The effects of type, severity, and victim of children's transgressions on maternal discipline.

Abstract
Mothers of 7- to 9-yr-old boys and girls were asked to describe how they would discipline misdeeds committed by their children. The misdeeds were either mild or serious, directed against a peer, the mother or an adult neighbor, and involved either the commission of an antisocial act or the failure to be prosocial. Serious acts were responded to more frequently and made mothers angrier than mild acts. Mothers were more punitive if they were the victims of the misdeed than if the victim was a peer or a neighbor. Antisocial acts were perceived as more serious than the failure to be prosocial, and children were punished more for them. For girls, empathy training was used more frequently for the failure to be prosocial than for the commission of antisocial behavior.

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