The present study examined the relation among corporal punishment, negative parenting characteristics, and long-term negative outcomes with respect to levels of collectivist orientation. University students from individualist (i.e., Western European) and collectivist (i.e., South Asian and Chinese) backgrounds responded to questionnaires on their childhood experiences of corporal punishment, their perceived levels of parental warmth and parental use of reasoning, and their current perspective-taking, self-esteem, and aggressive behaviour. The results indicated that childhood experiences of corporal punishment negatively predicted self-esteem for individualist participants, but not collectivist participants, due to its association with low parental warmth and less use of reasoning in individualist cultures. Individualist participants' perspective-taking, however, was negatively associated with corporal punishment regardless of the level of parental warmth or use of reasoning. Thus, the results of the present study suggest that the use of corporal punishment in collectivist cultural groups, in particular, does not necessarily indicate less optimal parenting.
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