I. Do We Know the Laws We Follow: Legal Knowledge and Compliance?

For law to change behavior, one must know the law. The notion that legal knowledge is essential—both to empower and deter individuals—is widely accepted.Footnote ¹⁷ But how successful are states in disseminating legal information? When we consider legal awareness, what does that mean? Inquiring into whether there is legal awareness is an essential step between law and behavioral change that is often missed. More often than not, both compliance and non-compliance are presumed to be willful obeyance, or not, of the law. There exists a presumption of legal knowledge and an intention to comply with it when a driver stops at a red light. Could that not merely have been a consequence of the car in front stopping, or cross-traffic?

In 2008, a study conducted in Germany highlighted that only a third of the sample population had heard of the comprehensive workplace harassment law that had been passed two years prior, and another fifteen percent knew of—but not precisely what—the law set out.Footnote ¹⁸ Similar results have been achieved in the United States and UK as well.Footnote ¹⁹ Most people do not know the content of the laws or their procedures. An empirical study conducted on consumer protection laws and housing laws on English and Welsh citizens indicated that most individuals were not aware of their rights under the legislation.Footnote ²⁰ It was true irrespective of whether the law was more or less relevant to them—in other words between tenants and houseowners. Lack of legal knowledge is higher among individuals from more vulnerable socio-economic communities, like the poor or immigrants.Footnote ²¹ This is problematic, especially considering how often governments rely on legal solutions to address socio-economic problems and empower the vulnerable.

It is abundantly clear, in studies as well as our own anecdotal experiences, that legal knowledge is not easily accessible by most individuals whose behavior it intends to impact. In a world with increasingly complex regulatory framework for governance, there seems to be a systemic misprediction about the content of the law by individuals governed by the law.Footnote ²² This may be motivated by multiple reasons. It may be intentional to avoid cognitive dissonance between one’s lived experiences and the law where the two diverge significantly.Footnote ²³ It may qualify as rational ignorance where the cost of acquiring the precise information is too high given the benefits.Footnote ²⁴ It can simply be lack of access to accurate and accessible information in a timely manner.

Questioning the assumption of perfect legal awareness of individuals is an important first step towards identifying what could motivate compliance or non-compliance to a law. If not always by directly learning about the law, how do individuals decide whether to comply with the law? In the next section, this Article aims to provide one such explanation of regulatory compliance in the presence of limited legal information—behavior of others within our social network.

II. Deciding Under Imperfect Information Condition: A Cognitive Explanation

Law is not unique in its dilemma as to how individuals decide between alternative behavioral choices under imperfect information conditions. Political science, economics, sociology, and psychology have all explored the issue from their own unique methodological prism.Footnote ²⁵ It requires an understanding of how our brain processes the limited information it has access to in order to arrive at conclusions. Decision theory—where an individual’s informational and computational capacities is limited to the environment he exists in—was first academically explored at length by Herbert Simon in 1955.Footnote ²⁶ He is credited for coining the term “bounded rationality,” which provided an alternative modeling for decision-making where the mind utilizes the information and the structural information of their environment to arrive at an optimal decision.Footnote ²⁷

Recognizing that a legal agent’s informational and computational capacities are limited aids in understanding why social perceptions about law and its enforcement become relevant. When faced with a decision, an individual—aware of their lack of complete information—relies on the behavior of others as a tool to help guide their own behavior.Footnote ²⁸ It results in what has been described by behavioral economists as “herding behavior.”Footnote ²⁹ We have a natural tendency to trust decisions of others—and the reasons why others chose the behavior they chose is not always relevant for this impact.Footnote ³⁰ Movie and restaurant reviews, both online and in-person recommendations, are everyday examples of an individual’s perception being impacted by the decisions of others. Literature on financial bubbles, trends, fashion fads, and marketing strategies all rely on aspects of social proof to explain frequently observed phenomena.Footnote ³¹ Even popular media like “canned laughter” or marketing gimmicks like “the most popular or trusted brand” relies on the power of social proof.Footnote ³²

Utilizing others behavior around us as a proxy for missing information may be an active decision, such as when we arrive in a new country and are unsure of their civic processes, or when new traders rely on the behavior of seasoned investors to determine their investment strategy.Footnote ³³ This tendency to “imitate behavior” arises from an active acknowledgment by an individual about one’s own lack of information.Footnote ³⁴ It acts as a proxy for all the information that the individual does not possess. Banerjee explained imitation, or, tendency to herd in stock markets, as a suspicion or expectation on the part of the individual player that the others may have certain private information that is not publicly accessible yet.Footnote ³⁵ When it is an active choice to utilize the behavior of others as an information proxy, it could, in theory, be easier to alter one’s decision with accurate and updated information. Nonetheless, as this Article discusses in a later section, this may not always be possible in situations with network externalities and path dependencies. The instability and superficiality of fashion fads and financial bubbles are often explained through such easy shifts in decisions.Footnote ³⁶

More often than not, however, herd behavior, or following one’s peers, constitutes part of our tacit knowledge—in other words we are more likely to intuitively know how to imitate rather than know why we imitate.Footnote ³⁷ It is a heuristic—or a cognitive shortcut—that our brain relies on to address situations.Footnote ³⁸ Gigerenzer and Goldstien described “imitation as the fast and frugal heuristic in social situations.”Footnote ³⁹ It is more complicated to impact behavior with updated information when the decision is a result of a heuristic rather than an active decision.

Therefore, as individuals, the reason why we have a tendency to imitate the behavior of others around us is clear. It is a frequently chosen behavioral preference. When it comes to law, in its weakest assertion, this would imply that the behavior of others around us with respect to the law will have some impact on our decision to comply. The “behavior of others” in reference to the legal rule can inform our perception as to the effectiveness of the law and its implementation, what the precise law is, and so forth. At its strongest, we would replicate the behavior of others without considering the content of the law.

There have been multiple experimental studies to indicate how compliance with laws is impacted by social proof of others’ compliance. Individuals are more likely to throw a scrap paper in the dustbin if they witness someone else doing the same soon before, or if the environment in which they are in is sufficiently clean.Footnote ⁴⁰ People tend to comply with tax laws better if they perceive that others within their tax bracket are also complying with the law.Footnote ⁴¹ People spend more effort returning a lost wallet if they are informed that someone else did so too.Footnote ⁴² How seriously one perceives the risk of marijuana consumption in states where it is illegal, or how seriously one perceives the risk of underage drinking, largely depends on the social proof they receive from peers around them.Footnote ⁴³

These are examples where there is a greater focus on informational social influence or social proof. Though there may be elements of normative social influence as well—one may be likely to consume certain substances if they believe it helps them “fit better” in the group. However, it still does not take away from the informational social influence with respect to the law, in other words it is clearly safe to consume a substance despite its illegality, if no one around seems to suffer any legal consequences.

There is an additional social influence often ignored in our theoretical discussions on legal compliance but frequently highlighted in empirical investigations. Legal compliance is not always binary, neither is knowledge of law.Footnote ⁴⁴ When an individual provides in a survey that they know of “sexual harassment laws,” does it imply they know what “sexual harassment” means under the law? Studies indicate that most people who are aware of a law often fill in the details of the law in accordance with their own understandings of “what they think is legal or illegal.” In a recent empirical study on what employees thought constituted “sexual harassment” under law, unsurprisingly, the interpretation was dependent on an individual’s personal perception as well as social interactions in workplace.Footnote ⁴⁵ In family law, a survey done in the United States indicated that individuals interpreted “parental responsibility” to mean who gets property in the instanc e of an unplanned death of a spouse, the differences in responsibility under legal cohabitation, and the legalities surrounding marriage.Footnote ⁴⁶ Multiple studies have similarly concluded across disciplines, such as criminal and employment law, that the individual expectations of what the law says is more closely aligned with the social attitude—and their expectations—of what the law ought to say, rather than what it actually says.Footnote ⁴⁷ Behavior of those around us provides us with both informational and normative evidence as to how we interpret the laws we hear. Therefore, we utilize the behavior of others around us not only to decide whether or not to comply with a law but also to determine what compliance means.

So far, this Article follows, to some extent, the explanation put forward by the social influence conception of deterrence—that observing behaviors of others can influence our decisions. In fact, it extends the scope of informational social influence beyond criminal law to policy at large. Nonetheless, to conclude that developing the understanding of social proof here would be a problematic over-simplification of the complex socio-cognitive phenomenon. In the next section, this Article develops the concept of how social proof manifests within a society. It operationalizes the concept within a society and in the context of legal compliance.

I. Group Identities: Who Matters?

Individual belief and perception of the world are acquired not by independent verification of the facts in the real world, but from social sources regarded as legitimate.Footnote ⁴⁸ This section of the Article deals with what individuals are likely to consider legitimate social sources. Cialdini summarized it best in his “Rules of Persuasion”—people listen to others like them.Footnote ⁴⁹ Therefore, the initial explanation for our behavior that this Article begins with, that “everyone else was doing it,” is often simply “everyone else around me was doing it.”

It is simple and intuitive. Our mind cannot process behaviors it does not observe—including those outside of our social network. This notion is also supported through multiple experimental studies. Studies show that young people are more likely to disregard the choices of older people.Footnote ⁵⁰ In a study, New Yorkers were more likely to embark on a more serious attempt to return wallets when they were informed that another New Yorker had attempted to do so—as compared to New Yorkers being informed that another foreigner had made similar attempts.Footnote ⁵¹ It is, therefore, important to understand that social proof is not always synonymous with trusting the majority. The trust will more strongly be placed on the social network that one relies on or identifies with.Footnote ⁵²

The relevant social network, in fact, evolves for each of us as the nature of law and relevant behavior changes. When faced with a decision, the individual will categorize the problem based on its salient characteristics—as the individual identifies them in a given situation—and this categorization will help identify the social group relevant for deciding, enabling the individual to arrive at his conclusion on how to act, based on a comparison of the popular belief within the identified group.Footnote ⁵³ The group may vary depending on the categorization of the decision type. For example, on how strictly to adhere to an office dress code, the behavior of co-workers is more relevant. And while deciding on whether to segregate the garbage, the behavior of those we share community bins with becomes more relevant. Accordingly, there is no one monolithic group relevant for social proof.Footnote ⁵⁴ In a study conducted to observe energy consumption, it was observed that households adjusted their consumption when information was shared about the energy consumption of their neighbors.Footnote ⁵⁵ For this decision, households within the community constituted the relevant social group irrespective of how close-knit a community was.

Identities are fluid and change according to situations and context. In fact, the sense of group identity and the instinct to mimic behavior can even be artificially influenced. Experiments indicate that subtle priming, where certain characteristics of groups are highlighted by the experimenter, can cause individuals to imitate or align their behaviors with others possessing such characteristics despite not necessarily sharing strong group identities with these individuals outside of the experiment.Footnote ⁵⁶ These types of “identity priming” techniques are often utilized in policy debates by framing issues around group identities where individuals are more likely to agree or disagree with a given policy stance when one changes the group that constitutes the relevant social network for influence.Footnote ⁵⁷ Research indicates that merely mentioning an identity increases the salience of the interests and behavioral preferences of that group—thereby making it the relevant sample for social proof—without any specification on how such policies or laws impact that group.Footnote ⁵⁸

Similarly, there are experiments where spontaneous groups are randomly selected, and although these groups are not natural groups, they still exhibit stronger tendency of behavior alignment within these artificial groups.Footnote ⁵⁹ Once a group identity is created, there is a stronger tendency to imitate, even in the absence of a cohesive group identity.Footnote ⁶⁰

These are important nuances to social proof that should be of importance for law makers and regulators: (a) people look at people like themselves to form their own perception of the law; (b) the identity of “self” is transient and differs in different contexts; and (c) different identities of the self can be triggered in different situations, which may create completely different behavioral responses, despite adhering to the principle of social proof.

This has some direct repercussions on legal compliance. From a policy standpoint, the individuals relevant for determining one’s social proof of compliance also help determine how to effectively focus resource allocation for increased compliance. First, it highlights that localized information dissemination with local examples of successful compliance and enforcement are more likely to be successful than nation-wide advertisement campaigns—especially in larger countries with diverse populations and stronger group identities.Footnote ⁶¹ Recent comparative empirical research on compliance in weak state situations highlights how weak states—meaning states with limited capacity for traditional enforcement—can in fact considerably increase compliance by adopting effective strategies of legal knowledge dissemination.Footnote ⁶²

Second, it highlights that one effective means of disseminating legal information given our discussion on the role of reference networks is through exemplifying local examples. Local examples of compliance and non-compliance as well as associated consequences influences our perception in two ways. First, it provides us with more information, directly reducing informational uncertainty. Second, it alters our existing information by altering the information received through social proof. Witnessing increased compliance to traffic laws in urban areas, in general, or another city has little influence on one’s decision to comply with the law. Similarly, discussing the benefits of legal compliance or the potential harm from non-compliance is less forceful if those around an individual are often, and without consequence, ignoring the law.

Does this discussion suggest that there should be high levels of compliance across all identifiable groups to reach the “everyone” in “everyone is doing so?” How many individual cases of compliance within one’s group constitute sufficient evidence for “social proof?” The following section discusses what our brains need to form their own conclusions in terms of the quantity and quality of “social proof.”

II. Law of Small Numbers and Availability Heuristic: How Many People Are Needed to Persuade Us?

Another way in which our brains manage deciding with limited information is through its tendency to generalize from small sample spaces. It is a cognitive fallacy when we presume a small set of examples are representative of a much larger set, sometimes even the entire population.Footnote ⁶³ For our purposes, this Article assumes that very limited experiences of our own, if within our social network, are sufficient for us to conclude the efficacy of the legal system and the usefulness of the specific law or even laws in general—regardless of whether or not most individuals comply with the law. This number can be as small as one. Consider how often we have heard explanations for decisions starting with “I heard someone did/say . . . .”Footnote ⁶⁴ The causal jump from “someone/some people are doing so” to “everyone/most people must be doing so” is made by our cognitive ability to generalize, even from an unrepresentative and small sample of information.

Therefore, the number of responses one observes before deciding to emulate the behavior of his peers could be a very small number. But whose behavior is more relevant and what choices play a more important role in forming an individual’s perception of “what people do” is impacted by another cognitive limitation of our brains—the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic refers to the excessive weightage our brain associates with more easily retrievable or recent memories and information.Footnote ⁶⁵

Considerable empirical work on how availability heuristics impact decisions was conducted in risk studies. In a famous empirical study where the risk perceptions of individuals were evaluated, the presence of availability heuristic through media coverage of different incidents in decision-making was strongly observed.Footnote ⁶⁶ Eighty percent of individuals considered accidental deaths to be more deadly than strokes even though strokes cause twice as many deaths. Tornadoes were considered more dangerous than asthma even though the latter kills twenty times more people. Death by an accident was considered 300 times more likely than death by diabetes, even though diabetes caused four times the number of deaths than accidents. The study concluded that events which were given greater media coverage were considered more likely to occur than not. For social proof, the study implied that scandals within the community would be more likely to be remembered.

The availability heuristic implies that we are likely to ignore the actual probability of something happening in favor of the few incidents we do remember. Cass Sunstein, in his analysis of policies on terrorism termed the phenomenon of “probability neglect,” argued that there is a stronger tendency of public mobilization and demand for regulation of emotionally charged issues, even if there are more urgent and relevant policy matters with lesser emotional appeal.Footnote ⁶⁷ He considered it to be a manifestation of the availability heuristic. As we tend to remember more strongly incidents that are associated more closely with certain emotions, we are more emotionally invested in issues that are more likely to suffer from probability neglect.Footnote ⁶⁸

Understanding the availability heuristic is essential for the theory of social proof because that initial “I heard someone did/say . . .” explanation for our behavior is more likely to be guided by a memory or story which happened to someone close to us, was highly publicized, or emotionally impacted us. Between national data on corruption and a recent experience of a sibling successfully bribing a police officer, the latter is more likely to inform an individual’s decision on whether one should offer up a bribe to a traffic warden for not wearing a seat belt. If an individual successfully bribes an officer or hears about such corruption from peers, it is more likely to color one’s own perception of legal accountability of government servants than any available statistics on improving accountability of the legal institutions.

The cognitive abilities of our brain to give more weight to individual events over statistical probabilities provides resource-strapped countries with an alternative solution on how to improve perception of stronger legal enforcement by publicizing incidents of local enforcement. This would effectively involve individuals who are central to various social networks and equipping them with adequate information. Any information received through these people and platforms is more likely to leave a lasting memory than generic legal advertisements. Decentralizing legal information dissemination and creating public examples are key to creating a perception of compliance.

In a dynamic equilibrium, these perceptions could create a self-fulfilling cycle, where the perception of law determines the success or failure of the law and each of these successes or failures further entrenches the perception of the law. This cascading effect of social proof across the society and across multiple laws is discussed in the following section.

I. Informational Cascades Within a Law

If enough people believe that other people do something, enough people will do the same thing over time. The initial mistaken belief comes to indicate the reality over time as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, to explain the term “self-fulfilling” prophecy, Robert Merton, who is credited for coining the phrase, used an illustration involving informational social influence itself—the actual collapse of a bank because the bank’s customers feared the bank was collapsing.Footnote ⁶⁹

The principle of social proof suggests that we are influenced by the behavior of those around us even in the absence of any normative motivations. But unlike an academic who analyzes patterns ex-post, most individuals cannot observe the behavior of the aggregate in real time or predict which behavior will turn out to be the dominant pattern within their social network. Our decisions are made on the basis of following some decisions that we have observed, known of, or heard about, in a situation similar to ours. These experiences can be a product of our past experiences and are not always associated precisely with the law in question. Adding to the previously discussed availability heuristic and representative biases, a few decisions can come to form our perception of “how things are done” in a society. Once we extrapolate the behavior of the few to represent social opinion and follow the decision, we become part of the social proof for others around us. If enough people similarly extrapolate decisions of a few around them, the extrapolation becomes reality, meaning the decision of the initial few empirically represents the choice of the majority within that society.

There is uniformity in behavior which will propel future behavioral compliance in accordance with the principle of social proof. Nevertheless, the initial uniformity itself was also a consequence of the cognitive tendency to imitate. This creates a cyclical pattern where there could be constantly high levels of compliance with an inefficient private behavior based on the initial decisions of very few participants which resulted in a cascade. Marketing research often utilizes information cascades as an explanation for fashion fads and trends.

The most prominent exploration of this cascading impact of social influence on regulation was provided by Cass Sunstein and Timur Kuran.Footnote ⁷⁰ They considered social influences—both informational and normative—on increased perception of risk from certain threats, such as terrorism or illegal immigration, after some tragic events and the resultant emphasis on spending state resources on regulating probabilistically fewer threatening issues while ignoring other relevant issues. They argued that “public discourse shapes individual risk judgments, risk preferences, and policy preferences; and the reshaped personal variables then transform the public discourse that contributed to their own transformations.” Such behavior creates a cyclical feedback loop.

This Article applies this feedback loop within our discussion on the informational social influence on legal compliance. Initial individual decisions to comply or not comply based on small sample spaces of compliance or non-compliance they see around them will create a widespread cascading effect, increasing the strength of the social proof. The belief that most people follow the law will create the evidence to morph the belief into a self-fulfilling, reinforcing behavior in favor of or against compliance in the long run. A strong correlation between initial impression of individuals about general compliance and their own decision on compliance has been observed both in randomized and lab experiments.Footnote ⁷¹ This Article uses social proof and information cascades to explain this frequently observed social behavior and its impact on our understanding of compliance.

As a social phenomenon, it requires a few initial takers to create widespread uniformity in behavior.Footnote ⁷² Informational cascades can be propelled through herding tendencies of humans even when there is no direct effect of the decisions of others on one’s own payoffs, meaning the only externality of one’s decision in these circumstances are informational in nature.Footnote ⁷³

However, in the real world, there are network effects to social learning as well—our own payoffs may be dependent on how many others follow the trend.Footnote ⁷⁴ Consider financial markets—if one buys shares in a company based on a portfolio of successful investors, the bet is that enough other investors will have the tendency to imitate the behavior of successful investors to increase the prices and earn profits. The expectation that others will follow a trend will itself create or break the momentum for the trend to imitate.Footnote ⁷⁵

These network effects, often, exist for even smaller legal compliances. Consider stopping at a traffic light. On arriving in a new city or as an inexperienced driver, my decision to stop at a red light will depend on the first few drivers I witness—or on how I saw other drivers behave when I was younger. If these individuals chose not to stop at the red light, neither would I. I would also not expect the driver in front of me to do so. In fact, in such matters requiring coordination, it is better if I followed the people around me and not the law.Footnote ⁷⁶ Further, there is a self-reinforcement of availability. As the number of people imitating a social behavior increases, there exists more evidence to convince others that there must be a reason as to why “so many” people are doing what they are doing. Even in the absence of such normative faith in the actions of the people, in such coordinated situations, law is only as useful as the expectation that those around will comply with the law. If the social proof contradicts this presumption of compliance, our brain will update its behavior. Consider rules on jaywalking in India, United States, France and Germany. Most countries have rules against it but our behavior as pedestrians is dependent on those around us, and rightly so.

Following this explanation for legal compliance and the example above, there is an important observation to be made about the instrumental functions of law. These include the ability of laws to signal to society normative attitudes of acceptable behavior and focal points around which to coordinate behavior.Footnote ⁷⁷ They are often considered reinforceable independent of the traditional compliance techniques required for behavioral change.Footnote ⁷⁸ However, if the observable social proof is of non-compliance to the law, it is unlikely to signal any new focal points for coordination or change in normative social attitudes. This is so because, given the expectation of non-compliance, no one will be willing to be the first law-complying individual required to propel a cascade.Footnote ⁷⁹ There are two ways to address the issue. First, creating initial proof in favor of compliance through traditional legal compliance strategies. Second, relying on a general empirical expectation in favor of legal compliance. Creating initial proof in favor of compliance through traditional enforcement mechanism means people will evolve their expectation based on the new information they receive. Another approach which enables the early compliant behaviors in light of new law is an empirical expectation in favor of compliance—in other words, an expectation that most people will, unless it is against their interest, follow a new law when informed about it.

Given our discussion on the importance of early compliant behaviors in initiating compliance cascades, understanding what these empirical expectations are is relevant to our discussion. The following discussion explains how social proof transmutes between legal rules and can affect the overall perception towards legal compliance.

II. Information Cascades Across the System: Perception of Compliance

So far, this Article outlines how observable decisions of even a few within our social network can result in widespread compliance or non-compliance with a rule, thereby communicating a persistent perception in favor of or against voluntary compliance to that legal rule. Nonetheless, this perception will not always be limited to individual illustrations of compliance or non-compliance and specific rules. The cognitive tendency to generalize from a small sample—law of small numbers—to a wider population applies also to generalizing from witnessing compliance or non-compliance of a few rules to the operation of that general legal system as well. Similarly, the informational cascade previously discussed in reference to a few individuals influencing widespread compliance also flows from experiences with a few rules to many and, over time, to our general perception about the legal system at large. For example, social proof about following traffic lights will also inform our decision on whether to comply with a newly introduced rule about putting on seat belts. Similarly, based on the stories and experiences of others in our reference network, our response to a police officer requesting us to pull over will be impacted irrespective of whether we are stopped for driving under influence, not wearing a seat belt, or texting while driving.

For legal systems, social proof can contribute to shaping two perceptions: (a) perceptions about the efficacy and need of legal compliance—or subject-matter specific perception—based on witnessing others interacting with some rules; and (b) perception about procedural fairness of legal actors within a system—or procedural or process specific perception—based on witnessing or hearing others interacting with different legal actors. There is also a strong level of interconnectivity between the perception of the procedure and perception of the effectiveness of the laws with studies showing that when people perceived the legal procedures followed by different legal actors, there was stronger presumption of fairness of legal rules and greater likelihood of voluntary compliance.Footnote ⁸⁰ In this case, individuals utilized their own experiences and experiences of their peers with legal authorities as informational proxies for all the legal information missing with respect to the content of the various legal rules.

Similarly, studies conducted on perception of local courts among people in the United States indicate that people who do not have direct experience with the court system use their perception of the government, in general, to evaluate their local courts.Footnote ⁸¹ In the absence of experience and information about the judicial system, individuals relied on their own and others’ experiences of interacting with governmental agencies to develop their perceptions of the courts.

Therefore, our cognitive tendency to rely on the behaviors of others creates two types of informational cascades in reference to regulatory compliance. One is an informational cascade within a single law which results in widespread compliance or non-compliance to the legal rule from a small behavior set, which can result in widespread compliance or non-compliance. The other is between laws where social influence of compliance to some rules guide behavior in compliance with other rules. Taken together, this can create a socio-behavioral loop in favor of or against compliance with certain laws. This in turn contributes to a general perception of law at large. The general perception of legal rules and law at large, furthermore, guides future individual decisions on compliance. Therefore, there is constant reinforcing feedback between individual behavior and widespread compliance through the intermediating impact of informative social influence.

Considering social proof within this dynamic equilibrium across rules helps identify an important shortcoming in the existing legal literature on informational social influence. Visibly reduced disorder in a neighborhood will have an impact on the individual’s perception about criminality. Despite this, it will not exclusively have an impact on the perception of the individual. The perception about the government, legal actors, and the procedure followed will also impact deterrence. Most importantly, the general perception within the society about law and legal compliance at the time when these new policing policies are introduced will influence how this new information is perceived. If the general perception about law and legal compliance is negative, given the presumed disorderliness, the indiscriminate and harsh policing mechanisms introduced for law-and-order maintenance are more likely to create a negative perception about police legitimacy. There is increasing empirical evidence to support this presumption.Footnote ⁸² Given the explanation of informational cascades between rules—including procedural to substantive laws—there arises the implication that strategies, when applied in isolation, can push the perception against voluntary compliance rather than towards it. In fact, there is some scattered empirical evidence to support this assertion.Footnote ⁸³

This cognitive explanation of legal compliance both emphasizes and is emphasized by literature on legal socialization. Legal socialization refers to the process of acquiring the requisite norms, values, and behavioral models for interacting with law and legal authorities by children through assimilation and adaptation of the information they receive from their surroundings.Footnote ⁸⁴ It focuses on building the accurate or desired perception of law and legal authorities at an early age as it recognizes the reinforcing nature of social learning. Empirical research on legal socialization in adolescents also lends credence to the fact that perceptions, once created, become the filter through which future decisions on compliance will be taken.Footnote ⁸⁵ Literature on legal socialization and an individual’s interaction with law has also emphasized the role that the society one lives in, including the observable behavior of others—social proof—plays an important role in giving direction to this legal socialization.Footnote ⁸⁶ The behavior of others includes within it the observable behavior of legal actors.Footnote ⁸⁷ Therefore, the discussion on cascading across laws and the importance of perceived procedural fairness in creating compliance cascades cannot be undermined.

Recently, the United Nation released a document recommending “strengthening the rule of law through education.”Footnote ⁸⁸ It advocates for teaching a culture of lawfulness by imparting basic legal knowledge and enforcing positive compliance behaviors in school. The document is a policy document which aims to formalize a favorable legal socialization mechanism. Social and environmental factors cannot be absolutely compensated through a school’s curriculum, but it is an essential first step in breaking a persistent negative perception and non-compliance self-enforcing equilibrium. Legal socialization in childhood will equip the individuals with what Christopher Engel described as “normative proficiency” in law—in other words, the ability to handle normative expectations. Over time, different declarative knowledge—what should be done or not done—will be acquired through specific laws.Footnote ⁸⁹

Once there exists a general perception in favor of compliance—or, normative proficiency— individuals are more likely to presume or expect compliance when new laws are introduced. And, as this Article posited in the beginning of this section, if enough people believe that others will do something, enough people will do that thing over time.