Abstract:

The problem of the human aggression and aggressiveness is far from being solved despite the long history of its study in psychology and other sciences. One of the debatable questions is whether it is possible to prevent or at least reduce human aggressiveness. In particular, in the scientific literature there are contradictory data on the relations of aggression and aggressiveness with such lifestyle features as:
(1) playing sports (level of physical activity), and
(2) presence/absence of smoking habit.

In the presented study, aggressiveness is investigated on the basis of the System-Functional Model (SFM) of personality traits by Russian psychologist Alexander Krupnov. According to the SFM, aggressiveness is considered as a system of motivational-meaningful and regulatory-dynamic components and variables. The SFM has been repeatedly used in comprehensive studies of the relations between various personality traits, including aggressiveness, and different aspects of social behavior.

The purpose of the present study is to reveal and analyze the relations between the aggressiveness as personality trait and the level of physical activity among non-smoking and smoking university students. We assumed that there are differences in the nature of the correlations between the studied variables depending on the presence or absence of the smoking habit.

The research was conducted in 2021 at several Russian universities. A total of 152 university students (79% – female) aged 18 to 23 years (the average age is 20 years) took part in the research, including: 81 non-smoking students (80% – female) and 71 smoking students (79% – female).

The aggressiveness level was measured with the “The Aggressiveness Questionnaire” by A.I. Krupnov in T.V. Nechepurenko’ modification. This questionnaire includes 7 subscales according to the SFM and diagnoses 14 variables of aggressiveness.

The level of physical activity (PA) of students was determined using the “International
Physical Activity Questionnaire” (IPAQ). This questionnaire includes 7 questions and allows to identify 3 levels of PA: (1) high, (2) middle, and (3) low levels.
The descriptive statistics methods, Mann–Whitney U-test, Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance, analysis of factor matrices were used for processing the data in the program Past.

The research findings show that the aggressiveness variables are more related to the level of PA in the subsample of non-smoking students, for example, the lowest level of physical aggression was revealed in this subgroup. Smoking students with average PA level have high scores on the externality and personality difficulties variables of aggressiveness. The comparative analysis showed that non-smoking respondents who have the high level of PA are characterized by less pronounced values of the main variables of aggressiveness, i.e., in general, its lower level.

The results obtained must be taken into account when designing preventive programs for correcting aggressiveness among university students taking into account the presence or absence of their smoking habit.

Keywords:

Aggressiveness, Lifestyle, System-Functional Model, Smoking, Physical activity, IPAQ, University Students.