Does parental use of harsh discipline and punishment in response to ambiguous child situations vary by child physical abuse risk?

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES

The present study investigated the extent to which fathers and mothers at high-risk and low-risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed in their use of harsh discipline and punishment when presented ambiguous child situations (situations where differences in positive and negative valences are close to zero).

PARTICIPANTS/METHODS

High-risk for CPA parents (N = 74: fathers, n = 41; mothers, n = 33) and low-risk parents (N = 178: fathers, n = 91; mothers, n = 87) were asked to indicate their likelihood of using harsh verbal discipline (HVD), harsh physical discipline (HPD), and punishment (i.e., retributive harm separate from HVD and HPD) after viewing each of eighteen ambiguous child situations.

RESULTS

As expected, high-risk, compared to low-risk, for CPA parents were significantly (ps < 0.001) more likely to use HVD (d = 0.546), HPD (d = 0.595), and punishment (d = 0.564). Overall, fathers, relative to mothers, were significantly more likely to use HVD (d = 0.261) and HPD (d = 0.238). For punishment, however, there was no significant parental role (father, mother) difference (d = 0.136).

CONCLUSIONS

Since in everyday living situations many child behaviors are ambiguous, the findings that parents, especially high-risk for CPA parents, use harsh discipline and punishment when encountering ambiguous child situations suggest that non-contingent harsh child-related parental behaviors may be frequent in the lives of some children. The findings that parents may use non-contingent discipline and punishment suggest the need to explore whether, when these parenting behaviors occur, they increase the likelihood of negative child outcomes.

Children endorse deterrence motivations for third-party punishment but derive higher enjoyment from compensating victims

Children's punishment behavior may be driven by both retribution and deterrence, but the potential primacy of either motive is unknown. Moreover, children's punishment enjoyment and compensation enjoyment have never been directly contrasted. Here, British, Colombian, and Italian 7- to 11-year-old children (N = 123) operated a Justice System in which they viewed different moral transgressions in Minecraft, a globally popular video game, either face-to-face with an experimenter or over the internet. Children could respond to transgressions by punishing transgressors and compensating victims. The purpose of the system was framed in terms of retribution, deterrence, or compensation between participants. Children's performance, endorsement, and enjoyment of punishment and compensation were measured, along with their endorsement of retribution versus deterrence as punishment justifications, during and/or after justice administration. Children overwhelmingly endorsed deterrence over retribution as their punishment justification irrespective of age. When asked to reproduce the presented frame in their own words, children more reliably reproduced the deterrence frame rather than the retribution frame. Punishment enjoyment decreased while compensation enjoyment increased over time. Despite enjoying compensation more, children preferentially endorsed punishment over compensation, especially with increasing age and transgression severity. Reported deterrent justifications, superior reproduction of deterrence framing, lower enjoyment of punishment than of compensation, and higher endorsement of punishment over compensation together suggest that children felt that they ought to mete out punishment as a means to deter future transgressions. Face-to-face and internet-mediated responses were not distinguishable, supporting a route to social psychology research with primary school-aged children unable to physically visit labs.

Why Do We Punish?

Abstract. We investigated whether individuals’ punishment behavior aims at compensating for inflicted harm (i.e., retribution) or at deterring the offender from committing the offense again (i.e., deterrence) and whether punishment motives depend on the punishment system. Participants ( N = 149) assigned punishment for selfish decisions in a group resource allocation task under three conditions: Open punishment (the allocator is informed about the punishment, allowing for retribution and deterrence); hidden punishment (the allocator is not informed about the punishment, precluding deterrence); and unintentional offense (decision is made by the computer not the allocator, precluding retribution and deterrence). In line with retribution motives, participants assigned more punishment under hidden punishment compared to unintentional offense and open punishment. We found these differences in punishment between punishment conditions only under centralized punishment (i.e., punishment can only be executed by one group member), but not under decentralized punishment (i.e., each group member can punish).