Aggression and anxiety trait level of young male contact and noncontact athletes

Abstract

Background: It is necessary to deal with the aggressive behaviour of young people and find out whether sport can play a role in this area. So far, findings indicate modification role of sports activity and its type in terms of contact's occurrence, in the behavior of individuals. Objective: The aim of the study is to compare the level of the dimension of aggression and anxiety trait between nonathletes and contact and noncontact sport athletes and to assess the relationship between dimensions of aggression and the level of anxiety trait across the groups. Methods: The research group consisted of 153 males aged 22.07 ± 2.49 years: 47 contact sport athletes, 51 noncontact sport athletes and 55 nonathletes. Dimensions of aggression were evaluated by the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, anxiety trait was evaluated by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The differences between the groups were assessed with the Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney U test was used for posthoc pairwise comparisons. Relationship between dimensions of aggression and anxiety trait was assessed by the Spearman correlation coefficient. Results: We found that nonathletes were more physically aggressive than contact sport athletes and they also displayed a higher level of anger and hostility. Moreover, nonathletes were more hostile, physical and verbally aggressive than noncontact sport athletes. Nonathletes also had a higher level of anxiety trait than athletes. There was no difference between athletes in any dimension of aggression and anxiety trait level. Besides that, we found a significant relationship between anxiety trait level and physical aggression across the groups. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that sports activity can be beneficial for personality in both contact and noncontact athletes. Sport activity may be one of the factors which increase the possibility of releasing of aggression, while "contactness" of the sport does not play any major role in the aggression of athletes.