Using an evolutionary perspective to understand the relationship between physical aggression and academic performance in late adolescents |
| |
| Authors: | José Antonio Muñoz Reyes Rómulo Guerra Pablo Polo Eduardo Cavieres Miguel Pita Enrique Turiégano |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chilejose.munoz-cea@upla.cl;3. Dirección de Postgrado, Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Santiago, Chile;4. Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile;5. Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Espa?a |
| |
| Abstract: | In this study, we applied an evolutionary perspective to analyze the relationship between aggressiveness, academic performance, and sociality in a population of 528 adolescents of both sexes. In men, we expect physical aggression (PA) and sociality to be negative predictors of academic performance. However, in women, PA would be a negative predictor of academic performance, and sociality a positive one. Our results report a negative association between academic performance and PA in both sexes. As we expected, social effect derived from the use of PA seems to be different for each sex, where men could display a rebellious attitude to increase chances of finding a mate. In contrast, results for women are not conclusive, because no relationship between academic performance and any aggressive mechanism, were predicted by sociality. We conclude that an evolutionary framework, which includes sex-specific hypotheses, is appropriate to obtain a holistic perspective of this phenomenon. |
| |
| Keywords: | academic performance evolutionary psychology late adolescents physical aggression sociality |
|
|
