Is there proof that spanking impairs self-control?

© 2024 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Some people might spank children because they believe it will teach self-control. But the evidence tells us otherwise. In fact, research indicates that spanking actually interferes with the development of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility — skills permit kids to resist impulses and respond appropriately to rules.

As I’ve written elsewhere, there is ample evidence to suggest that children’s behavior tends to worsen when their parents use spanking as a disciplinary response. In addition, a brain imaging study hints that spanking prompts children to become more focused on threats, which might bias them to respond more negatively towards other people (Cuartas et al 2021).

Such research (and everyday intuition) has led many people to wonder if spanking also undermines executive function – a package of skills that includes

• inhibitory control (your ability to resist inappropriate impulses)
• cognitive flexibility (the tendency to adapt quickly in response to changing rules or requirements); and
• working memory (your capacity for keeping multiple pieces of information “in mind”).

And the first two – inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility – map pretty closely onto what most people mean when they talk about “self-control”.

So if we routinely spank children, how will this affect the development of executive function? Does spanking teach kids self-control? Or does it actually have a negative impact?

As you might imagine, this is hard to prove in a scientific way. It’s not as if we can conduct controlled experiments — randomly assigning some unfortunate kids to a regimen of spanking, and then following them over time.