CORPORAL PUNISHMENT ANE FUSION OF SEX AND VIOLENCE
Masochistic sex is enjoyment of pain and humiliation during sex
* Long standing belief that it is a side effect of spanking children
* The study illustrates how a long standing belief can be tested
* Previously: only case study and personal testimony
* Is it generally true, and how generally?
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed his need to be spanked
to become sexually aroused to being spanked as a child.
Rousseau was sent off to school at age 8, and boarded with
a minister and his sister. The minister's sister, Miss
Lambercier, was a very loving and affectionate woman who
nevertheless frequently used corporal punishment. As
Rousseau puts it:
“Who would believe this childish discipline, received at
eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty,
should influence my propensities, my desires, my
passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a
contrary sense from what might naturally have been
expected?:
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosopher,1712 - 1778
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PREVALENCE OF MASOCHIST SEX
Kinsey et al. (1953): 12% of females and 22% of males became
sexually aroused by sado-masochistic stories
Probably an underestimate
* Popularity of Madonna's song "Hanky Panky (A Little Spanky)"
* Bondage and discipline clubs and list serves
* But these may just reflect intrigue with with sex of any
kind, or taboo sex, or anything that is taboo
Need a study to find out how much:
• Fantasizing about masochistic sex such as being tied up or spa when
having sex
• Actually participating in masochistic sex
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THEORETICAL QUESTION
IF CP IS A RISK FACTOR FOR MASOCHISTIC SEX, WHAT COULD LEAD TO
THAT RELATIONSHIP?
Genetic Inheritance Theories
1. Preference for masochistic sex is inherited, and has nothing to do
with spanking experienced as a child. Because nearly everyone has
been spanked, there is a correlation, but that is a spurious relationship,
not a causal relation
2. Spurious relation between spanking as a child and masochism. Both
are inherited. So they are correlated, but one does not cause the other
John Money (leading medical sex researcher) Neurological theory:
Because the centers of the brain that process feelings of sexual arousal
and feelings of pain are in such close proximity, when they are
stimulated simultaneously many times over a long period of time, the
brain can no longer separate the two. Thus feelings of sexual arousal
and pain become forever woven together. This fusion is especially
likely because the most common ages for spanking are two to six
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Add slide for theories by Straus, Gagnon, etc from BCD chapter.
“It may mean a spanking now and then, but I'll make sure he knows it's
because I love him.”
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HOW WOULD YOU DO A STUDY TO FIND OUT IF THERE IS A LINK
BETWEEN CP AND MASOCHISTIC SEX?
1. What kind of sample?
2. What would be the independent variable?
3. What would be the dependent variable?
4. How might you measure the dependent variable?
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THE STRAUS AND DONNELLY STUDY
(Chapter 8 in Beating The Devil Out of Them)
RESERARCH QUESTIONS:
1. Prevalence rate – how prevalent is masochistic sexual interest?
2. Is corporal punishment associated with an increased probability of
masochistic sexual preference? (Is CP a risk factor)
3. What is the effect of the combination of CP and high parental affection?
SAMPLE: 207 students (76 men and 131 women) in sociology and
psychology classes at three universities and colleges in the Northeast.
1993
MEASURE OF CP: How often spanked by mother the year you were
spanked the most, and the same question for father
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MEASURE OF MS: Six questions (embedded in a series of questions
about sex)
* Having a partner restrain me as part of sex play
* Having a partner spank me as part of sex play
* Engaging in playful fights and being physically rough with partner
- Each answered twice – How many times in the past year they had
been sexually aroused by imagining each these behaviors, and
for being sexually aroused while doing these things.
- Two scoring methods: (1) If the participant indicated that any one
or more of the six had happened: coded as having a
masochistic sexual interest
(2) The number of masochistic behaviors – can range from 0 to 6
MODERATOR VARIABLE: Parental warmth (to test theory that it is the
combination of love and violence that leads to masochistic sex)
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RESULTS FOR PERCENT AROUSED BY IMAGINING
AND BY ACTUAL BEHAVIOR
PREVALENCE OF MASOCHISTIC SEXUAL AROUSAL
29% had become excited by imagining a play fight
48% had been sexual aroused by a play fight
30% became sexually aroused while imagining "Having a partner
restrain me as part of sex play"
26% became excited while actually being restrained
7% aroused by imaging being spanked
7% aroused by actually being spanked
61% had been sexually aroused imagining or doing one or more of the
three activities in the Masochistic Sex Index
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How different and how
similar are men and
women?
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* Men have
higher rates of
MS
* Effect of CP is
same for men
and women
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Even for those who
had the most loving
parents, those who
were high in CP were
higher in MS
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Nine percentage point
difference
19 percentage point
difference
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HOW TO READ A TABLE OF “ODDS RATIOS” (Increasingly used method)
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LIMITATIONS
(ASK CLASS)
Very difficult to establish a cause and effect link between spanking and some
adult behavior such as masochistic sex because experiments are not
possible and longitudinal studies are expensive
• University student sample:
* Young and experimenting
* Not representative of even all youth
• Participants may not have fully disclosed
* Need a “social desirability” scale to measure limited disclosure and then
control for it
• Measure has only three masochistic behaviors – may need to be more
comprehensive
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CONCLUSIONS
• Masochistic sex is "...not part of normative arousal-activity patterns..."
(DSM III-R, p. 279)
* May be true in the sense of cultural norms, but it seems to be off
the mark statistically
* Almost two thirds of the students sexually aroused by at least one
of the three masochistic asexual activities in the Masochistic
Sex Index
* At least some masochistic is part of the sexual repertoire of the
majority of college students, not a rare form of sexual deviance
• The belief that women tend toward masochism more than men was
not supported -- Found the opposite, at least for sexual masochism
• CP is a risk factor for masochistic sex for both men and women
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CONCLUSIONS (continued)
• CP is linked to MS regardless of whether the parents were cold or warm
and loving
• The relation of CP to MS is strongest when parents are warm and loving.
Probably because this establishes a link between love and violence in
the brain of developing infants and toddlers
• Results suggest that the wide use of corporal punishment on American `
children is one reason for the prevalence of MS
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WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED FROM THIS LECTURE?
About Family Violence
• Prevalence of masochistic Sexual Interest (MS)
• Parental warmth and love moderate the effect of CP
• At any level of CP, children of loving parents are less likely to have
an interest in MS
• But when CP is combined with parental warmth, the effect of CP
is increases
Research Methods
• Differences between “test of significance” and “effect size”
• Moderator or interaction effect
• How to interpret odds ratios
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