Links between spanking & delinquency, depression, & alcohol use are explained by moderate-to-large degrees of genetic covariation, & small-to-moderate degrees of nonshared environmental covariation

Barbaro, Nicole. 2020. “The Effects of Spanking on Psychosocial Outcomes: Revisiting Genetic and Environmental Covariation.” PsyArXiv. March 8. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zhgme

Abstract: A large body of work has investigated the associations between spanking and a wide range of psychosocial outcomes across development. A comparatively smaller subset of this literature, on a narrower range of psychosocial outcomes, has employed genetically-informative research designs capable of estimating the degree to which observed phenotypic effects are explained by genetic and environmental covariation. The current research analyzed data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY; Study 1) and conducted simulation models using input parameters from the existing literature (Study 2) to provide a summative evaluation of the psychosocial effects of spanking with regard to genetic and nonshared environmental covariation. Results of Study 1 replicated previous work showing that associations between spanking and outcomes such as delinquency, depression, and alcohol use were explained by moderate-to-large degrees of genetic covariation, and small-to-moderate degrees of nonshared environmental covariation. Estimates from the simulations of Study 2 suggest that, generally, genetic covariation could account for a substantial amount of the observed phenotypic effect between spanking and the psychosocial outcome of interest (≈ 60%-80%), with the remainder likely attributable to nonshared environmental covariation (≈ 0%-40%). Collectively the results of the current research indicate that continued work on the developmental effects of spanking is best served by genetically-informative research designs on a broader range of outcomes than what is currently available.