Abstract
Research on mental health pays increasing attention to the influence of social institutions on subjective well-being over the life course. Yet little research has considered how belief in the promise of legal institutions may have beneficial effects for well-being. Through structural equation models of longitudinal data, our findings suggest that belief in the neutrality and fairness of legal institutions has salutary effects for mental health net of social and economic status and across individuals from a wide range of ethnic groups. By combining research in the sociology of mental health, cultural sociology, social psychology, and the sociology of law, we extend the emerging literature on the institutional determinants of mental health by including attention to law as one of the central organizing institutions of social life.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 266-282 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of health and social behavior |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2022 |
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by grants from the Johann Jacobs Research Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Keywords
- culture and institutions
- law
- mental health
- system justification
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
