Aggression and Social Anxiety in Adolescents
Keywords:
aggressiveness, social anxietyAbstract
The main problem of this study was to determine whether aggression and social anxiety, as two relatively opposing forms of expressing the psycho-physical reactive system "fight-or-flight", are interrelated and whether the level and the way of their manifestation depend on the gender and age differences. Applying the A-87 questionnaire to measure aggressiveness and other questionnaires to measure social anxiety, 368 Medical and Technical high school students from Novi Sad are tested, 243 girls and 125 boys aged between 14 and 18 years.
High reliability of measurement instruments was established, and four factors of social anxiety were abstracted by factor analysis. Pearson's correlation method determined that there is no direct correlation between the total scores of the measured constructs, but that the factors of latent and indirect aggression correlated with all factors of social anxiety, and overall aggressiveness is significantly correlated with all the factors of social anxiety, except for inhibition in social uncertain situations. The finding confirms the premise that reactive aggression is manifested through indirect forms, the way of manifestation of social anxiety. One-way analysis of variance found that the boys are more aggressive and the girls are socially anxious, and that the forms of aggression and social anxiety vary in age.
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