Self-Presentation and Legal Socialization in Society: Available Messages about Personal Tax Audits

Research has shown that direct experience of legal authorities' unfairness or rudeness lowers unfairly treated individuals' support for legal authorities in general and fosters noncompliance with laws. Many people, however, get information about legal authorities and institutions indirectl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law & society review 1994-01, Vol.28 (4), p.859-895
Main Authors: Stalans, Loretta J., Kinsey, Karyl A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audit
Auditing
Communication audits
Compliance
Factors
Fairness
Income tax
Law
Law enforcement
Management audits
Oregon
Payments
Perceptions
Prejudice
Prior convictions
Public Officials
Self Presentation
Sharing Legal Knowledge: Taxpayers' Tales
Social interaction
Social networking
Social research
Social status
Socialization
Tax audits
Taxation
Taxpaying
Temporal currency
U.S.A
USA
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Summary:Research has shown that direct experience of legal authorities' unfairness or rudeness lowers unfairly treated individuals' support for legal authorities in general and fosters noncompliance with laws. Many people, however, get information about legal authorities and institutions indirectly through conversations with others. To highlight the possible ripple effects of specific enforcement contacts on the general population's support for authorities, we compare what taxpayers said happened in their tax audit interviews with what they tell other members of their social network. Because people are most concerned about others' image of them, this motivation for communication often weakens a bias toward negative messages. Our findings demonstrate that messages about fairness of decisionmaking, favorability of outcomes, and dignity more closely approximate the distribution of the sample of audited taxpayers' perceptions. We found support, however, for a bias toward negative messages in two situations: messages about instrumental quality and in the rare circumstance when taxpayers received undignified treatment and favorable outcomes. In this circumstance, the message does not have connotations for one's own image. We discuss the implications for legal socialization and the reservoir of societal support for legal authorities and institutions.
ISSN:0023-9216
1540-5893
DOI:10.2307/3054000