Robert Larzelere

Who they are

Larzelere's affiliation is given on the 2005 paper as the Psychology Department, Munroe-Meyer Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center.

This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Comparing child outcomes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics: a meta-analysis (2005), with Kuhn. Across 26 qualifying studies, the authors compared the effect sizes of physical punishment with those of alternative tactics, arguing that comparing differences between tactics reduces systematic bias and matches the choices parents actually face. Effect sizes favoured what the authors called conditional spanking over 10 of 13 alternative tactics for reducing child noncompliance or antisocial behaviour. Customary physical punishment produced effects equal to the alternatives, except for one large study that favoured physical punishment. Only overly severe or predominant use of physical punishment compared unfavourably.

Key ideas

The paper's central idea is that the question should be how a disciplinary tactic is used, compared with the realistic alternatives, rather than whether it is used at all. The authors call for better distinctions between effective and counterproductive uses of disciplinary punishment in general. A larger meta-analysis published in 2016 by Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, pooling 75 studies, found no outcome that spanking reliably improved, and the two papers are usually read as the main reference points on either side of the question.

---