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A 50-year-old study showed that spanking makes kids anti-social. Kids who suffered physical abuse in childhood tend to develop negative behaviors resulting to a much serious problem when they grow up.

The study said that kids who suffered beating and physical abuse are more likely to develop social abnormalities and become criminals when they grow up. However, those who are shown love and care when they are young are friendlier and more sociable compared to the kids who received constant beating from their parents, TeCake reported.

The records of more than 160,000 children from 50 years showed the researchers that hitting on the head and cheeks increases cognitive difficulties, mental aggression leading to adverse anti-social behavior. "Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognise as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors," said Elizabeth Gershoff from The University of Texas at Austin in the US.

"We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children," she added.

The public records also showed that children who suffered beating make them more aggressive. Furthermore, when these children became parents, they are more likely to hit their children unnecessarily, creating a chain that carries through generations that leads to social abnormalities.

The result of the study says that spanking increases the possibilities of different negative effects on children. Spanking results to the opposite of what the parents are expected, said co-author Grogan-Kaylor University of Michigan's school of social work in the US.

The researchers came up with their results by reviewing different studies and only found negative behavioral associations towards spanking on every research model. They stated that there is no clear evidence that spanking has any positive effect on a child's behavior and development. The outcomes of spanking are the same as the outcomes of physical abuse, Fox News reported.

"We as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors," Gershoff said in the release. "Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative child outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree."

Gershoff noted in the news release that the results of their research fall in line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recent report that called for "public engagement and education campaigns and legislative approaches to reduce corporal punishment," which includes spanking as a means of reducing physical abuse in a child.

"We hope that our study can help educate parents about the potential harms of spanking and prompt them to try positive and non-punitive forms of discipline," she said in the release.