War legitimizes aggression not only on the frontlines but also within families, on the streets, and in social media. Over the past two years, police officers have reported an increase in fights, aggressive verbal altercations, incidents of domestic violence, and a significant rise in serious crimes. The relevance of systematically studying aggression in different sexual and age groups is driven by both scientific inquiries and the practical task of preventing the rising levels of aggression in society. Considering sexual and age aspects of aggressive behavior allows for the development of effective psychological intervention and prevention strategies.
For the first time, this dissertation implements a multi-aspect study of aggression ranging from adolescence to elderly age, which provides a conceptual picture of the functioning of this phenomenon considering sexual characteristics. Aggression is presented as a complex psychological phenomenon whose functioning is determined by a system of external and internal factors and can be represented by its morphological, operational, functional, and cultural-regulatory components. The specifics of the reactive and proactive aggression of representatives of different sex and age groups were empirically established, in particular, it was determined that: teenage girls are more prone to reactive aggression than boys; that, within the mature age, women show more readiness for proactive aggression than men; In the age -old dimension, the most prone to both reactive and proactive aggression are boys and girls of adolescence.
For the first time in a civilian sample of persons with normative behavior, it is determined that men, regardless of age, tend to legitimize aggression based on personal experience. The contradictory manifestations of aggression in interpersonal interaction in elderly men were empirically established, the essence of which is due to the predisposition to the humiliation of others through the use of derogatory humor and sarcasm, as well as a tendency to experience the effects of their own their own imbalance, anger and rudeness.
The understanding of the polystructural functioning of aggression as a complex, dynamic, and heterogeneous phenomenon, integrating components with their own structure into a whole, has been improved. The study further develops the understanding of the features of communicative aggression, revealing that adolescent boys tend to artificially stimulate their own aggression, driven by a tendency towards communicative actions aimed at initiating aggression in others and responding with their own aggressive behavior to the aggression of others.
In the first chapter of the dissertation, an aggression is revealed as a phenomenon functioning at the intersection of the biological and social aspects of a person. Aggressiveness is presented as an internal psychological characteristic of a personality, determining personal tendencies to exhibit aggression in behavior, influenced by genetic, upbringing, and social factors. It is shown that aggressiveness is always the result of a complex interaction of trans-situational and situational factors, making it unlikely to attribute its formation to a single mechanism. It is typically the "product" of various factors and mechanisms, each with its range of influence. In each specific case, a whole complex of causes and prerequisites related to different systems of the psyche—biochemical, biogenetic, psychophysiological, individual-psychological, social, etc.—may be involved. Aggressiveness as a psychological phenomenon can be represented as an integral unity of components: morphological, which characterizes the relationship of the structural components of aggressiveness; operational, responding to the planned or impulsive nature of aggressive actions; functional, representing a relatively stable structure of means of activity actualized by the subject in a specific situation of aggression realization; and cultural-regulatory, reflecting the social acceptability or unacceptability of certain forms of aggressive behaviour.
It is determined that the ways of manifesting and the motivations for using aggression vary depending on the sexual and age characteristics of the subject. Sexual and age differences in the manifestation of aggression can depend on the social environment, cultural norms, personal characteristics, and other contextual factors.
