Self-Declared Aggression is Not Perceived in Indonesian Male Faces

Abstract

Facial features provide a powerful means of non-verbal communication, offering insights into a person’s gender, age, and tendencies toward aggression. Aggressivity is a characteristic of dominating, protecting position, and fighting over resources. This behavior is commonly observed across the animal kingdom, including in humans. Human aggressive behaviors manifest as anger, hostility, and physical or verbal aggression. Previous studies in Western societies have shown that human aggression can be perceived from the faces; a notable gap exists in understanding its perception in non-Western contexts. In this study, 100 Indonesian adult males from the Jakarta Metropolitan Area, aged 17 to 62, were asked to provide demographic information and complete the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) and Overt Aggression Scale Modified (OASM) to measure long-term and short-term aggression scales, respectively. Average facial photographs were generated based on participants' BPAQ and OASM scores for the low aggressivity (min-Q1) and high aggressivity (Q3-max) groups. Subsequently, A total of 212 male and 294 female raters evaluated the perceived aggressivity of these averaged faces. The resulting mean±SD of their BPAQ scales (BPAQ Total Aggression, Anger, Hostility, Physical Aggression, and Verbal Aggression) were 71.50±15.19, 17.36±4.35, 21.15±5.58, 19.27±5.05, 13.72±3.24. Then, the resulting mean±SD of their OASM scales (OASM Total Aggression, Verbal Assault, Aggression Against-Objects, Aggression Against-Others, Aggression Against-Self) were 6.17±2.51, 2.21±3.95, 1.50±3.80, 1.44±3.72, 1.02±11.61. The study findings align with existing research on the impact of genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors on aggressive behaviors, noting higher aggression scores among younger males and those with higher incomes. This study also reveals that private employees exhibit higher short-term aggression scores than students. Additionally, individuals with higher education levels and lower income tend to show increased short-term aggression. Moreover, none of the demographic factors in this study significantly impacted the choices made by raters of either gender.