The main question addressed in Tom Tyler's essay is, obviously, "Why do people obey laws?". The essay tackles two main reasons. These include social relations and normative values. .
Social relations refers to the way social groups influence people. They do so through rewarding and punishing members of their group "either by withholding or conferring signs of group status and respect, or more directly by channeling material resources toward or away from particular members (475)." Also included in social relations is the fact that people do not commit crimes because their family and friends would look down upon them if they did. .
Second, a person's normative values include "the sense of what is right or appropriate (475)" to that individual. These are sometimes referred to as internalized obligations. Internalized obligations are two-fold; first is personal morality and second is legitimacy. Personal morality has to do with a person's compliance to laws due to the knowledge of right and wrong. The essay contributes compliance to the second part of internalized obligation: legitimacy.
Legitimacy, according to Tyler, "is regarded as a reservoir of loyalty on which leaders can draw, giving them the discretionary authority they require to govern effectively (477)." Legitimacy has three possible objects including authorities, the regime, and the community. Cooperation with those in power is legitimacy of authorities. Legitimacy of regime is the support of institutions. When an authority belongs to a certain social group, that social group will view that authority as "one of them" and therefore that authority will have legitimacy of that social community. .
A study was done in Chicago that focused on why people obey the laws. First of all, it found that legitimacy does influence compliance to laws. The study found "that normative concerns are an important determinant of law-abiding behavior, in contrast to the instrumental concerns that have dominated the recent literature on compliance (493).