Personality Correlates of Hostility in Medical Students: Aggression, Anger & Assertiveness

Abstract

Background: People who are less poised and emotionally unstable are more likely to display aggression in response to anger-inducing events. Their intensity of anger is directly proportional to loss of behavioral control. Aggressive behavior is a serious social problem. It is extremely important to address this situation at an early age to secure the healthy development of children.

Objective: The objective of this study is to propose a new way to measure aggression and observe the aggressive behavior across various factors.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Private Medical College. The data was collected from 401 medical students using a convenient sampling technique. The data was collected on a self-designed questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire and was came out to be 85%. The reliability of the extracted factors was also tested. Confirmatory factor Analysis (CFA) was used to observe the overall performance of the model.

Results: Significant value of KMO and Bartlett test allowed for EFA. Three extracted factors accounted for 76.5% of the variation. The extracted factors were named as “Aggression”, “Anger” and “Assertiveness”. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to observe the factorial structure using AMOS 21. About 32.7% of students clearly mentioned that they are not short-tempered.

Conclusion: Nearly three fourth of the students said that they do not break things in anger and approximately 70% said they do not get into fights without any reason. A significant difference exists in the overall level of aggression across age groups.

Keywords: Aggression, Anger, Student, Violence