This study is a further investigation of cultural differences in Aggression by applying self-reports to university students of both sexes in Japan and Spain. Subjects were undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology courses: 200 Japanese students (100 males, 100 females) with a mean age of 20,50 years, and 203 Spanish students (67 males,136 females) of 18,77 years old as an average. They completed the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) devised by Buss and Perry (1992) and the EXPAGG, a questionnaire designed by Campbell, Muncer and Gorman (1992). The AQ is divided into four subscales measuring Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility; factor analysis allowed basically a high and positive correlation between the four factors with minor differences between the categorization of the subscales into each facto. The EXPAGG is a psychometric measure to assess instrumental versus expresive representations of aggression; both, Japanese and Spanish versions of this questionnaire contained a 20 item scale keyed such that a high score represents a predominantly expressive view of aggression. A 2 (country) x 2 (sex) ANOVA was computed for each of the scores. Japanese students scored higher on Physical Aggression and Spanish students on the other three factors, namely Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. In both samples, men scored higher than women on Physical Aggression and Verbal Aggression. A significant interaction effect between country and sex was obtained in Physical Aggression: Spanish males scored higher than Japanese males, while Japanese females scored higher than Spanish females. There was also a significant effect of country [F(1,375)=335,981, p<0.01] and sex [F(1,375)=222,096, p<0.01] in the social representation of aggression measured by the EXPAGG: Spanish students showed more expressive representation of aggression that Japanese students (13,53 vs. 11,00). And in both samples the expressive representation of aggression was significantly higher in female students than in male ones (13,10 vs. 10,93). A significant interaction between both factors [F(1,375)=29,616, p<0.05] was also found. The discussion will focus on the relevance of these cultural and sex differences to research on aggression.
Aggressive Girls at School