Enhancing public legal awareness in regulating normative deviance: a social psychological evaluation of legal education

Abstract

Public legal awareness is a key factor in regulating deviant behavior, and legal education is the main channel for improving public legal awareness. This study evaluates the importance of raising public legal awareness in regulating deviant behavior from the perspective of social psychology, using legal socialization theory and planned behavior theory as conceptual frameworks. This paper first adopts a pre - and post evaluation design in six cities in a province, and then uses effective scales and public perception of legal functions to measure the four core structures of the Theory of Planned Behavior - attitude towards legal compliance, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intention. The results showed that the total number of abnormal events in the six cities decreased from 274 to 102, and the paired differences were statistically significant, t (5)=9.40, p <0.001; the age distribution of the participating group had undergone significant changes, with chi square (3)=15.62 and p =0.001; the distribution of risk levels had undergone significant changes, with chi square (2)=150.48, p <0.001. Research has shown that at the individual level, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions all show significant improvement after the project (all p <0.05), and these psychological structures significantly mediate the association between legal education and reducing deviant behavioral tendencies (indirect effect=–0.643, 95% CI [–0.736, –0.556]). Although the design does not allow for causal attribution, legal education is associated with a significant reduction in deviant behavior and a positive shift in public legal awareness through identifiable psychological mechanisms.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Frontiers in Psychology, 2026 · DOI ↗