Does Subjective Well-being Depend On Childhood Punishment? – An Exploratory Study

In India parents and teacher mostly use corporal punishment as a disciplinary technique. The purpose of the present study is to see whether the effect of corporal punishment continues in adulthood. Further, the study also tries to find out the effect of gender and perceived effect of punishment on SWB and adjustment of young adult. 186 participants (Female 100 and Male 86), aged 19 to 24 years, participated in the study. Results showed that childhood punishment as well as perceived effect of punishment had negative effect on SWB and adjustment of young adult. There was no gender variation on the variables. However, an interactive effect of gender and punishment on both variables was evident. Thus the present study implies that it is necessary to psycho educate authority figure about the negative effect of punishment.

Child Abuse and Hypnotic Ability

Earlier empirical and theoretical work has suggested that there is a relationship between higher hypnotic susceptibility and severity of childhood punishment. The present study examines the hypnotizability of young adults who were physically abused as children. The hypnotizability scores of three groups were compared: an abused group whose members were physically abused before the age of ten ( n = 23); a family-disruption group whose members reported divorce or death in the family before age ten, but no physical abuse ( n = 27); a baseline/control group whose members reported neither abuse nor family disruption ( n = 346). The abused group was significantly more hypnotizable than either the family-disruption or baseline/control group. The effect was substantial, with 65 percent of abused subjects in the high hypnotizable classification (compared to 14.8% and 35.3% for the family disruption and baseline/control groups respectively). Two explanations of this relationship are offered, and suggestions are made for future investigations.