Answer

Personality traits are one of the factors that influence the levels of aggression in an individual. The General Aggression Model (GAM) theorizes that personal factors such as personality traits and gender determine aggression levels in an individual by influencing their internal state (Kokkinos et al., 2017). Relational aggression is a non-physical form of aggression that employs manipulative methods. It is the act of harming or intending harm to others through the purposeful manipulation of relationships between people, social exclusion or threatening to do so, and spreading rumors or gossiping (Kokkinos et al., 2017). This form of aggression can either be proactive (unprovoked) or reactive (responding to a threat). The Five-factor model is a broadly used method of categorizing personality traits into five dimensions: agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, and extraversion (Kokkinos et al., 2020). Understanding personal traits can help in understanding relational aggression.

Kokkinos et al. (2017) investigate the mediating role of Hostile Attribution Bias (HAB) in the relationship between personality traits and relational aggression and the mediating role of personality traits in the relationship between HAB and relational aggression. The study involved 347 participants, mostly student adolescents from northern Greece aged between 11 and 16 years. As expected, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion were negatively correlated to relational aggression, while neuroticism was positively correlated to relational aggression. Low conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and high neuroticism were associated with hostile attribution bias. The study is limited by the fact it is only cross-sectional and therefore lacks longitudinal aspects.

Another study by Kokkinos et al. (2020) investigates the mediating role of social-cognitive processes (such as social dominance, popularity, and intimacy) and friendship jealousy in the relationship between personality and relational aggression. The study involved 235 students from northern Greek junior high schools aged between 12 and 15. Social dominance negatively affects agreeableness and openness, popularity is negatively affected by neuroticism and positively influenced by extraversion, intimacy positively influences openness and conscientiousness, and it is negatively influenced by neuroticism (Kokkinos et al., 2020). Conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, and agreeableness negatively correlate to relational aggression, while neuroticism positively correlates to relational aggression (Kokkinos et al., 2020). This study’s limitations are that it is only cross-sectional and does not explain how these factors may change with time; the self-report technique employed may be subject to bias. The study is restricted to only adolescents in a small area of Greece.

There is a lot of research available regarding the relationship between personality traits and relational aggression. However, the classification method of personal traits using the Five-Factor Model was only recently introduced (Kokkinos et al., 2020). Therefore, there is minimal research regarding the relationship between the big five personality traits and relational aggression. Research on the variation of relational aggression with gender differences has also provided conflicting evidence (Kokkinos et al., 2016). Some research concludes that females are more prone to relational aggression; others suggest that males are more prone to R.A, while others argue that gender difference does not affect relational aggression. This study will, therefore, act to increase the knowledge available on the five-factor model relation to relational aggression and clarify the issue of gender difference. Relational aggression research is also mostly done on adolescents (Kokkinos et al., 2020). This study changes this by focusing on other age groups.

This study aims to determine the effects of the big five personality traits on relational aggression for various genders and age groups. From past studies, it is predicted that males are more likely to be relationally aggressive than females. Young adults are also more likely to be relationally aggressive compared to older people.

Method

Participants

The survey involved a total of 214 participants who were psychology students at Deakin’s college, completing HPS 121 OR HPY 713 in T3. The participants were also classified according to their genders as follows. Females were the majority in number contributing 164 participants, the number of males was 46 while 2 identified as others and 2 preferred not to specify. All the participants had to be 18 years or older. The participants’ age ranged from 18 years to 52 years, with an average age of 30.86 years and a standard deviation of 9.56. All the participants had to be Australian residents.

Materials

The questionnaire filled in by the participants consisted of 3 sections. The first section requested the participants’ demographics, that is, the age, gender, and confirmation that the participant was a student at Deakins University. The second section assessed the participants’ personal traits using 20 questions that had to be answered by each participant. The participants had to first show to what extent they agree with their personal traits ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The personal traits were measured using the international personality items pool (mini-IPIP). Negatively worded questions on the mini-IPIP subscale were reverse scored. Average agreement on the 20 items of the subscale was then used to calculate mean scores for the participants in the big five personality traits. The third section assessed the participants’ relational aggression using the Self-Report of Aggression and Social Behavior Measure (SRASBM) that consists of proactive and reactive relational aggression subscales.

The subscales consist of a list of statements (items) relating to relational aggression. The participants had to show the statements as either not at all true, sometimes true, or very true with each answer associated with a score. A mean score of all the items in each subscale is then used to calculate each participant’s score. Higher levels of score indicate higher levels of relational aggression.

Procedure

All participants agreed voluntarily to be involved in this survey, and all participation was anonymous. The process involved filling in a questionnaire consisting of three parts. Part one was demographics (age; gender), part two involved answering 20 items to determine the big five factors of personality, while part three involved answering items on the proactive and reactive subscales of the Self Report of Aggression and Social Behavior Measure (SRASBM). The entire process required 15 minutes to complete. The Deakin University research team collected and analyzed the data using SPSS Statistics v 26.