Moral obligation or dull compulsion in ethnic minority immigrants? Testing pathways to obeying the police via the mediating influence of identity threat

Understanding how and why people obey police remains a key focus in psychological and criminal justice scholarship. While some people obey police because they see police as legitimate and feel morally obliged to do so, recent research suggests that the obligation to obey can also occur coercively when police are seen as illegitimate. Research in countries with histories of police power abuse (e.g. Nigeria and South Africa) suggests that this coerced or dull compulsion to obey police may occur because individuals feel powerless or fear retaliation from police if they do not obey. Recent research suggests that dull compulsion can also operate in Western democratic countries where police abuse of power is less commonplace. The current study extends prior work by comparing predictors of moral obligation and dull compulsion to obey police amongst 790 ethnic minority immigrants living in Australia. We find that dull compulsion is most likely when police are seen to abuse their power and are perceived as procedurally unjust. Interestingly, it can also occur when police are seen to be highly effective. Importantly, we find that identity threat explains (i.e. mediates) why these factors influence dull compulsion but not moral obligation to obey police.