Slavery for their Own Good is the title of a novel by Andrew Acosta , describing his incarceration in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager for 71 days. In 1983, after watching the movie It's a Wonderful Life, he speculated with a high school friend what the world would have been like had he never existed. This was misinterpreted as a suicide threat, and caused a series of events that eventually led to his incarceration in the mental hospital.

"Slavery for their own good" was also an argument used by anti-abolitionists and slave owners to defend the perpetuation of the slavery of African Americans. The justification used was that the slaves were barbarians who had to be civilized under slavery. This philosophy is indicative of the strong racial prejudices of the period.