Psychological Aspect of Legal Impact

Abstract

The paper considers the phenomenon of legal impact as a socio-psychological legal phenomenon. The subject of law is in the core of the epistemological analysis of the psychological aspect of legal impact. The subject is the only component able to actively respond to legal impact. An active reaction is expressed as participation in legal impact, obtaining and processing legal information, modeling one’s own behavior in accordance with the information received. In the paper, the author reviews some research in this field and concludes that there is a need to strengthen interdisciplinary interaction between the theory of law and psychological sciences in a quantitative and qualitative way. The absence of such studies determines the relevance of this study. The main personality traits determining the strategy of its behavior, the influence of external and internal factors are determined. In the system of social communication, a person is an active self-organizing entity that transmits and transits legal information to subjects of other levels of social interaction. The assessment of the significance of legal information and the choice of a decision on its use is carried out by the subject independently, using their own social experience and psychological properties. The mechanism of psychological legal impact has been studied. Within the framework of the paper, the author substantiates the need to introduce the concept of «directed behavior» into scientific circulation, which should be understood as the state of the subject experiencing legal influence, as well as the consequences in the form of certain acts of the subject mediated by legal impact, the process of exchange of significant legal information between participants in social communication. The role of legal awareness and legal information in the mechanism of psychological legal impact is determined.