Personal Aggression and Anxiety of Adolescents and Perception of Aggressive Advertising

Abstract

This article presents a study of the relationship of the personal characteristics of adolescents (personal aggressiveness and anxiety) to an unconscious attitude to commercials in which there are acts of aggression. The study was conducted in two stages. At the first stage, the adolescents were offered the Buss-Durkee questionnaire, questionnaire of Spielberger-Khanin, Eysenck questionnaire. In addition, they had to rank the colors according to the method of M. Luscher according to the degree of their attractiveness to themselves. At the second stage of the study, they were shown commercials with elements of aggression. After watching commercials, retesting was performed using the technique of M. Luscher, as well as the method of Etkind’s Color Test. A sample of our research was made by adolescents aged 14-16 in an amount of 60 people. The entire sample is divided into 2 subgroups: adolescents with a high level of aggression (30 people) and adolescents with a low level of aggression (30 people). The results indicate that adolescents with a high level of aggression perceive the scenes of violence in television advertising as encouraging activity and overcoming harassment, which further aggravates the aggression. At the same time, adolescents with low levels of aggression, on the contrary, perceive aggressive advertising as depressing and unpleasant.