Reply #43: Every study done on corporal punishment has shown that it leads to aggression..

[True Earthling]

and violent behavior in the child.

Meta-Analysis in 2002

In 2002, researcher Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff published a comprehensive meta-analysis of the studies on corporal punishment over the last sixty-two years. She found a consistency in the research indicating harmful effects from spanking that is rare in social science research. She reviewed eighty-eight studies, including 117 tests of the hypothesis that corporal punishment is associated with harmful effects such as aggression, delinquency in childhood, crime, antisocial behavior as an adult, low empathy or conscience, poor parent-child relations, and mental health problems such as depression. Of the tests, 103 found results suggesting such negative effects of spanking. Despite the fact that there were some methodological weaknesses of many pre-1997 studies, and while they are not conclusive evidence, these statistics, based on decades of research, do seem to clarify that the harmful effects of corporal punishment are serious; indeed, they appear to produce the same harmful effects of physical abuse, albeit to a lesser degree.They support and complement more recent research that provides greater evidence of causation. Some researchers believe the result of this meta-analysis reveals an “unprecedented degree of consistency in research findings.” While no study has controlled for every confounding factor that could contribute to the adverse effects associated with spanking, the research as a whole allows for the conclusion that the associations between spanking and the various problems discussed herein are not coincidental. “Triangulation” is a well-recognized scientific principle holding that valid conclusions may be based on cumulative evidence from studies, which, taken one by one, are not conclusive. This basically means that weaknesses in some studies have been dealt with in other studies. When the results of the studies converge, this clarifies the causal link between spanking and the harmful associations. In sum, the vast majority of studies on corporal punishment demonstrate harmful long-term effects: the scientific data has reached the point of triangulation when it comes to the harmful consequences of spanking children.
http://www.deanapollardsacks.com/Banning-Child-Corporal-Punishment.pdf