Aggressiveness, dominance, developmental factors, and serum cholesterol level in college males.

The present study was conducted to examine for college males relations between aggressiveness (or expressive hostility) and dominance and (a) particular developmental experiences and (b) total serum cholesterol. Aggressiveness but not dominance was found to be positively related to subjects' reports of their parents' behavior which reflected (a) less genuine acceptance, (b) more interference in the person's desires as a child, and (c) more punitiveness. For low-physically fit subjects, both aggressiveness and dominance were found to be positively related to levels of total serum cholesterol. These relations are congruent with the notion that both aggressiveness and dominance may contribute to hastening coronary atherosclerosis and risk of CHD via elevated levels of plasma lipids. It should be noted, however, that the relations obtained in the present study were all modest in size. For high-physically fit individuals associations were not found between total serum cholesterol and either aggressiveness or dominance. These results suggest that good physical fitness may attenuate the degree to which either aggressiveness or dominance may adversely affect health via elevated levels of cholesterol.