From toddlers' timeouts to criminals' prison sentences, punishment reinforces social norms, making it known that an offender has done something unacceptable. At least, that is usually the intent—but ...

Behavioral psychology says that punishment is an ineffective motivational tool, because its effects are only temporary. While punishment may suppress undesirable behavior temporarily, it fails to ...

Corporal punishment has declined so rapidly in the United States in the last 15 years that many people think it’s practically nonexistent in modern American public schools. To the contrary, more than ...

The degree of human cooperation among strangers in large societies is a major evolutionary puzzle 1,2. One of the most prominent explanations is that cooperation is maintained because many individuals ...

About 2000 men, women, and teenagers currently wait on America's "death row." Their time grows shorter as federal and state courts increasingly ratify death penalty laws, allowing executions to ...

“I’m sick and tired of violence… I’m tired of war and conflict in the world. I’m tired of shooting. I’m tired of hatred. I’m tired of selfishness. I’m tired of evil. I’m not going to use violence no ...

Punishment often has the immediate effect of correcting poor employee habits, but also the long-term effects on the employee's behavior typically outweighs the short-term benefit. Although punishing ...

(2) discriminates on the basis of socioeconomic status, race, and geography; (3) is arbitrary and capricious, including its use against the mentally ill and defendants who did not kill anyone and did ...

When news broke recently that a 6-year-old student was beaten with a wooden paddle by her school principal in Florida, many people likely had to double check that it wasn’t a story from the 1950s. In ...