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The validity of physical aggression in predicting
adolescent academic performance
James M. Loveland
1
*, John W. Lounsbury
2
, Deborah Welsh
2
and Walter C. Buboltz
1
1
Louisiana Tech University, USA
2
University of Tennessee, USA
Background. Aggression has a long history in academic research as both a criterion
and a predictor variable and it is well documented that aggression is related to a variety
of poor academic outcomes such as: lowered academic performance, absenteeism and
lower graduation rates. However, recent research has implicated physical aggression as
being predictive of lower academic performance.
Aims. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the Big Five personality
traits of agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism and
extraversion and physical aggression in predicting the grade point averages (GPA) of
adolescent students and to investigate whether or not there were differences in these
relationships between male and female students.
Sample. A sample of 992 students in grades 9 to 12 from a high school in south-
eastern USA as part of a larger study examining the students preparation for entry into
the workforce.
Method. The study was correlational in nature: students completed a personality
inventory developed by the second author with the GPA information supplied by the
school.
Results. Results indicated that physical aggression accounts for 16% of variance in
GPA and it adds 7% to the prediction of GPA beyond the Big Five. The Big Five traits
added only 1.5% to the prediction of GPA after controlling for physical aggression.
Interestingly, a signicantly larger amount of variance in GPA was predicted by physical
aggression for females than for males.
Conclusions. Aggression accounts for signicantly more variance in the GPA of
females than for males, even when controlling for the Big Five personality factors.
Future research should examine the differences in the expression of aggression in males
and females, as well as how this is affecting interactions between peers and between
students and their teachers.
* Correspondence should be addressed to James Loveland, Department of Psychology, Louisiana Tech University, Box 10048,
Ruston, LA 71272, USA (e-mail: loveland@latech.edu).
The
British
Psychological
Society
167
British Journal of Educational Psychology (2007), 77, 167176
q 2007 The British Psychological Society
www.bpsjournals.co.uk
DOI:10.1348/000709905X79563
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This study investigated the validity of trait physical aggression as a predictor of
adolescent academic performance, beyond what is accounted for by the Big Five
personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism). Researchers have long been examining factors or characteristics that
are related to academic performance, from intellectual level to personality (Balkin,
1987; Edwards, 1967; Gough & Lanning, 1986; Kuncel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2004).
However, little research has attempted to examine the impact that aggression may have
on academic performance. The research that has been conducted has shown that
aggression is related to poor academic outcomes, including school drop-out (Farmer
et al., 2003; French & Conrad, 2001; Shure, 2001) and truancy (Lahey et al., 1999; Miller
& Plant, 1999). Balkin found that an Adjective Check List measure of aggression was
negatively related to the grade point average (GPA) of 112 college students, predicting
6% of variance above achievement and high school GPA. Based on a sample of 220
students in the seventh grade and 290 students in the 10th grade, Lounsbury,
Sundstrom, Gibson, and Loveland (2003a) found that a self-report, personality trait
measure of aggression was negatively correlated (r 2:30, p , :01 and r 243,
p , :01, respectively) with cumulative GPA in the two samples. Additionally, they found
evidence for aggression having incremental validity in predicting GPA in both the middle
school and high school samples after controlling for the Big Five personality traits.
Specically, they found that aggression accounted for 4% of variance in the 7th graders
and 10% of variance in the 10th graders after controlling for the Big Five personality
traits. Interestingly, neither of these studies examined sex differences in predicting GPA,
especially in light of the fact that numerous studies have found that males and females
differ in levels of aggression (Crozier, 1997; McDermott, 1996; Tremblay, Gardner, &
Heipel, 2000; Bjorkqvist, O

sterman, & Hjelt-Ba ck, 1994).

These ndings are interesting and deserve further attention not only because it is an
important criterion variable that is not ordinarily addressed in the literature on
aggression, but also because it is not mentioned in most literature on personality
predictors of academic performance (e.g. Barton, Dielman, & Cattell, 1972; Graziano &
Ward, 1992, Parker & Stumpf, 1998). In line with a validation strategy of examining the
boundaries of validity relationships as a function of individual difference variables
(Cronbach, 1988; Messick, 1989) and given the marked gender difference in aggression
in school settings (Crozier, 1997), we also examined the predictive validity of aggression
in relation to academic performance for males and females separately. The choice of sex
as a blocking variable is motivated by the extensive literature showing differences
between males and females in aggression and construct relations involving aggression
(e.g. Brennan, Hall, Bor, Najman, & Williams, 2003; Eley, Lichenstein, & Stevenson,
1999; Hammock & OHearn, 2002; Scherzer & Pinderhughes, 2002; Vierikko,
Pulkkinen, Kaprio, Viken, & Rose, 2003).
Thus, the important question in this regard is: does aggression uniquely contribute to
the prediction of academic performance above and beyond other personality constructs
for male and females which have traditionally been studied in relation to academic
performance? Given the often observed multicolinearity in personality measures (e.g.
Hofstee, 2002), it is important from the standpoint of theory development as well as for
practical application to determine the unique validities of traits such as aggression.
Both the Balkin (1987) and Lounsbury et al. (2003a) studies provide evidence for the
incremental validity of aggression in predicting academic performance. However, when
examining the question of the relative importance of aggression as a predictor of
academic performance, there is no inherent reason why the Big Five traits should be
168 James M. Loveland et al.
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given theoretical precedence over aggression with the focus on the incremental validity
of aggression after accounting for the effects of the Big Five. Aggression has a much
longer history of research in psychology than the Big Five, which emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s as a discrete topic. Moreover, as noted by Paunonen and Nicol (2001), in
order to clarify the predictive validity of narrow personality traits, it is important to
assess not only whether a narrow trait increments the validity of the Big Five traits but
also whether the Big Five traits are able to increment the validity of the narrow trait.
Resolving such issues could have important implications not only for the elaboration of
theory, but also for practitioners who might, for example, want to choose one measure
to predict the GPAs of adolescents in school or counselling psychology settings.
The primary objectives of this study were to: (1) assess the relationship between trait
physical aggression and GPA for males and females; (2) assess whether aggression adds
incremental validity to the prediction of GPA above and beyond the Big Five personality
traits of openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional
stability for each sex; and (3) to assess whether the Big Five traits add incremental
validity to the prediction of GPA beyond aggression for each sex.
Method
Participants
The setting for this study was a south-eastern U. S. city high school with students in the
9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades serving as participants in an employability study
conducted in 2002 for the high school (Lounsbury & Gibson, 2001). All high school data
were obtained from an archival source. Of the 992 participants, 264 (27%) were in the
9th grade, 272 (27%) were in the 10th grade, 254 (26%) were in the 11th grade and 202
(20%) were in the 12th grade. Fifty-one percent were females. The average age was 15.5
years. Individual race/ethnic data were not recorded. Aggregate statistics for the school
indicated 80% were white/Caucasian, 16% were African-American and 4% were Other.
Measures
The personality inventory used in this study was the Adolescent Personal Style
Inventory (APSI) developed to measure the Big Five personality traits and other variables
for adolescents down to age 12 (Lounsbury & Gibson, 2002; Lounsbury et al., 2003b).
The aggression subscale of the APSI contains six items which all relate to the use of
physical aggression in various situations. Here are two sample items: If somebody
pushes me too far, I get angry and attack that person. I would rather ght than talk
about a problem. The aggression subscale has been previously used to measure trait
aggression (Lounsbury et al., 2003a). In a pilot sample for this study based on 84 college
students, the APSI aggression measure correlated .78 with the Buss (Buss & Perry, 1992)
physical aggression subscale.
Cumulative GPA for individual students were provided by the school participating in
the study.
Results
Table 1 displays the intercorrelations among all six of the personality measures with GPA
for the total sample. Table 2 shows these data for males and females separately, with males
belowthe diagonal and females above. Table 3 summarizes the regression results for both
males and females, with the Big Five traits entered rst as a set, followed by aggression.
Physical aggression and academic performance 169
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Table 4 summarizes the regression data for males and females, with aggression entered
rst. To examine the degree of incremental variance inGPAwhichcould be accounted for
by the aggressiveness measure beyond the Big Five, the Big Five traits were rst entered as
a block, followed by the aggression measure as the next block in a stepwise regression.
Table 1. Intercorrelations of study variables for entire sample
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Agreeableness (1) (.84) .28** .27** .28** .34** 2.69** .30**
Conscientiousness (2) (.80) .11** .28** .32** 2.20** .14**
Emotional Stability (3) (.82) .17** .09** 2.27** .10**
Extraversion (4) (.82) .36** 2.21** .08*
Openness (5) (.84) 2.27** .20**
Aggression (6) (.79) 2.40**
GPA (7) (N/A)
Note. N 992.
*
p , :05;
**
p , :01.
Table 2. Intercorrelations of study variables with females above the diagonal and males below
the diagonal
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Agreeableness (1) (.84) .24** .32** .22** .29** 2.66** .31**
Conscientiousness (2) .23** (.80) .17** .20** .25** 2.15** .10*
Emotional stability (3) .43** .17** (.82) .26** .14** 2.32** .11**
Extraversion (4) .24** .29** .25** (.82) .26** 2.15** .03
Openness (5) .34** .35** .13** .40** (.84) 2.19** .17**
Aggression (6) 2.68** 2.17** 2.41** 2.16** 2.30** (.79) 2.47**
GPA (7) .24** .16** .16** .09 .22** 2.29** (N/A)
Note. for females, N 505; for males, N 487.
*
p , :05;
**
p , :01.
Table 3. Results of hierarchical multiple regression for males and females with Big Five traits entered
before aggression
Step Variable Multiple R R
2
R
2
Change
Males only; dependent variable: GPA
1 Big Five traits (agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability,
extraversion and openness)
.301** .090** .090**
2 Aggression .337** .114** .024**
Females only; dependent variable: GPA
1 Big Five traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, extraversion and openness)
.335** .112** .112**
2 Aggression .488** .238** .126**
Note. males: N 417, females: N 470.
*
p , :05;
**
p , :01.
170 James M. Loveland et al.
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For males the multiple R for the Big Five was .301 (R
2
:09, p , :01) and reached .337
(R
2
:11) with a signicant R
2
change of .024 (p , :01) with the addition of aggression.
For females the multiple R for the Big Five was .335 (R
2
:11, p , :01. When aggression
was addedtothe model, the multiple Rwas .488 (R
2
change :13, p , :01). Toassess the
difference between the amount of variance in GPA accounted for by the aggression
measure (while controlling for the Big Five) betweenmales and females, a z test of the two
beta weights (Cohen & Cohen, 1983) was completed, z 3:53, p , :01. Finally, to
determine whether or not males had higher aggression scores overall, an independent
samples t test was conducted. Results indicated that males did, in fact, score higher on
aggression than females, t990 7:997, SEM :040, p , :0001.
The same hierarchical regression procedure was repeated, except that aggressionwas
now entered as the rst step and the Big Five were entered second (as a block).
The multiple correlation for aggression was R .399 (R
2
15:8%, p , :01). When the
Big Five were added to the equation, the multiple R increased to .418 which represents
an R
2
change of 1.5%(p , :01). For males only, the Rfor aggression was .291 (R
2
:083,
p , :01). Entry of the Big Five raised the multiple R to .337 (R
2
change 3:1%,
p , :01). For females, the R for aggression was .472 (R
2
22:2%); entry of the Big Five
raised the multiple R to .488 (R
2
change 1:8%, p , :01).
Discussion
The rst main result of the present study is that aggression is negatively related to GPA.
Insofar as this result replicates the ndings of Balkin (1987), Lounsbury et al. (2003a) and
Risi, Gerhardstein, and Kistner (2003), we have increased condence in the
generalizability or external validity (Cook &Campbell, 1979) of the aggression-academic
performance relationship. It is interesting to note that the bivariate correlation between
aggression and GPA is 2.40, which is at least as high in absolute value as is ordinarily
found for: (1) criteria that have been traditionally linked to aggression, such as bullying
(e.g. Ireland & Archer (2002) found a .36 correlation between aggression and acts of
bullying among juvenile offenders) and physical violence (e.g. Bushman & Wells (1998)
report a .33 correlation between aggression and penalty minutes for ghting among
professional hockey players) and (2) standard cognitive measures used to predict
academic performance suchas the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT; Wolfe &Johnson(1995)
Table 4. Results of hierarchical multiple regression for males and females with aggression entered
before Big Five traits
Step Variable Multiple R R
2
R
2
Change
Males only; dependent variable: GPA
1 Aggression .291** .083** .085**
2 Big Five traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, extraversion and openness)
.337** .101** .029*
Females only; dependent variable: GPA
1 Aggression .472** .222** .222**
2 Big ve traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, extraversion and openness)
.488** .238** .015
Note. males N 417, females N 470.
*p , :05; **p , :01.
Physical aggression and academic performance 171
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found that SAT scores had a .34 correlation with undergraduate GPA) and intelligence
(e.g. Omizo (1980) found a .31 correlation between intelligence and collegiate GPA).
The present nding that aggression adds incremental validity to the prediction of
GPAbeyond the Big Five is important because it shows that aggression is uniquely predictive
of academic performance. This nding also informs the ongoing debate about broad vs.
narrow personality traits (e.g. Ashton, 1998; Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996; Ones &
Viswesveran, 1996; Paunonen, 1998; Paunonen, Rothstein, & Jackson, 1999), with the
present results adding weight to the argument for including both narrowand broad traits in
predicting complexcriteria like grade point averages. However, it shouldbe noted that while
the Big Five traits do add signicantly to the prediction of GPA after aggression has been
accounted for, the Big Five traits add less than 2% of the variance in the prediction of GPA.
The incremental validity of aggression in predicting academic performance after
controllingfor the BigFive traits raises aninterestingtheoretical questionas towhy this might
be so. Drawing on traditional conceptualizations of aggression in the school setting (for a
review, see Crozier, 1997), one might expect higher levels of aggression to result in lower
levels of academic performance through such mechanisms as attention decits, poor study
habits, ghting and social disruption which could lead to detentions, suspensions and
negative labelling by teachers all of whichcould directly or indirectly result inlower grades.
The correlations across the sexes between agreeableness and both aggression and
GPA are virtually identical (males r 2:68; :24, respectively; females r 2:66; :31,
respectively). The same is also true for the other Big Five traits and aggression. The
correlation between aggression and agreeableness could be explained by the fact that
aggression is the behavioural manifestation of low levels of agreeableness and not the
trait of agreeableness itself. This explanation would need to be supported by a nding
that aggression accounts for unique variance both before and after agreeableness were
entered into a regression analysis. As discussed earlier this was clearly the case.
However, when aggression manifested in females it resulted in R
2
values two to three
times greater than those for males.
It is not clear howaggression would be negatively related to GPAindependently of the
Big Five traits. Nevertheless, we offer two of many possible mechanisms which might
mediate this relationship. One possibility pertains to processes within the aggressive
students and a second to processes within the teachers (who are assigning the grades).
Recent scholarship within social psychology has convincingly demonstrated that people
(1) become much more aggressive (Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001) and (2)
show signicant impairments in intelligent thought (Baumeister & DeWall, 2004)
following instances of social rejection. Neither of these two ndings is mediated by affect
or mood of participants. It is possible that the processes associated with the relationship
between aggression and academic performance both relate to adolescent experiences of
social rejection. Aggressiveness, which is such a distinguishing attribute of socially
rejected adolescents, is highly consistent from childhood to adolescence (Moftt, 1993).
Socially rejected adolescents have serious adjustment problems throughout their life,
including academic difculties. In fact, the key factor in predicting whether adolescents
rejected by their peers will drop out of school in late adolescence is their aggression
towards their peers in elementary school (Kupersmidt & Coie, 1990). A second possible
mechanism underlying the relationship between aggression and GPA is that aggressive
students interfere with classroommanagement and, thus, might be punished by teachers
inthe formof lower grades. These are only twoof many possible mechanisms. Identifying
the nature of the mechanism underlying the relationship between aggression and
172 James M. Loveland et al.
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academic performance in adolescents clearly represents a challenge for future research
and theorizing on aggression and its role in academic performance.
One other aspect of the present results concerns the status of aggression as a broad
or narrow trait. In the full sample, aggression is signicantly related to all of the Big Five
traits. Accordingly, one interpretation is that aggression is a broad personality trait that
includes the Big Five factors of agreeableness, emotional stability, openness,
extraversion and conscientiousness; this interpretation differs from that of Lounsbury
et al. (2003a) who treated aggression as a narrow personality trait. Such an
interpretation is analogous to Ones (1993) conclusion that integrity is a broad construct
comprising conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability. Viewing aggres-
sion as a broad personality construct that encompasses several subfactors such as the
Big Five (and perhaps other traits such as impulsivity and anger-hostility) would help
account for why aggression is related to a variety of criteria such as ghting, smoking
and academic performance. Resolving the question as to whether aggression should be
viewed as a broad or a narrow trait is beyond both the scope of this paper and the data
that were examined. However, the data here do lend some support to the argument that
the scope of aggression may be broader than earlier researchers have assumed.
Turning to the differences in validity relationships for males versus females, it is
interesting to see that the amount of variance accounted for by aggression in females is
more than double that for males. When controlling for the Big Five personality traits,
aggression accounts for over ve times the variance in GPAfor females than for males. We
do not know the mechanism that explains the link between aggression and academic
performance in general or why the association is so much stronger in females. However,
we suggest a few possibilities. The increased strength of the correlation between
aggression and academic performance in adolescent females may relate to differences in
howteachers treat male and female students. As we discussed earlier, aggressive students
are problematic for teachers in general and may consequently be penalized with lower
grades. However, inour society, the penalty for aggressioninfemales is muchgreater than
it is for males because it violates expected gender norms (Glick & Fiske, 1999, 2001).
Thus, teachers, responsible for assigning students grades, may especially penalize
aggressive girls in the subjective component of their grading. Secondly, teachers may
provide more remediation for aggressive males (which may improve their skills and
facilitate their academic achievement) than they do for aggressive females (Sadker &
Sadker, 1994). Thus, the deleterious impact of aggression on academic performance
would be expected to be stronger in females. Another interesting possibility that goes
along with this hypothesis is that there may be differences in the ways that males and
females engage in physically aggressive behaviour. For instance, boys may be more overt
in their aggressive behaviours than are girls so problem boys may be quickly targeted for
extra attention. Girls, on the other hand, if they are more discreet in their aggressive
behaviour may simply be alienating their peers without attracting the attention(andhelp)
of the teacher. As a corollary to this, it is important to also consider the idea that different
types of aggression may be punished differently. For instance, girls who physically harm
other girls may be punished to a higher degree thanboys who attackother boys. While we
did not address this issue in our study, research in this vein is warranted.
There are a number of limitations of the present study. First, the aggression and Big
Five measures were based on-self report data. It may be worthwhile to include an
independent method to assess students personality attributes, such as teacher ratings.
This would have permitted assessment of the convergent validity of ndings via two
independent methods and, if teacher ratings could have included other variables such as
Physical aggression and academic performance 173
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frequency of different types of aggression, it might have allowed us to clarify how
aggression affected academic performance (for example, more aggressive students may
have been placed in isolation areas more frequently which would have deprived them of
in-class instructional time). Second, it would help to include a measure of assessing
social rejection in the participants. Third, the setting for this study was a single
geographic region in an urban setting with unknown generalizability to other locales.
Fourth, longitudinal data that would have permitted a better explication of causal
dynamics among the variables were not collected. Fifth, it would have been interesting
to measure gender role identication, such as Bems (1981) constructs of masculinity,
femininity and androgyny or a measure of attitudes towards woman such as the
Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI: Glick & Fiske, 1996) in addition to sex as blocking
variables for the validity relationships.
To summarize, the present results provide additional support for the substantive
bivariate relationship between aggression and the academic performance of middle and
high school students as well as the unique validity of aggression in predicting GPA after
controlling for Big Five traits. An important question raised by this study is why aggression
appears to be one of the best personality predictors of academic performance as well as
why the magnitude of its relationship with GPA may be as high as cognitive variables
traditionally used to predict academic performance, such as intelligence and the SAT. Two
other important observations made here are that aggression has a relatively wide
nomothetic span (Messick, 1989) across disparate criterion variables and that aggression
shouldperhaps be regarded as a broad or higher-order personality construct encompassing
the Big Five, and perhaps other, personality traits. Our nding that the negative relationship
between aggression and GPA is stronger in females is intriguing. Future research aimed at
identifying the processes mediating this relationship is necessary in order to develop
intervention strategies to facilitate the academic performance of aggressive girls.
In conclusion, the strength of the negative association we found between aggression
and academic performance beyond that accounted for by other personality factors and
the gender differences we found in this association are intriguing. Our ndings suggest a
need for modications to current theoretical conceptualizations of academic
performance as well as a need for future empirical investigations to explicate the
mechanisms mediating these relationships.
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Received 4 January 2005; revised version received 15 September 2005
176 James M. Loveland et al.