No, You Didn’t Deserve to be Hit as a Child
Why conservatives continue to defend corporal punishment, despite the overwhelming counterevidence.
Find the abridged version of this article here.
Former Vice President Mike Pence recently sat down with undecided voters from Iowa to discuss the issues that matter to them. When asked about how to deal with students with extreme behavior problems, he responded,
I went to catholic school for eight years. The ‘board of education’ was applied to my ‘seat of knowledge’ more than once in those eight years, and the nuns knew how to get the paddle out when you deserved it. I guarantee you I deserved it more times than I got it. I think traditional discipline being returned to our schools as opposed to flooding our kids with Ritalin and other behavioral modification chemicals makes more sense to me. The Bible says, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” I’m a believer in that.
Pence’s support for corporal punishment is disappointing, but not surprising. Despite mounting evidence that spanking and paddling do more harm than good, there are several psychological factors underlying such support.
Unpacking Corporal Punishment
Corporal or physical punishment is defined as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child’s behavior (p. 4).” The most common forms of corporal punishment are spanking, grabbing a child roughly, and hitting a child with an object (such as a wooden paddle).
Psychologists have known for several decades about the detrimental effects of physical punishment. A 2021 narrative review summarized the findings of 69 longitudinal studies. It reiterated how physical punishment increases a child’s level of aggression, conduct problems, stress, and cognitive abilities. Physical punishment was not associated with positive outcomes such as improved attention or prosocial behavior. Parents who use physical punishment are at greater risk of perpetrating severe maltreatment, exacerbating the damaging effects on their children.
The CDC considers corporal punishment abuse, yet over 15 states still allow schools to paddle students. Preventing its use has been difficult due to its acceptance by many parents and educators. According to The American Family Survey conducted in 2021, the populations most likely to support the use of spanking are men, people over 45, less-educated adults, those living in the South, those with household incomes less than $80,000, and religious conservatives.
Researcher and professor Elizabeth T. Gershoff, who has coauthored several spanking and corporal punishment studies, said, “We’re seeing national data that support for use of physical punishment and actual use of it are going down slowly, over time. But still, over half of children are physically punished each year. So the message is not getting out quick enough.”
If the evidence continues to mount that physical punishment is not only ineffective but downright harmful, why does the myth persist that it will fix the behavioral problems we see in communities and schools?
The Fallacy of Either-Or
Let me first address the low-hanging fruit — which is that Pence committed the either-or fallacy. There is some evidence that psychotropic medications are being overused in children. This is especially the case for children in vulnerable populations such as children in foster care, those with developmental disabilities, those in the juvenile justice system, those who are homeless, and those with a history of trauma.
As psychiatrist Robert Drake explained,
Why are so many children overmedicated? The crux of the matter is this: American culture, including institutions of all kinds, does not protect vulnerable children. The U.S. does not have universal health care, does not support family leave during pregnancy and early childhood, does not have sufficient day care, does not provide equal access to educational opportunities, and does not have accessible, evidence-based, mental health services for children with behavioural difficulties. Thus, children who develop intellectual, emotional, social, learning or behavioural difficulties, unless they have the good fortune of birth to parents with resources, may be considered problems to be controlled rather than fragile human beings worthy of care and protection. While health care and education advocates are relatively weak, the advertising, pharmaceutical, illicit drug, tobacco and unhealthy food industries are powerful and prey on vulnerable children.
If Pence is rightly critical of the pharmaceutical industry overprescribing medication for our children, is corporal punishment really the only solution left?
Nostalgia and the Myth of the Past
Many defenders of physical punishment remember the past with rose-colored glasses. They may exhibit Juvenoia wherein they disparage younger generations. This is not new. There have been records of the older generation lamenting their disappointment in the upcoming generation as far back as 2000 years ago.
Pence may be remembering his youth as a simpler time when few problems occurred. Conservatives are more likely to agree with statements such as, “Our society is getting worse every year” compared to liberals. Pence likely believes the current generation has more problems and that they experience fewer physical consequences. Therefore, the lack of physical punishment has caused the problems of today.
This is an example of mixing up correlation and causation. As my Psychology 101 students can tell you, just because two things have occurred together, doesn’t mean one caused the other. (See how researchers address questions of causality related to physical punishment and externalizing problems here.)
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are indeed worse off[1] than previous generations in some ways such as greater instances of mental health disorders, but there is no evidence that this increase is due to a lack of physical punishment at home or in schools.
System Justification Theory
Support for physical punishment may stem from a desire to maintain the status quo and uphold tradition. Social psychologist John Jost’s system justification theory suggests that humans tend to endorse belief systems that explain and legitimize existing social, economic, or political structures. This bias arises from our need to reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord, leading us to favor preserving the current state rather than risking change.
On average, conservatives score higher on System Justification scales than liberals[2]. They are more likely to agree with statements such as, “In general, the American system operates as it should.” Conservatives are more likely to justify current power structures and endorse clear hierarchies, such as between students and teachers. Conservatives’ inclination to preserve the existing order, uphold traditional values, and prioritize hierarchy may lead to greater resistance to modernizing disciplinary approaches.
Pence may believe the world is just, a belief more common in conservatives than liberals. That is to say, Pence may endorse the principle of karma where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. We humans have a need to feel that we are in control over our lives. As Jost stated, “To cope with distress [from injustice], people convince themselves that the social world operates according to rules of deservingness, namely, that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (p. 36).”
Some researchers argue that a belief in a just world serves to foster a sense of well-being in the face of negative life events. In a series of experiments from Claudia Dalbert (summarized here), participants were placed in one of two conditions. In one condition, participants were asked to recall an anger-provoking, and seemingly unfair, experience. In other conditions, they recalled happy or sad experiences or just listed their daily activities. Participants who scored higher on the General Belief in a Just World Scale reported less anger and greater self-esteem than did low scorers. The authors interpreted these findings as indicative of a belief in a just world as serving a function of well-being, especially in the face of negative or unfair occurrences.
Karma and Victim-Blaming
While a belief in a just world may serve a positive psychological role, it can also lead to victim-blaming. Much of the research on a belief in a just world has addressed the process by which we ascribe negative characteristics to people to whom bad things happen. For instance, research participants who learned about a woman’s suffering and were denied the opportunity to help her directly were more likely to defame her character than were participants able to compensate her in some way.
Jost explained,
When opportunities to help are blocked, people are prone to derogate those who are impoverished, unlucky, and unemployed; those who are sick with cancer, pneumonia, and HIV; and victims of sexual assault, spousal abuse, and electric shock. The desire to maintain the belief in a just world apparently leads people even to derogate themselves for their own misfortune. (p. 36)
Believing we deserved our past suffering may be one way to cope with the fact that we cannot change what happened to us and preserve our belief that ultimately our fate is controllable and predictable. Believing in a just world makes it difficult to consider that there exist any children who were harmed at the hands of adults who didn’t deserve to be.
Cognitive Dissonance
Relatedly, Pence may be experiencing cognitive dissonance. This term stems from Leon Festinger’s groundbreaking theory that helps explain the discomfort that arises when our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors conflict.
In Festinger and Carlsmith’s famous 1959 experiment, participants engaged in a boring task and then were asked to lie to the next participants about how exciting the task was. One group was given $1 for lying, while the other group was given $20 (equivalent to around $200 in 2023). When both groups were asked about the task after the study, those who had received $1 were much more likely to report having enjoyed the task and reported willingness to participate again.
As the researchers had predicted, those who essentially sold their integrity for a measly $1 needed some way to justify their behavior to themselves. Their thoughts about themselves conflicted with their behavior. Rather than modify their view of themselves as honest people, they changed how they viewed the task and convinced themselves that it genuinely was enjoyable.
Pence may feel dissonance between the research on physical punishment and his belief that being hurt as a child ultimately helped him in some way. He could resolve the conflict by painfully admitting that he did not in fact deserve to be paddled as a child or find a way to discount the research. If he chose the latter, he wouldn’t be the only conservative to do so. Reaction to scientific findings is very polarized where conservatives are far more likely than liberals to reject consensus scientific findings.
One strategy Pence is using is to insist that hitting children is biblical and therefore the right thing to do. It’s interesting to note that religious conservatives tend to selectively reference the Bible. They often cite it when their beliefs align with its teachings but may overlook or dismiss parts of it that do not align with their views, illustrating a common instance of motivated reasoning. Jost wrote that people are “resistant to persuasion when it comes to an attitude that is ideologically relevant because if they change one attitude they are obliged to reconsider others that are logically dependent on it — or face the consequences, which include cognitive dissonance and accusations of hypocrisy (p. 237).”
The most tragic part of Pence’s statement is that he believed he deserved to be paddled as a child. I echo the words of author Shelly Robinson who wrote,
Before you can truly embrace the radical idea that kids don’t need to suffer emotionally or physically in order to learn (aka: punishment), you must first embrace the radical idea that you didn’t deserve to suffer emotionally or physically in order to learn. It always starts with us.
To our former Vice President, I emphatically say that there is nothing you could have done as a child that would have warranted physical harm. Compassion starts with the self. You didn’t deserve to be hurt then just as the students of Iowa and throughout the world don’t deserve harm now.
As Jon Cox of the Utah Board of Higher Education recently advised Snow College’s new president, “Be grounded in the…history of this great school, but do not be bound by it.” Pence, you can set the example of acknowledging the pains and lessons of the past to advocate for a brighter and more hopeful future.
Footnotes
[1] They’re also better off in some ways; would Pence attribute that to a decrease in paddling?
[2] The differences between conservatives and liberals are even more striking on scales specific to economic and gender-specific system justification.
