Exploration of Verbal Aggressiveness and Interpersonal Attraction through Social Network Analysis: Using University Physical Education Class as an Illustration

Analyzing a network sample of 67 students and professors at university physical education class, the authors aim to detect informal structures (hierarchies of targeting of verbal aggressiveness and interpersonal attractiveness), to point out determinants of these structural properties, and to formulate a typology of verbal aggression targets and attractive persons. Complete network analysis was applied on the sample. Four network analysis centrality indicators were used: in-degree, Katz status, pagerank and authority. Non-network and network determinants of being target of verbal aggressiveness or attractive were discussed. Basic results of the study were that, at least in particular university milieu the verbal aggressiveness does not seem to depend on the education level of the parents. Male nodes seem to be quite susceptible to become a target of verbal aggressiveness and also to be physically attracted (especially, of course, by female nodes). The professor that the students appreciate proves to be a determinant of targeting students for verbal aggressiveness. The appreciation proved to be related with social and physical attractiveness while the task attractiveness seems to be significantly correlated with the friends number. As for the attractiveness, the following types were proposed: a) the “perfect image”: the one who is socially and physically attractive tends also to be task attractive and b) the “handsome” is the socially attractive. Regarding verbal aggressiveness in combination with attractiveness, two types of target emerged: a) the “immune star”, namely a person who exerts social, physical and task attractiveness, without being a target, and b) the “targeted star”, who attracts being a target.