Holden George W, Brown Alan S, Baldwin Austin S, Croft Caderao Kathryn
Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, USA.
Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2014 May;38(5):902-8. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.10.013. Epub 2013 Nov 16.
Positive attitudes toward the use of corporal punishment (CP) predict subsequent spanking behavior. Given that CP has frequently been associated with behavior problems in children and child maltreatment, this prevention work was designed to test whether adults' attitudes could be changed by informing participants about the research findings on problematic behaviors associated with CP. Two random assignment studies are reported. In Study 1, we tested whether an active reading condition would result in more attitude change than a passive condition. With a sample of 118 non-parent adults, we found that after reading very brief research summaries on the problems associated with CP, there was a significant decrease in favorable attitudes toward CP. Contrary to expectations, the magnitude of the change was comparable for active and passive processing conditions. In Study 2, we extended our approach to a sample of 520 parents and included a control group. A significant decrease in positive attitudes toward spanking was observed in the intervention group, but no change for the control group. Parents who were unaware of the research showed more change after reading the summaries. Thus, these studies demonstrate that a brief and cost-effective approach to raise awareness of research findings can reduce positive attitudes toward CP. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.
对体罚的积极态度预示着随后的打屁股行为。鉴于体罚经常与儿童行为问题和虐待儿童相关联，这项预防工作旨在测试通过向参与者告知与体罚相关的问题行为的研究结果，是否可以改变成年人的态度。报告了两项随机分配研究。在研究1中，我们测试了主动阅读条件是否比被动条件能带来更多的态度改变。以118名非父母成年人作为样本，我们发现，在阅读了关于与体罚相关问题的非常简短的研究摘要后，对体罚的支持态度显著下降。与预期相反，主动和被动处理条件下的态度改变幅度相当。在研究2中，我们将方法扩展到520名父母的样本，并设立了一个对照组。干预组对打屁股的积极态度显著下降，但对照组没有变化。不了解该研究的父母在阅读摘要后态度变化更大。因此，这些研究表明，一种简短且经济高效的提高对研究结果认识的方法可以减少对体罚的积极态度。文中讨论了对预防和干预的启示。
