Obedience In Children Research Articles

The use of corporal punishment in child rearing in the West Indies

The West Indian child is usually loved by its parents or caretakers, but is frequently subjected to corporal punishment unsuitable to the age and stage of its development and excessive in relation to the alleged offence. The debate on whether the persistent use of what is considered excessive punishment as the means of instilling obedience in children, centres around the parents' African heritage or learned behaviour from the institution of slavery. Socially and economically disadvantaged parents under stress seem to displace their frustrations and anxieties on the children through corporal punishment which often assumes ritualised characteristics. The community in general and the parents in particular need help through appropriate education, to change their attitudes of accepting excessive corporal punishment as the means of imposing discipline upon children.

Parents' Perceptions of Their Preschool Children's Obedience

This study compared parents' perceptions of their own preschool children's obedience with their perceptions of other preschool children's obedience, and compared the mothers' and fathers' perceptions with each other. Parents of 44 nursery-school children predicted the obedience levels of their own children and of most other children in an experiment on obedience. Their predictions suggest that parents perceive their own children as more obedient than other children to the request of an adult stranger, and that mothers and fathers differ in their perceptions of how obedient their children are.

Factors Affecting Obedience in Preschool Children

This study investigated the effects of four factors (threat, surveillance, sex of child and time) on obedience of children to adult requests. An adult told the subjects (48 4-year-old boys and girls) to carry marbles from one box to another. The adult either made no threat or threatened the child for possible disobedience, and either stayed in the room or left the room during the session. Four measures of obedience were recorded for five consecutive 2-minute periods. Results showed in general that: (1) the children were very obedient; (2) threat increased obedience in girls, but not in boys; (3) surveillance increased the amount of time the children worked at the task; (4) obedience decreased with the passage of time; and (5) 94% of the children indicated that the experiment was fun, but 33% indicated that they would not like to do it again. , These findings are compared with previous research findings on obedience, resistance to temptation and social reinforcement. (Author/MS) *********************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) . EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. *********************************************************************** I I IN Iry NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION tH1S DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REM'. DUCED EXACTLY AS RECENED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STA TED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE. SENT OFF IC1AL NATIONAL INSTITUFF OF EDuCAT,ON POSITION OR POLICy Factors Affecting Obedience in Preschool Children

A behavioral study of obedience in children.

Using Milgram's original test of obedience, 192 Jordanian subjects were tested in a 2 X 2 X 3 design in which sex, two kinds of punishment instructions, and three levels of age groups (6-8, 10-12, and 14-16 years) were combined factorially. The instructions issued to the experimental group were identical to those used in Milgram's paradigm in that teacher subjects were asked to administer shock to confederate learners each time the latter made a mistake in a paired-associate task and to increase the shock level with each additional mistake. The subjects in the control group were given a free choice of delivering or not delivering shock each time the learner made a mistake. The results showed that 73% of all experimental subjects, as opposed to 16% of the control subjects, continued to deliver shock to the end of the shock scale. Neither age nor sex differences in obedience rate were found. However, significantly more obedient females than males reported that they punished the learners because they were obeying orders.

A behavioral study of obedience in children.

A behavioral study of obedience in children.

Children's obedience to adult requests: interactive effects of anxiety arousal and apparent punitiveness of the adult.

Children's obedience to adult requests: interactive effects of anxiety arousal and apparent punitiveness of the adult.

EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF THE FACTORS DETERMINING OBEDIENCE OF FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN TO ADULT FEMALES

LANDAUER, T. K.; CARLSMITH, J. MERRILL; and LEPPER, MARK. Experimental Analysis of the Factors Determining Obedience of Four-Year-Old Children to Adult Females. CHmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1970, 41, 601-611. The problem was to assess the relative importance of several potential factors in producing natural variation in child obedience between 1 adult-child dyad and another. Nursery school children were asked to perform tasks by their own and other mothers. There was essentially no consistency across children in the ability of mothers to command obedience; being obeyed by 1 child did not predict being obeyed by another. There was only slight, marginally significant consistency across mothers in the tendency of children to obey; obeying 1 mother did not strongly predict obedience to another. However, obedience was strongly determined by the preexisting relationship between adult and child; 44 of 52 children were less obedient to their own mothers.