The International Journal of Indian Psychology

ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)

Volume 3, Issue 4, No. 60, DIP: 18.01.078/20160304
ISBN: 978-1-365-26308-8
http://www.ijip.in | July-September, 2016

Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary

School Students

Muddanagouda Patil 1*

ABSTRACT
The present study aimed to assess the aggression and frustration level among rural and urban
secondary school students. It was hypothesized that rural and urban secondary school students
differ significantly on aggression and frustration. In order to verify the above hypotheses a
sample of 120 students were selected from secondary schools. The sample includes equal size
of rural (N=60) and urban (N=60) students. To aggression scale developed by Pal and Naqvi
(1986) and the Frustration Scale developed by Chauhan & Tiwari (1999) was used. This scale
was administered individually to the subjects. The data were subjected to ‘t’ analyses and the
major findings of the study revealed that: rural students (mean=52.10) have more aggression
then urban students (mean=47.89) of secondary school. There is 0.05 level significant
differences between rural and urban students of secondary school on aggression. On frustration
variable rural students (mean=50.05) have more frustration then urban students (mean=49.94)
of secondary school, but they is no significant difference between both the group.

Keywords: Aggression, Frustration, Students and Dominical.

Aggression may be defined operationally in terms of rude answering to elder, irritation, feeling
of unfairness, carrying grudges, frequent quarrelling, broken engagement, impulse to take
revenge, and reactionary attitudes to traditions or beliefs (Chauhan & Tiwari, 1972). James
Davies (1970) writes that aggressiveness implies a “predisposition, an attitude of mind, an
underlying characteristic” whose likely product is a tendency for a violent action, injury, or
damage. Leonard Berkowitz (1993) writes that aggression is “any form of behaviour that is
intended to injure someone physically or psychologically”. This term is widely accepted and
used in the majority of books that deal with human aggression.

Seymour Feshbach (1994), in an attempt to explain functional differences of aggression states

that, human aggression entails a complex set of behaviors that vary markedly in structure,

1
Research scholar, Department of Psychology, Karnatak University Dharwad, Karnataka, India
*Responding Author
© 2016 I M Patil; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

content, context, and consequences. An angry feeling, a thought of revenge, jostling, teasing and
derogation, fighting over a contested object, bullying and sadistic actions, murder, and the killing
of others in the context of a revolutionary struggle or a conflict between nations, are all
considered to be acts of aggression. They are grouped together because they have in common the
intent to or actions that have the consequence of inflicting injury and harm to others.

Human aggression is any behavior directed toward another individual that is carried out with the
proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm. In addition, the perpetrator must believe that the
behavior will harm the target, and that the target is motivated to avoid the behavior (Bushman &
Anderson 2001, Baron & Richardson 1994, Berkowitz 1993, Geen 2001).

Accidental harm is not aggressive because it is not intended. Harm that is an incidental by-
product of helpful actions is also not aggressive, because the harm-do believes that the target is
not motivated to avoid the action (e.g., pain experienced during a dental procedure). Similarly,
the pain administered in sexual masochism is not aggressive because the victim is not motivated
to avoid it-indeed, the pain is actively solicited in service of a higher goal (Baumeister 1989).

Frustration:
Frustration is common in our society. It is revealed in the behavior which accompanies attempts
to get something that is difficult or impossible to get. Freud (1943) developed the concept of
frustration first time in human beings. According to Freud, “frustration occurs whenever pleasure
seeking or pain-avoiding behaviour is blocked”. He established a causal relationship between
frustration and aggression.

Encyclopedia of Psychology (1951) defines, “frustration is any interference with a goal response
or with the instrumental acts leading to it”.

“Frustration refers to the blocking of behaviour that is directed towards a goal” (Robinson, 1961;
Coleman, 1964). Frustration is ‘motivational or affective state resulting from being blocked,
thwarted, disappointed or defeated’ (English and English, 1959), has a different mechanism of
behaviour, lacking goal-orientation, having feeling of intensity, compulsiveness, appearing a
product of need-deprivation (Chauhan&Tiwari, 1972).

Frustration-Aggression Theory:
Freud emphasizes the study of aggression to understand human behaviour disorders. For Freud,
aggression is one of the consequences of frustration. This suggestion of Freud widely accepted
by Dollard et al., (1939), and formulated a theory and postulated that frustration results in
aggression. “Aggression has been defined as an act, whose goal response is injury to an organism
or organism-surrogate” (Dollard et al., 1939). Aggression is defined as behavior intended to
injure the person toward whom it is directed.

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 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

Yale group hypothesis of ‘frustration-aggression’ defined aggressive behaviour as logical and

expected consequence of frustration. They state that when our efforts relate to the goal-directed
behaviour suffers interference; our first reaction is often one of attacking and attempting to
remove the obstacle (Dollard et al., 1939).

Yale group theory of ‘frustration-aggression’ asserts, the occurrence of aggression always

presupposes the existence of frustration and contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always
leads to some forms of aggression. According to revised model of the frustration-aggression
hypothesis (Berkowitz, 1989), frustrations lead to aggression to the extent that frustrations
produce anger or other types of negative emotions such as sadness, disappointment, threats to
identity, physical pain etc., (Berkowitz, 1983, 1989). The frustration-aggression hypothesis has
many implications for individual and social behaviour. It implies, for example, that adolescent
aggression is caused by the increased frustrations of that stage of life. A large body of research
on aggression indicates that frustration often produces aggression but this relationship is always
not true. It is influenced by situations and by individual differences in personality factors.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Kozina (2007) done research on aggressive behaviour refers to the behaviour that is intended to
cause harm or pain. It can be external or internal, direct or indirect. A negative influence on
society in general is obvious, but the influence on school work should not be neglected as well. It
seems that the problem of aggressive behaviour in school settings has been increasing through
the years and therefore affecting school work at many different levels. Therefore it is essential to
develop valid instruments for measuring aggression in the school settings in order to control
aggressive behaviour and improve the school climate for effective learning. In the following
study we present the development of psycho metrically valid instrument for measuring student’s
aggression in school. We will use a newly developed instrument to identify correlates of student
aggression according to different student and school factors. The students factors included in the
analysis are: gender, age, educational aspirations, and activities in spare time and attitudes
toward school. The school factors are focused on the level of job satisfaction among teachers and
their perception of school safety. The value of the new instrument is shown through its metric
characteristics and through investigating the role and importance of aggressive behaviour in
school. Its practical value is shown in identifications of the student and school factors that are
associated with aggression.

Campano, Jessica and Munakata, Tsunetsugu (2004)describes the extent of anger and aggression
in a sample of secondary school students in the southern Philippines. A total of 650 students in
both public and private schools completed a self-report survey of levels of anger and aggression,
and teachers rated them on aggression. Results indicated that their overall levels of aggression
and anger were average. Students in private schools had higher overall aggression and anger
compared to students in public schools. Teachers rated males as having a higher level of

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 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

aggression compared to females. Self-reported anger and aggression were significantly higher
among older students, but teachers rated them as being less aggressive. The implications of these
findings for intervention and future research are discussed.

Lopeza, Pereza, Musitu Ochoab and Ruiza (2008) studied on the influence of family and
classroom environments on the development of particular individual characteristics, including
level of empathy, attitude to institutional authority and perceived social reputation, and the role
these characteristics may in turn play in school aggression. Participants were 1319 adolescents
aged 11–16 (47% male) drawn from state secondary schools in Valencia (Spain). Since previous
studies suggest that these variables may contribute differentially to aggressive behaviour
depending on adolescent gender, two different meditational structural models were calculated,
respectively, for boys and girls. Results obtained confirmed the associations expected among the
variables considered in the structural equations tested and pointed out different paths for boys
and girls. Overall, our findings suggested that a positive family environment seems to be a
stronger protective factor for girls in the development of problems of behaviour at school,
whereas for boys this is the case for a positive classroom environment. This model accounted for
40% of the variance in aggression at school for boys and 35% for girls.

Shaheen and Jahan (2014) investigate the role of self-esteem in development of aggression
among adolescents. The sample comprised of 200 (100 male and 100 female) students from
senior secondary school of Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh. Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
(Rosenberg, 1965) was used for measuring self-esteem, and Aggression Questionnaire (Buss &
Perry, 1992) was used for measuring adolescent’s aggression. Pearson Product Moment
Correlation and t-test were used for analyzing the data. Result showed that there was significant
negative correlation between self-esteem and aggression. In gender differences, it was found that
male students scored significantly higher on self-esteem in comparison to female students. It was
also found that male students scored significantly higher on different dimensions of aggression
(i.e. physical, verbal, anger and hostility) in comparison to female students.

Jain and Kakkar (2015) studied on Frustration among the Secondary School Students in relation
to their emotional maturity. Human is always ambitious by nature. They have many desires and
they want to achieve or gain all the desires, but sometimes they did not attain as the basis of their
needs and desires. In this way they become frustrated. Some situation is found among boys and
girls of college. They suffer from frustration due to failure. Sometime they may achieve success
after a number of failures. While sometimes they become helpless. So, they feel their life under
frustration. Secondary School students are adolescents who are on the verge of adulthood and
their impressionable minds feels sundry new experiences which help in their attaining a certain
degree of emotional maturity and ability to cope with the feeling of anxiety. In this fast changing
times the present problem with us will help in understanding the emotional maturity and anxiety

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 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

in secondary school students. This work is an effort to study those reasons, circumstances which
make a student frustrated and emotional immature.

Patil (2016) was studied on the Montessori method of schooling that focuses on personal
development rather than exams. The method of education produces more mature, creative and
socially adopt children compared to traditional method of education. The present study aimed to
assess the aggression and frustration of Montessori and traditional school children. It was
hypothesized that the traditional method children have significantly higher aggression and
frustration than the Montessori method children. In order to verify the above hypothesis a sample
of 120 children were selected from schools which offer education with Montessori (N=60) and
traditional methods (N=60). To measure aggression, the aggression scale developed by Pal and
Naqvi; and to measure frustration, the frustration test developed by Chauhan & Tiwari, was
administered individually to the subjects. The data were subjected to ‘t’ analyses and the major
findings of the study reveal that the children of traditional school has significantly higher level of
aggression and frustration compared to children of Montessori method of education.

Rani & Deswal (2015) studied the relationship of frustration and academic achievement of
adolescents of Government and Non-Government senior secondary schools. For this purpose a
sample of 200 adolescents, randomly selected from four Government and Non-Government.
Senior secondary schools Rohtak city was taken. As a result significant negative relationship was
found between Frustration and Academic Achievement of Adolescents of Government and Non-
Government senior secondary schools.

Chatterjee (2016) was conducted a research to see the impact of gender and socio-economic
status on frustration and aggression of adolescents. For this purpose 320 (160 male and 160
female) adolescents were purposively selected as a sample from different high schools situated in
Ranchi district. These two groups were further divided according to their parental education and
income. The result revealed that females were having higher level of aggression as compare to
male adolescents. On the other hand high socio-economic status group of adolescents were more
prone to aggression as compare to low socio-economic status group. Result further revealed that
there is no relationship between frustration and aggression.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research problem:
To find the difference between the rural and urban students of secondary school on their
aggression and frustration level

Objective:
• To explore the dominical effect on aggression and frustration level of secondary school
students.

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 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

Hypotheses:
1. There is a significant difference between rural and urban students of secondary school on
aggression.
2. There is a significant difference between rural and urban students of secondary school on
frustration.

Sample of the study:

The study was conducted on 120 samples of secondary school students. The sample includes
equal size of rural (N=60) and urban (N=60) students, include male and female students from
Chandana High School, Sirasiand Karnataka University Public School located in Dharwad,
Karnataka state. Their age ranged from 14 to 16 years.

Tools used in the study:

1. Frustration Test developed and standardized by Chauhan and Tiwari (1999), has 40
items with 4 dimensions such as Fixation, Regression, Resignation and Aggression and
each dimension has 10 items. The following scoring pattern of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 & 0 was
used. The test-retest reliability for the subscales of four modes of frustration ranges from
.78 to .92 and on total scale the reliability is .88. Whereas validity of the scale is found
to be significant level.
2. Aggression Scale - developed and standardized by Pal and Naqvi (1986) has 30 items
with six responses and scoring pattern of the scale is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 & 0. The test-retest
reliability of the scale was found to be .78 and the validity co-efficient was found to be
.74.

Statistical Techniques:
Obtained raw scores of the samples were converted into standard scores using 20 versions of
SPSS, subsequently the mean and SD was calculated. The data was subjected to independent
sample ‘t’ analysis to find the significant difference between the rural and urban students of
secondary school.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Table 01: Means, standard deviations and ‘t’ value of the rural and urban students of
secondary school on aggression.
Sample Group (N=120)
Aggression Rural students Urban students ‘t’ value
(N=60) (N=60)
Mean 52.10 47.89
2.34*
SD 10.36 9.23
* Significant at 0.05 level.

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 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

The table 01 shows means, standard deviations and ‘t’ of the rural and urban students of
secondary school on aggression. On the aggression variable there is significant difference
between the rural and urban students of secondary school. The obtained mean scores are 52.10
and 47.89 respectively. The obtained standard deviation scores are 10.36 and 9.23 respectively.
The ‘t’ value obtained for the mean difference is 2.34, which is significant at 0.05 level. This
result reveals that rural students of secondary school have high aggression then urban students of
secondary school.

Table 02: Means, standard deviations and ‘t’ value of the rural and urban students of
secondary school on frustration.
Sample Group (N=120)
Frustration Urban students
Rural students (N=60) ‘t’ values
(N=60)
Mean 48.87 51.12
Regression 1.23
SD 10.41 9.52
Mean 49.8 50.10
Fixation 0.11
SD 10.45 9.61
Mean 50.03 49.96
Resignation 0.03
SD 9.70 10.36
Mean 51.34 48.65
Aggression 1.47
SD 10.95 8.83
Total Mean 50.05 49.94
0.05
Frustration SD 10.50 9.55

The table 02 shows means, standard deviations and ‘t’ values of the rural and urban students of
secondary school on frustration. On the regression mode of frustration the obtained mean scores
are 48.87 and 51.12 respectively. The obtained standard deviations are 10.41 and 9.52
respectively. The ‘t’ value obtained for the mean difference is 1.23, which is not significant
level. On fixation dimension obtained mean scores are 49.8 and 50.10 respectively and standard
deviations are 10.45 and 9.61 respectively. The ‘t’ value obtained for the mean difference is 0.11,
which is not at significant level. On resignation mode of frustration the obtained mean scores are
50.03 and 49.96 respectively and standard deviations are 9.70 and 10.36 respectively. The ‘t’
value obtained for the mean difference is 0.03, which is not at significant level. On aggression
dimension obtained mean scores are 51.34 and 48.65 respectively and standard deviations are
10.95 and 8.83 respectively. The ‘t’ value obtained for the mean difference is 0.11, which is not
at significant level. On the frustration variable the obtained standard deviations score are 50.05
and 49.94 respectively and standard deviation score are 10.50 and 9.55 respectively. The ‘t’
value obtained for the mean difference is 0.11. This result reveals that rural students have more
frustration then urban students of secondary school but there is no significant difference between
the rural and urban students of secondary school.

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 18
 Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban Secondary School Students

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The present study is an attempt to know the aggression and frustration of the secondary school
students in relation to their dominical. The findings of the study reveals that the rural secondary
students have more aggression then urban students of secondary school, and it is showing
significant difference at 0.05level. On frustration variable rural students have more frustration
then urban students of secondary school, but there is no significant difference.

Acknowledgments
The author appreciates all those who participated in the study and helped to facilitate the
research process.

Conflict of Interests
The author declared no conflict of interests.

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How to cite this article: M Patil (2016), Aggression and Frustration among Rural and Urban
Secondary School Students, International Journal of Indian Psychology, Volume 3, Issue 4, No.
60, ISSN 2348-5396 (e), ISSN: 2349-3429 (p), DIP: 18.01.078/20160304, ISBN: 978-1-365-
26308-8

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 20