Imagine in a classroom full of disciplined children, there exists a non-conformer, causing chaos and hampering the peace of the class. How would the teacher-in charge react to ensure restoration of peace in the classroom? A commonly used strategy in this situation would be “punishment” or “detention”. Punishment involves forfeiting an offender of their privileges as a result of their wrongdoing (i.e., levying a penalty). Punishment can be served in many forms ranging from the extreme ones such as a life sentence in jail to simply depriving one of a favorite toy.
Punishment, for decades has been a sore spot for many researchers as literature posited a link between corporal punishment and problematic behaviors such as aggression, criminality, and delinquency in children. The ills of punishment have led to the condemnation of physical punishment in many countries and formation of a global initiative such as End Corporal Punishment. It is appalling to realize that the cessation of punishment is not global and is endangering the physical, psychological, and emotional health of children. This leads many to question the existence of punishment in some countries but not in others.
Research investigating punishment recently opened up new avenues establishing a link between a child's cultural environment especially family and their perception on use of punishment to reinforce or extinguish behavior. The foundation of this research is laid on the premise that parenting practices have a varied effect on a child’s behavior and this in turn is highly influenced by their racial membership. Evidence portraying differences in how corporal punishment affects children of different cultures show that children of European American descent showcase more antisocial behaviors when exposed to higher levels of punishment whereas children of African descent do not necessarily follow the trend i.e., the frequency of punishment did not predict antisocial behavior in Africans. It has been posited that a child’s perception of the disciplinary actions laid down by their caregivers is a major contributing factor in deciding if the after effects of that discipline are positive or negative.
These claims were further verified in a study using two comparative cohorts of American third graders and African American third graders. The results showed little to almost no association between exposure to corporal punishment and higher teacher or peer reported conduct problems for African Americans. Americans, on the other hand, followed a positive trend i.e., more exposure to physical punishment, higher the teacher or peer reported conduct problems.
Culture also plays a prominent role in helping parents maintain the behavior of using punishment by passing the behavior (punishment) across generations, moreso in some societies than others. An article mentions that “mirroring” previous generations of parents who were ignorant of the ills of punishment is the easiest way for this behavior to cross generations of parents. For instance, in the USA, the African American subculture uses physical punishment more widely than other American cultures, owing to the historical accounts of punishment being a strategy of the older African American parents.
In addition to the historical accounts, religious affiliations have also shown to be an influential factor in parents’ endorsement of whether or not to use punishment with their children. For instance, a study has shown that parents who are conservative protestants used punishment widely as they believed that it was an efficacious way of reducing their child’s evil behaviors as opposed to parents who did not have any religious affiliations.
Additionally, more evidence of culture affecting beliefs and decisions relating to punishment comes from a study which posits that the use of punishment with individuals is influenced by whether one’s religious orientation is based on orthodoxy (focuses on belief) or orthopraxy (focuses on behavior). The results showed that irrespective of the affiliation, all the participants judged a crime done intentionally more harshly than the one done unintentionally. When it came to unintentional crimes, individuals high in orthodoxy passed more lenient judgements than their counterparts who endorsed orthopraxy and passed harsher judgements. In order to disseminate the findings further, the authors extended the research to include studying the responses of individuals belonging to an orthopraxic religion (such as Hinduism) and an orthodoxic religion (such as Protestants); concluding with the same results with regards to both intentional and unintentional crimes and punishment.
The aforementioned subjectivity in the once universal social process of punishment leads us to question the traditional beliefs and forces us to rather acknowledge the newer models inclusive of both cultural and other contextual factors. This newer understanding will aid us in not only understanding the causes of this social process but also translate that understanding into social policy decisions. Even though punishment may help extinguish behaviors, it nonetheless leaves residual negative consequences such as aggression, emotional trauma, and other behavioral issues.
Urvi Mange
