The study seemed not very convincing to me, at least the way it was described in the article. To summarize: they asked crowdworkers to write a law who used legalese, but not when writing news stories about it or when explaining the law. From that the researchers concluded that people use legalese to convey authority.
But what if people just imitated the writing style of existing laws, but not with the intention to make it authoritative but because that is what they understood their task to be?
But what if people just imitated the writing style of existing laws, but not with the intention to make it authoritative but because that is what they understood their task to be?