How Do Laws Shape Our Beliefs?
Check out Postdoc Fellow Mikaela Spruill’s new paper about "legal enculturation" - a framework for how laws shape people’s beliefs and perceptions.
Psychology and law research has mostly examined how individuals shape the law, through jury decisions, eyewitness testimony, policy attitudes. Spruill's paper flips that question and asks: how does the law shape us? Using examples, from redlining in the U.S. to housing policy in Singapore, and interdisciplinary scholarship, she shows how living under a legal system, generation after generation, teaches people what's normal, who's valued, and how they should see themselves and others - i.e., the process of legal enculturation.
Importantly, legal inequity doesn't just harm the groups it targets - it also shapes how others see the world, leading to false beliefs about inequality and limiting empathy.
Read the full paper here: The Law Shapes the Mind
