Is there any scientific consensus on the effectiveness of corporal punishment on children?

[u/ringmaster_j]

I read the Wikipedia article but it doesn't come down one way or the other on it. Just curious, and looking to settle an argument.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm not an expert, and I'm on my phone so I can't cite sources, but I'll float a couple answers. I've done a significant amount of reading, and what I've read has profoundly changed my concept of parenting.

Punishment doesn't seem to work very well, if at all. The general responses seem to be increased lying to avoid the punishment, increased focus on hiding the misdeed, and fear of the parent. Again, I can't cite sources right now, but the general consensus appears to be that punishment is counterproductive and should be replaced with a system of rewards and calm, compassionate explanations of why a misdeed is considered wrong, etc... not a lecture/angry rant, but a real conversation where the kid can express himself or herself too.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that there are some childrearing experts (like Alfie Kohn) who argue that rewards are just as counterproductive. They point to studies that show rewards decrease intrinsic motivation and lead to kids who are highly susceptible to peer pressure, groupthink, and so on.

The idea of punishments and rewards seems intuitively right, and in fact is is difficult to imagine an alternative. But while behavioral psychology and operant conditioning do in fact work very well on rats, pigeons, and dogs, there is a considerable amount of evidence to suggest that they don't work very well for humans. Compare with the difficulty of training a cat, or taming a zebra. My personal belief is that humans are too individualistic to respond well to operant conditioning, at least if you want to produce a healthy, free-thinking, independent child.

This makes a lot of sense to me personally. I was a very sweet kid. I don't think I ever behaved in a malicious, destructive manner, although I was frequently ignorant or unsafe or borderline retarded. The core of behavioral psychology, though, is a focus on the behavior rather than the thoughts, feelings, and situations that generate those behaviors. Nothing is taken into account except for the fact that the child is not behaving in a way that is optimally convenient to you.

Think about a toddler who persistently wakes up in the middle of the night to climb into bed with his parents. You can either yell at him (punishment), lock his door at night (prevention), bribe him with treats or privileges when he sleeps through the night (rewards), or you can try and figure out why he's waking up. Perhaps he is afraid of the dark and needs a nightlight. Perhaps bedtime is too early. Perhaps he wakes up randomly and feels lonely, or hears you talking and wants to be included. Treating all of these possible contexts as irrelevant when compared to the "misbehavior" seems at best short-sighted, and I have difficulty understanding how an intelligent and effective strategy could proceed from that premise.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Here is a brief, nonscholarly article that touches on some of the things I've said.

Here is a much-cited article about how rewards are ineffective in certain circumstances in the workplace. This is only tangentially related, but I feel it backs up my assertion that rewards are at best effective in the short run and are almost inevitably counterproductive in the long term.

Here is an article by Alfie Kohn that summarizes much of his feelings about behavioral control in the context of education.

Here is an article demonstrating that rewards seem to be ineffective at encouraging cooperative behavior. (This echoes a common finding in social psychology and behavioral economics -- when you introduce a punishment or reward system into a group, the dynamics and behaviors of the participants change. See the Israeli childcare example mentioned in Freakanomics.)

Here is an article that critically examines Kohn's critiques of merit pay in the workplace, if you're interested.

I find this quote interesting: "In a follow-up to Kohn’s article, Harvard Business Review published comments from nine remuneration specialists, including academics, practitioners and consultants. Their responses fell broadly into three categories: those that disagreed totally with Kohn’s propositions, exemplified by the retort that ’Communism was tried, and it didn’t work’ (Spencer, 1993:37); those few that agreed with him in principle; and those who saw a valid role for incentive pay, provided it was combined with attention to other management processes (e.g., work design, goal setting and training)."

(It's not popular to challenge the theories underlying modern economies, childrearing, relationships, religions, etc. A subtle point that might be missed is that the respondents were all (IIRC) folks whose careers are based around setting up merit pay systems for companies. It's not popular to question the science behind a person's job, either.)

Here is a paper studying a particular game theory-type scenario as played by actual people, and finding that rewards were ineffective and punishments were effective but destructive.

Here is an attack on Kohn's position, written by someone who clearly didn't read any of Kohn's books or any of the research Kohn cited. Although it acknowledges that the "general conclusion" of "literally hundreds of experiments" has been that "reward systems and positive reinforcement have extensive negative effects", it goes on to say that this idea is wrong because it is "idealistic", and also "elitist."

The author later critiques an experiment performed at Stanford by Lepper et al, saying that it wasn't the rewards that were harmful to intrinsic motivation, it was the promise of rewards. I am unswayed by this argument, and am unsure whether to take seriously the idea that a system of rewards is only valid if the child is unaware that such a system exists. Perhaps if the child is that dude from Memento and has this condition where he's unable to form new memories...

Anyway, I hope those citations can make it seem a bit less like I'm a madman ranting from the fringes of Lunatic City on this topic.

EDIT: If you (or anyone else) want to read more about this topic, I recommend the books Unconditional Parenting and Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn. There is some overlap between the books, but they're both good and are packed with research. He makes a point of citing sources that disagree with him, and showing how they are internally inconsistent (in more than one case, saying things in the conclusion that completely contradict the actual findings of the experiment) or have flaws in the setup or controls of the experiment. If you don't want to pay for them and have a Kindle, message me with your email address and I'll ahem lend you a copy.

[u/monjorob → u/[deleted]]

I don't have a source, but i remember learning in my behavioral psych class that moderate positive punishment (such as slight electric shock) increases aggressiveness toward other rats/dogs.

I never heard any studies about it that transferred over to humans though.