| Abstract [eng] |
Lekavičiūtė, G., (2019). The relationship between aggression, self-esteem and cognitive distortions among an offender and non-offender male sample. Master thesis. Vilnius: Vilniaus University, p. 48. Violence and aggressive behavior is a global problem that requires huge finances from government and society. Scientists claim that self-esteem and cognitive distortions are related to aggression. Therefore, the relationship between aggression, self-esteem and cognitive distortions was investigated in this study. The study included 110 men (58 unconvicted men and 52 convicted men); the average age of the convicted offenders was 30.6 years old; the average age of the unconvicted persons was 32.4 years old. The convicted participants were judged on average 2.5 times. Currently, all convicted persons have committed violent crimes (eg, causing physical pain, minor disruption to health, robbery, etc.). The average sentence for the convicted participants was 2.25 years. The study was conducted by using three tools: “Buss and Perry Aggression questionnaire“ (1992) to evaluate aggression, “Rosenberg self-esteem scale“ (1965) to evaluate self-esteem and “How I Think Questionnaire“ (Barriga, Gibbs, Potter, & Liau, 2001) to evaluate the use of cognitive distortions. The results showed that the convicted men are more aggressive than those who were not convicted. It was also found that the difference of self-esteem between convicted and unconvicted men is not significant. Convicted participants use cognitive distortions more often than the unconvicted participants. The results revealed that self-esteem and cognitive distortions can predict aggression. Likewise, it is possible to distinguish convicted from unconvicted according to their aggression and cognitive distortions. Keywords: aggression, self-esteem, cognitive distortions, antisocial behaviour. |
