Gender and aggression .2. Personal aggressiveness

To investigate how gender, ethnicity, age and education influence aggressiveness, we surveyed 115 male and female college students (56% male, 50% Angle and 26% Hispanic) and 79 persons (72% male; 92% Angle) working on a military base. Participants were administered the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and asked about their own aggressive behaviors. In both samples, men scored significantly higher than women on the Physical Aggression scale of the Aggression Questionnaire but not on the other scales. In the military sample, men indicated that they expected to behave more aggressively than women. Positive correlations among different aspects of aggressiveness were found for both men and women. Increasing age and education were associated with lower aggressiveness in both genders, suggesting that aggressiveness may be susceptible to modification over the course of one's life.