Predicting the university student’s Aggression according to Intelligence, Temperament and Attachment

Despite the effects of inconstant and situational variables on aggression, relative constancy of aggression across life span was confirmed in some studies. The present study aimed to predict the university student’s aggression according to intelligence, temperament dimensions and attachment styles as constant individual variables.

The population of the study was Salman Farsi University of Kazerun’s students, that 266 of them were selected by convenience sampling. For gathering data Buss-Perry Aggression questionnaire (Buss & Perry,1992), Temperament and Character inventory (Cloninger, et al., 1994), Adult attachment Inventory (Besharat,2011), The Cultural Fair Intelligence Test III (Cattel,1957) and Marlowe-Crown Social desirability scale (Crown and Marlowe,1960) were used. After controlling the effect of social desirability by partial correlation method, the variables with significant relationships to general aggression were considered for regression analysis with a stepwise method to predict the aggression.

Correlation coefficients indicated that aggression positively correlated to avoidant and ambivalent attachment, novel seeking, harm avoidance, and persistence. Besides according to the output of the regression avoidant and ambivalent attachment, harm-avoidance besides social desirability could predict 47% of aggression, although 16% of it was pertinent to social desirably responding.

It can be concluded that among normal university students, the weight of constant individual variables to predict aggression is not so much, and perhaps the other residual variance of aggression could be explained by situational or more acquired variables. Considerable to the little role of long-term personality variables, the expectation of modifiability and treatment of student’s aggression by intervention would be increased.