About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about whether there is a correlation between height and the tendency to be aggressive, focusing in particular on: (i) one hypothesis being that taller individuals feel more confident in a fight, thus are less likely to shy away from one; (ii) a key consideration in aggression studies being the gender/sex of the sample; (iii) other key socioeconomic variables to consider and aim to isolate; (iv) the role of variable interaction being a key reason for attempting to account for as many variables as possible; (v) participant recruitment as an issue for consideration, with the sampling method and its representativeness being central to this; (vi) challenges and trade-offs around self-report measures of height and aggression; (vii) considerations around types of aggression to focus on’ (viii) Buss and Perry’s 1992 Aggression Questionnaire and its application; (ix) Pearson’s R as a correlation measure.

About the lecturer

Dr Eduardo Vasquez is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent. His research interests include aggression, inter-group relations/conflict, and the influence of alcohol on social behaviours. Some of Dr Vasquez’s recent publications include 'Are you insulting me? Exposure to alcohol primes increases aggression following ambiguous provocation' (2014), 'Any of them will do: In-group identification, out-group entitativity, and gang membership as predictors of group based retribution' (2015), and 'The sexual objectification of girls and aggression towards them in gang and non-gang affiliated youth' (2017).