A model to explain the observed tendency to aggression in university students

Abstract

Some approaches in psychology (e.g. Psychoanalysis) define aggression as an inborn behavior while some others (e.g. Behaviorism) define it as an acquired behavior. However, today it is a more widely admitted idea that aggression is a product of heredity-environment interactions and it has a relation with different psycho-social variables. It is observed that aggression was tried to be explained by more basic research models in previous studies. in this study; however, it was preferred to form a complex model to explain aggression selected as a dependent variable. the main objective of the study in this context is to examine the relation between aggression and the variables of perfectionism, forgiveness and coping with stress. the study group consists of 2744 university students studying in seven different cities. the data of the study was analyzed with the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). the results obtained from the study show that aggression is explained significantly by the variables of perfectionism (beta=.13; p<.001), forgiveness (beta=-.40; p<.001) and negative and passive coping (beta=.17; p<.001). Some of the results show similarities with the previous findings while the others have some differences. in consideration of the results, some suggestions were made for the implementation process and for further researches.