BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1599092
The Impact of Teacher Punishment Intensity on Parental Trust in Rural China: An Experimental Examination of a Moderated Mediation Model
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
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Pedagogical punishment refers to the educational behavior carried out by teachers to manage, instruct or correct students who violate rules, so as to promote the healthy development of students. In home-school partnerships, parents determine their level of trust in educators based on pedagogical punishment. Preliminary empirical evidence indicates that the punishment intensity impacts parents' interpersonal trust, though the causal pathways remain to be elucidated. Utilizing a situational experimental design with 462 rural Chinese guardians (234 females, mean age is 40.86 years), this research establishes a causal relationship between pedagogical punishment intensity and parental trust. The analysis further evaluates trustworthiness perception as a mediator and student violation severity as a moderating variable. The findings demonstrate that teacher punishment not only directly strengthens parental trust but also indirectly increases it through perceived trustworthiness. Notably, the severity of student misconduct moderates the relationship between punishment intensity and parental trust, indicating that rigorous punishment behaviors in response to severe violations foster heightened perceived trustworthiness relative to less stringent interventions. This study offers critical insights to education professionals on the rationale and strategies for implementing appropriate punishment practices, thereby enhancing parental trust in educators.
Keywords: punishment intensity, violation severity, parental trust, trustworthiness, Rural China
Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 13 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Guo, Liu and Qi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chunhui Qi, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
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