One study by researcher Jorge Cuartas and his co-authors found that spanking undermines feelings of safety, and promotes hypervigilance. They found that children who were spanked were more attuned to potential threats, and which even included neutral faces. In other words, these children were more likely to be constantly monitoring the facial expressions of others, feeling on edge, and easily thrown into dysregulation if someone else seemed unhappy — even if it was simply the absence of a happy facial expression. One of the authors of the study compared it to the impact of sexual abuse, showing a change in how the brain processes the world, undermining and eroding a sense of safety: ‘You see the same reactions in the brain…Those consequences potentially affect the brain in areas often engaged in emotional regulation and threat detection, so that children can respond quickly to threats in the environment.’
D.L. Mayfield and Krispin Mayfield, STRONGWILLED, Chapter 10: “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child”
