Why do we view the police to be legitimate? Examining shame-sanction emotions on perception of police legitimacy

The current goal of the study was to expand the police legitimacy literature by investigating shame-sanction emotion as a mediator of procedural justice and police effectiveness on the perception of legitimacy to see if one's shame tendencies have any impact on police legitimacy constructs using a South Korean college sample (n = 2188). The results indicate that procedural justice and police effectiveness were still the main drivers of police legitimacy that led to an increase in sense of obligation to obey and cooperate with the police. Most importantly, albeit smaller in magnitude, Shame emotion was also a significant predictor of legitimacy, and had a small yet significant indirect effect on the obligation to obey and cooperate with the police. Practical policy implications are provided at the end.