « techniques of neutralization » which are used by juveniles as a means of neutralizing illegal or immoral acts. They argue that these neutralizations can occur before or after the fact because they are conventional, socially learned locutions that encompass excuses or justifications. They function as a rationalization which neutralizes guilt after the fact, or they may neutralize disapproval before the fact. In both cases, the vocabulary of motives remains the same and cannot easily be distinguished as either causal or mere rationalization.

Hamlin (1988) has challenged this view, and the whole « motive as cause » analysis, by arguing that people often do not have reasons for their actions at all. He contends that most neutralizing language used by juveniles is after the fact justification because « [f]or many juveniles the actions they commit are not defined by them in moral terms until someone forces them to define their actions that way, or until someone else defines their actions for them ». This argument poses a « reasons for » gap that may be particular interesting to adherents of legal consciousness. We like to believe that human conduct is not reducible to the physical movements that constitute behaviors (Peters, 1958 ; Winch, 1958), so we look for the reasons a person might have for acting in a certain way. Hamlin’s argument suggests that moral justifications, in particular, are not only learned in the process of development but may also be imposed from outside the individual. There may be no « reason for » an illegal or immoral (or legal or moral) action at all, or there may be only those reasons supplied and imposed by the State.

The « reasons for » gap points an obvious path toward the morality gap, in which it is assumed that people who hold moral principles also act in accordance with them. While the « reasons for » gap raises the question of the source of moral principles, the morality gap raises the further question of whether moral principles have any relationship to moral action. Blasi, in his review of the literature on moral cognition and moral action, asserts that « [f]ew would disagree that morality ultimately lies in action and that the study of moral development should use action as the final criterion » (p. 1). He then goes on to report that many studies of the relationship between moral cognition and moral action fail to find a relationship. Blasi considers this an absurd conclusion, however, and suggests that the relationship may not be as simple and direct as the literature has assumed. He concludes that the solution to the morality gap is to find the intervening variables that mediate the relationship between moral reasoning and moral action. In their study of legal socialization, Cohn and White (1990) identified attitudes toward specific rules and their enforcement as variables that mediate between legal reasoning and action. Their findings suggest that the morality gap is bridged in specific situational contexts, but considerably more work is necessary in order to fully understand the impact of situational factors on the mediation process.

Finally, it is important to consider a possible political context gap, in which it is assumed that the extent and nature of political control determines whether or not people obey the law. Following the analysis of Hamlin (supra), and the notion of a mediating process anchored in the situational context, we can anticipate the possibility that we are all molded into political beings by our political environment. Many, probably including ourselves, would argue against such a view, but its possibility cannot be ruled out on the basis of the existing literature. We would argue that studies of legal consciousness, including studies of how legal concepts are formed and acquired, how legal identities develop, and how rights and duties are conceptualized, should be designed in such a way as to allow for the testing of hypotheses about the relationship of these cognitive factors to the legal contexts from which they come and in which they are used. These are empirical questions that cannot be answered satisfactorily by reference to theoretical assertions or assumptions.

The six gaps, taken together, suggest that important issues have yet to be addressed by most of the legal socialization literature. Can one be molded into a rule follower or a rule violator ? Is there room for individual autonomy in making moral and legal decisions ? What is the role played by concepts, attitudes and reasoning in moral and political action ? These questions cannot be answered without going beyond the study of legal consciousness to the connections between legal consciousness and its behavioral context.

The empirical evidence of a complex
relationship between thought and action

Studying how legal consciousness or reasoning is connected to behavior reveals many complexities. In order to investigate this, we conducted two studies which investigated this relation, the legal socialization study and the legal reasoning study. The legal socialization study (see Cohn & White, 1986, 1990) was a longitudinal quasi-experiment in which students living in one of four residence halls and a cohort of freshmen were interviewed in the beginning of the fall and the end of the spring semester. The legal reasoning study was one in which participants viewed a videotape of one of three mock hearings and then deliberated about the case. Below we describe the two studies in more detail, including their findings.

Legal socialization study

The purpose of this study was to conduct a quasi-experiment in which the relation between legal reasoning and behavior could be followed longitudinally over the course of an academic year. Among the many issues we explored in this study was the relation between legal reasoning and the behavioral context. We administered measures of legal reasoning (Tapp & Levine Rule-Law Interview (Levine & Tapp, 1977)) and behavior in the fall and the spring of the academic year. We were able to observe this relationship in different behavioral contexts (i.e., residence halls which differed in the rule-enforcing conditions) and in different kinds of people (i.e. rule-followers versus rule-violators and people who disapprove of enforcing rules against these behaviors versus people who approve of enforcing rules against these behaviors). Before describing the findings in detail, it is necessary to give a brief description of the subjects and method of the study.

The subjects included two different cohorts of students, 225 students (freshmen and upperclassmen) who lived in one of four experimental residence halls on campus and 500 randomly-selected freshmen who lived in a variety of other residence halls on campus. The major focus of campus life is « partying » behavior. Of the four experimental residence halls, two had contrasting rule enforcing conditions and two were control halls. We manipulated conditions in the two experimental halls by varying the level and consistency of rule enforcement in the two residence halls that were similar in size and population. In one (the external authority hall/condition), the hall staff and police strictly enforced all of the rules, including those prohibiting underage drinking, loud parties, drunkenness and other « partying » behaviors. Violators were disciplined by university boards established by the Dean of Students. Some faced criminal charges. In the other hall (the peer authority condition), the rules were enforced solely by an internal conduct board composed of residents who were selected by the group for that purpose. Enforcement in the control halls was representative of the prevailing practice in the residence system, and consisted primarily of loose, discretionary application of rules mixed with occasional crack-downs.

The methodology used in this study was a general survey and a quasi-experiment which included both quantitative and qualitative data. As mentioned above, the quasi-experiment consisted of studying respondents who lived in one of four residential settings, including two experimental and two control halls. In the beginning of the fall semester and the end of the spring semester, participants living in the four halls completed a series of scales to measure their legal development level (levels of legal reasoning), approval/disapproval of 24 rule-violating behaviors, approval/disapproval of enforcing rules against the same behaviors, and reported frequency of engaging in the behaviors. The behaviors, almost all of which violated state laws as well as university rules, ranged from cheating to vandalism and assault and were common behaviors in the residence halls. A list of the behaviors is provided in Table 1. We also collected a variety of qualitative data, including « duty logs » of all activities occurring in the residence halls, journals written by the resident assistants in both experimental residence halls, copies of all in-house and university rule violations, and transcripts of the hearings in the peer authority residence hall.

We were able to address several of the gaps in the relation between legal reasoning and behavior in the data collected. The most obvious question we could answer was the relation between legal reasoning and behavior. We were interested first in whether there was a direct or indirect relation between the two variables. We found very little evidence for a direct relation between legal reasoning and behavior ; instead there was an indirect relation in which legal attitudes/norms mediated the relation (Table 2). Legal reasoning was related to legal attitudes which then were related to legal behavior. What this suggests is that legal action does not follow directly from legal reasoning. It is critical to consider the mediating variables that affect the relationship. In this study, those mediating variables were attitudes toward enforcing rules against different kinds of behaviors. The attitudes represent the impact of the behavioral context.

In addition to attitudes toward the behavioral context as mediating variables, one can look at the behavioral context itself as a mediating variable. Each of our two experimental residence halls formed a different behavioral context for the relation between reasoning and behavior. We found differences between our two rule-enforcing environments, the peer authority and the external authority conditions. We found more evidence for a direct link between legal reasoning and behavior among individuals living in the peer authority environment where they could participate in law enforcement decisions than among individuals living in the environment where they experienced strict, authoritarian rule enforcement (see Table 2). Rule violating behavior and approval/disapproval of the behavior decreased in the peer authority condition and increased in the external authority condition. Approval/disapproval of enforcing rules against the same behaviors increased in the peer authority environment and decreased in the external authority environment.

One can also determine if there are individual differences in the relation between legal reasoning and behaviors. We compared the relation between legal reasoning and behavior when one is in conflict with the law (i.e. a rule violator or one who disapproves of enforcing rules) versus when one is not in conflict with the law (i.e. a rule follower or one who approves of enforcing rules). We found that the relations between legal reasoning and behaviors were the same regardless of whether one was in conflict with the law.

Finally we were interested in testing the direction of the relation between legal reasoning and legal action /behavior. The assumption among cognitive developmentalists has been that legal reasoning comes first and then legal action/behavior follows. The findings can be found in Table 2. In our study, legal reasoning followed from behavior. This suggests that reasoning may be a justification and not a cause for action. Although not entirely conclusive, our evidence suggests that legal action/behavior comes before legal reasoning, which emphasizes the impact of the behavioral context on reasoning.

A limitation of this first legal socialization study was that we only had two static self-report measures of legal reasoning administered in the fall and in the spring. In order to better understand how reasoning is affected by the behavioral context, we were interested in studying the actual process of legal reasoning by observing participants actually engaged in active legal reasoning. We have evidence that we could learn a great deal from that process by observing what occurred in our conduct board in the peer authority community. In the legal reasoning study, we had subjects view one of three videotapes of conduct board hearings that varied the behavioral context of the rule violation.

Legal reasoning study

The purpose of the second study was to explore how legal reasoning operates in three different behavioral contexts. Specifically we were interested in studying the process by which individuals reason about legal matters after viewing one of three videotapes of mock hearings. Before discussing the findings, we will describe the subjects and the methodology.

The 306 subjects (160 females, 146 males) participated in a two session study. The methodology used in this study was both quantitative and qualitative. Large groups of students were administered a set of questions, including the moral development, legal development, and just world scales as well as demographic questions. Then small groups of six to eight students came into the laboratory to view one of three different videotapes of mock hearings : a physical assault case, a alcohol bottle throwing case, and a sexual harassment case. Each videotape was a mock hearing involving the person bring the charges, the person being charged and their witnesses presenting their testimony about what happened to the members of the conduct board. The conduct board had the opportunity to ask questions of the people testifying. Each mock hearing was based on an actual case. After viewing the videotape, participants individually completed a predeliberation questionnaire which assessed their reactions to the videotape. Then each group was videotaped as they deliberated about the defendant’s guilt or innocence in the case. Finally each subject individually completed a questionnaire which assessed the final reactions to the case by the individual and his or her group.

In this study, we investigated the gaps between legal reasoning and behavior from a very different perspective. Each of the three mock hearings involved a different behavioral context which was varied to reflect the norms of the community (a detail description of each case is provided in the Appendix). The physical assault case is an example of a normal prosecution, in which the norm and rule coincide. In a normal prosecution case, the norm in the community is to disapprove of the rule-violating behavior (i.e., physical assault) and approve of rule enforcement against the behavior. In contrast, the bottle throwing case is an example of a deviant prosecution case in which the norm and rule diverge. The norm in the community for this kind of rule violating behavior (i.e., bottle throwing) is to approve of the rule violating behavior and disapprove of rule enforcement. Finally, the sexual harassment case represents a deviant grievance case in which the community is divided over the norm of behavior and the rule is rarely enforced. Some members of the community approve of the rule violation ; while others disapprove of the rule violation. The actual deliberations about the cases reveal the process of legal reasoning.

This study provides rich and abundant data to investigate the relation between legal reasoning and legal behavior. In addition to the actual transcripts of the deliberations, we have legal development measures of the participants and responses to standardized questions both before and after the participants deliberated.

A critical question one can ask is whether the participants reacted differently to the three mock hearings which represented three behavioral contexts. Subjects were asked to define the behavior in each mock hearing according to its seriousness both before they deliberated and after they deliberated about the mock hearing they viewed (see Table 3). They indicated how they defined the mock hearings : fighting (less serious) versus assault (more serious) for the physical assault case, game versus vandalism for the bottle throwing case, and joking versus assault for the sexual harassment case. Both before and after the deliberation, a majority of participants defined the behavior in the physical assault case more seriously (i.e., an assault) ; while a majority of participants defined the behavior in the bottle throwing hearing less seriously (i.e., a joke). The majority defined the behavior differently before and after the deliberation about the sexual harassment mock hearing : less seriously (i.e., a joke) before and more seriously (i.e., sexual harassment) after the deliberation. These findings suggest that participants do define the seriousness of the behavior differently depending on the behavioral context. Participants were asked whether the accused was guilty or not guilty of the two charges in the mock hearing and how certain they were about their decision. The guilty or not guilty charge was weighted by the certainty of their decision. The data can be found in Table 4. The most striking changes are in the physical assault case and the sexual harassment case. In the physical assault case, participants are less certain about the fighting charge after the deliberation. In contrast, in the sexual harassment case, subjects report much more certainty about guilt regarding the sexual harassment charge in the post deliberation. The changes are much less striking in the bottle throwing case. This again suggests that participants reacted differently to the three behavioral contexts.

In addition to the quantitative findings described above, we were interested in the number and kinds of stories that our participants would use to understand our mock hearings. An interesting way to study the relationship between reasoning and behavior is to investigate what was said in the actual deliberations. We transcribed and analyzed the content of the 45 group deliberations. We used the strategy of the story model (Hastie, Penrod, & Pennington, 1983 ; Pennington, 1981) to understand the reasoning demonstrated by the participants discussing the videotape of the mock hearing. This model which has been used in analyzing jury deliberations argues that stories organize information to help jurors obtain a plausible psychological account of the events to help them integrate the facts of the case and render a decision of guilty or innocent.

For the purpose of this part of the paper, we will concentrate on the sexual harassment case. In the majority of the 15 groups, two sets of stories of the events were constructed. In some groups, only one set of stories of the events was adopted by the group.

The two conflicting sets of stories constructed by jurors in the sexual harassment case included one set of stories which were sympathetic to the victim Linda, the person bringing the charges and another set of stories which were sympathetic to the perpetrator Kevin, the person being charged. Examples of the elements of the two different stories are presented in Table 3. The set of stories which favored Linda focused on the fact that both Linda and the Hall Director has talked to the accused, Kevin, about the problem. Kevin had a bad attitude, he was immature and cocky, he could not discipline himself enough, and he had no respect for women. The set of stories which favored Kevin focused on the fact that the incident was an accident intended as a joke. Making reference to one’s body is not a big deal ; it happens all the time in the residence hall. This incident was a function of Kevin’s personality ; his joking is how he shows his friendliness. There seemed to be a personality clash between Kevin and Linda. Linda seemed to blow the incident out of proportion and did not know how to deal with it.

For some of the groups, the participants constructed one set of stories that they maintained as they reasoned about the case. Here is an example :

« But, um, which ever way either of them interprets the sexual harassment or assault, she told him quite a few times, she told him enough times, and it bothered her enough to get a hall director. And that just seems to me to be important enough that whether he had a bad day or not, just the fact that he was in the hall director’s office to have him talk to him about it and to tell him that she was thinking of resigning from her job. That should have been important enough, it shouldn’t have mattered whether he had a bad day, and she shouldn’t have to be physically harmed, or bruised, or anything, to be sexually harassed. It should be clear to him after having gone into the office and after having been told by the R.A. Whether it was a few times like he said, or as many as ten times as she said, he even admitted at the end that he said it had to have been about once every three days ».

For other groups, the participants constructed two sets of conflicting stories. Some members maintained the innocence of the defendant and said he was joking around ; other members of the same group argued about the innocence or guilt of the defendant during the reasoning process in the deliberation. Here are examples :

« Obviously there were two different stories. One was that he purposely intended to jump on top of her when she fell to the ground. And obviously his story is that, you know, he fell and in order to make it seem, you know, a little bit cool when he fell... he made this joke. I can easily see myself saying something like, « We have to stop meeting this way » or something like that ».

« I really don’t know what to say about that. I think that he should have got the picture that she really wasn’t hip to what he was doing... but then again, you know, I’ve seen it happen a lot what he did ».

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to explain why one can not ignore the behavioral context and assume that there is a direct relationship between reasoning and behavior. Focusing on the reasoning process alone ignores the complexity of the relationship between reasoning and behavior. We demonstrate both theoretical and empirical evidence for the complexity.

In the theoretical part of the paper, we argue that there are six gaps that make one question whether behavior automatically follows from reasoning. Each of these gaps considers problems of ignoring the behavior. The evidence cited suggests that the study of legal socialization is oversimplified if one focuses only on reasoning. By examining the relationship between reasoning and behavior, one can begin to understand the factors that limit the direct relationship.

In the empirical part of the paper, we focused on some of the factors that limit the direct relationship between reasoning and behavior. In the legal socialization study, we found that the relationship was not direct ; instead norms about rule-violating behaviors and norms about enforcement mediate the relationship. In future research, it would be helpful to explore other variables that might mediate this relationship. There may be other attitudinal scales that may be important to consider. We might ask subjects about their behavioral tendencies to engage in certain kinds of behavior. For example, what is the likelihood that you would steal something ?

The only behavioral context in which reasoning and behavior showed some direct relationship was the peer authority condition where residents ran their own judicial system. Only in this environment did students get actively involved in rule enforcement. It would be interesting to study the connection between reasoning and behavior in communities that have some form of dispute resolution such as mediation (Cohn & Neyhart, 1991). An interesting study would be to survey the participants in Boston’s « multi-door » approach. Where mediation is an alternative to a jury trial (Sander, 1976). One would predict that the direct relationship between reasoning and behavior will only be seen in the participants in mediation. People who opt for a jury trial may feel less engaged in the legal system and will not demonstrate a direct relationship between reasoning and behavior.

We also found that rule followers and rule violators did not differ in the relationship between reasoning and norms of behavior and norms of enforcement. This provides additional support that behavior does not directly follow from reasoning. To explore this finding more, it might be helpful to replicate the study in other settings. In our sample, the majority of respondents did not engage in serious rule violation but did engage in less serious rule violation regarding alcohol consumption. It would be interesting to interview respondents in communities where there is more of a range of serious rule violations and alcohol violations.

The final but very important finding of the legal socialization study was that we found support for the behavioral model with reasoning following from the behavior. The assumption has been that behavior follows from reasoning. This suggests support for the justification gap in which reasoning is not a cause but a justification for behavior. It means that it is critical to consider the behavior in studying legal reasoning. This finding is reminiscent of Bem’s (1967) criticism of Festinger & Carlsmith’s (1959) study of cognitive dissonance. Festinger and Carlsmith argued that attitudes led to behavior ; while Bem argued that behavior led to attitudes. The argument was finally resolved by Fazio, Zanna and Cooper (1977) who found that both theories were correct depending on the domain. Although there is more support for the behavioral model, Table 2 shows that there is also support for the cognitive model for certain kinds of behavior.

In the legal reasoning study, we found the behavioral context affected people’s definition of seriousness of the behaviors and their judgment of certainty about the two charges. An explanation can be found in the nature of the cases. The physical assault case was selected as a control case, because there was an agreement between the norms and rules ; people disapproved of the behavior and approved of rule enforcement. It makes sense that participants would agree about the behavior being more serious. In contrast, the bottle throwing case was selected, because there was disagreement between the norms and rule ; people approved of the behavior but disapproved of rule enforcement. Again it was understandable that participants would agree that the behavior was less serious. Only in the sexual harassment case was there a case of competing norms ; some people approved of the behaviors and others disapproved of the behavior. It may be in such a situation where participants change their definition of the situation from less serious to more serious. Evidence of the competing norms can be seen in the conflicting stories constructed by most of the jurors who viewed the sexual harassment mock hearing.

The importance of this paper was to demonstrate that the behavioral context is critical to our understanding of legal reasoning. Taking behavior seriously led us to understand that reasoning is more complex than previously thought. Exploring the factors affecting the relationship between reasoning and behavior can open up new areas for thinking about how individuals learn to be responsible for their actions. In sum, taking behavior seriously implies a better understanding of legal socialization processes.

Table 1
List of Rule-Violating Behaviors

Table 2
 Path Analytic Models Based on the Direct
and Mediating Behavioral and Cognitive Models

Table 3
Frequencies of Definitions of Cases
during Predeliberation and Postdeliberation

Table 4
Mean Degree of Guilt Certainty Predeliberation
and Postdeliberation by Case

Table 5
Elements of the Two Stories
about the Sexual Harassment Case

Favoring Linda, the Person Bringing the Charges

He had been asked to stop twice

She warned him repeatedly

He seemed really immature... his reaction to the whole thing

The Hall Director talked to him

He violated her privacy

He had a bad attitude - he was cocky

He would have known she was bothered

He had no respect for girls

His attitude toward women is absolutely off the line

Pulling bra straps is not appropriate behavior for someone in college

I find it hard to believe he would have fallen right on top of her

He couldn’t discipline himself enough

He might not be so innocent

Favoring Kevin, The Person Being Charged

It was intended jokingly

It was an accident

Making reference to your body is no big deal - people do it all the time

It’s something you get used to living in the dorm

It doesn’t offend other people on the floor

He was only a freshman

He was a jokester

It’s his personality ; that’s how he’s friendly

Linda definitely overreacted

She didn’t know how to deal with the problem

She couldn’t handle the situation she was in

She was either upset by the phone call or what he did

She blew it out of proportion

They don’t understand each other

It seemed more like a personal clash - she really disliked him beforehand

It really boils down to a conflict of personalities

You can see that the Hall Director wasn’t very prepared for his job

Description of Three Mock Hearing Cases

The first, the physical assault case, occurs when a male student and his girlfriend are waiting in line outside a food concession truck. Another male student who is in class with the girlfriend is talking to some friends near the truck. He decides to say hello to the girlfriend as well as put his arm around her. The boyfriend is so outraged by the action that he fights with the male classmate of his girlfriend. The victim is so badly beaten that hospitalization is required.

The second, the bottle throwing case, occurs when the car windshield of a student is smashed by a beer bottle thrown from a sixth floor room. Throwing beer bottles from that room is a common game – « hit the dumpster » – engaged in by many residents. The victim’s car happened to be parked next to the dumpster. The victim could identify the room window from which the bottles were thrown and the unusual beer bottle which hit her windshield (which matched the beer being drunk in that room). Occupants of the room admit throwing bottles but deny hitting the car.

The third, the sexual harassment and assault case, occurs when a female Resident Assistant charges a male resident with sexual harassment and assault. He is accused of a series of actions toward her over the period of a semester including making suggestive remarks, putting his arm around her repeatedly, snapping her bra, etc. He is also charged with coming into her room, closing the door, refusing to leave and pulling her to the floor as she tries to leave.

Bibliographie

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L’auteur

Ellen S. COHN

Ellen S. Cohn est Professeur associé de psychologie à l’Université de New Hampshire. Elle a obtenu en 1978 un titre de docteur en psychologie sociale à Temple University. Ses publications les plus récentes comprennent un ouvrage réalisé avec Susan O. White, Legal socialization : A study of norms and rules (La socialisation juridique : une recherche sur les normes et les règles) et un chapitre « Taking reasoning seriously » (Prendre le raisonnement au sérieux) qui doit paraître dans Advances in Criminological Theory (Les avancées de la théorie criminologique). Ses centres d’intérêt en matière de recherche concernent la socialisation juridique, le raisonnement juridique et l’attribution de la responsabilité en matière de viol commis soit dans le cadre conjugal, soit dans le cadre d’une relation amicale.

Susan O. WHITE

Susan O. White est Professeur de science politique à l’Université de New Hampshire. Elle a obtenu en 1970 à l’Université du Minnesota un titre de docteur en science politique et en droit public. Ses centres d’intérêt en matière de recherche portent sur l’application de la loi, le respect de la loi, la socialisation juridique et le raisonnement juridique. Ses publications récentes comprennent Legal socialization : A study of norms and rules (La socialisation juridique : une recherche sur les normes et les règles) et « Taking reasoning seriously » (Prendre le raisonnement au sérieux) dans Advances in Criminological Theory (Les avancées de la théorie criminologique), publications réalisées en collaboration avec Ellen Cohn.

* Université de New Hampshire (USA). Départements de Psychologie et de Science Politique.