TITLE:
Aggression questionnaire scores in extremely violent male prisoners, male bodybuilders, and healthy non-violent men
AUTHORS:
Henning Værøy
KEYWORDS:
Aggression; Violence, Criminals; Bodybuilders
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Psychiatry,
Vol.3 No.3,
June
26,
2013
ABSTRACT: Two aggression questionnaires,
the Revised Swedish Version (AQ-RSV) of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire
(AQ) and the shortened and refined version by Bryant and Smith (BS-AQ) were compared. Both questionnaires identified subscore levels of aggression and there
were significant differences between the groups. On the AQ-RSV subscales, the
violent inmates showed statistically significantly more aggression for
Hostility (p = 0.000), Anger (p = 0.000), Physical Aggression (p = 0.000) and Verbal Aggression (p = 0.01) than the healthy (non-violent)
men. The bodybuilders, all “on” performance-enhancing substances, scored
significantly higher on the Physical Aggression subscale than the healthy men (p = 0.000). Compared to the bodybuilders,
the violent inmates scored significantly higher on the Anger (p = 0.02) and Hostility (p = 0.002) subscales. For the BS-AQ,
where general variance was higher than for the original AQ, some of the above
mentioned relationships were different. The violent inmates still scored significantly
higher than the healthy men for Hostility (p = 0.000), Anger (p = 0.006) and
Physical Aggression (p = 0.000), but
not for Verbal Aggression. The inmates scored significantly higher than the bodybuilders
for Anger (p = 0.006) and Verbal Aggression
(p = 0.006), and the bodybuilders
scored higher than the healthy men on the Physical Aggression (p = 0.002) subscale only. These and
other more complex relationships are discussed in the light of previous
findings. Thus the BS-AQ resulted in more sharply defined relationships and, at
the same time, showed some important differences between the groups studied.
Verbal Aggression does not seem to distinguish violent inmates from healthy
men. Angry bodybuilders tend to express their aggression through Physical Aggression.