Locus of control and overt aggression in secondary school students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between locus of control and overt aggression in secondary school students. It was anticipated that students with locus of control profiles with higher scores in the two external subscales of Levenson's I, P, and C Scales (i.e. "powerful others" and/or "chance") and lower internal scores would exhibit more overt aggressive behaviour than would students with lower external and higher internal scores. Subjects were comprised of 616 secondary school students (298 females and 31 8 males) between the ages of 1 3 and 1 8. Each student completed the Levenson I, P, and C Scales, measuring locus of control, near the beginning of the school year. All students were monitored for overt aggressive behaviour over the course of that same school year. The correlation between individual students' overt aggressive behaviours and their respective locus of control profiles was examined using multiple linear regression as the main statistical analysis. Results of this study indicate that locus of control had a significant effect in predicting overt aggression. Over 44% of the variance in overt aggressive behaviour was predicted by locus of control scores.