Tattoos Aggression4

Running head: TATTOOS, AGGRESSION, AND REBELLIOUSNESS

Are Tattooed Adults Really More Aggressive and Rebellious Than Those Without Tattoos?

Viren Swami1-2, Helen Gaughan1, Ulrich S. Tran3, Tim Kuhlmann4, Stefan Stieger4,

& Martin Voracek3

1 Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, London, UK

2 Department of Psychology, HELP University College, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

3 Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, School of Psychology,

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

4 Research Methods, Assessment, and iScience, Department of Psychology, University of

Konstanz, Germany

Address correspondence to: Dr. Viren Swami, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science

and Technology, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W

6UW, UK. Email: [email protected]; Telephone: +442079115000.

Tattoos, aggression, and rebelliousness 2

Abstract

One stereotype of people with tattoos is that they are more aggressive and rebellious than

people without tattoos. However, studies examining differences in these traits between

tattooed and non-tattooed individuals are dated and have returned equivocal results. To re-

examine this issue, we asked 378 adults from London, UK, to complete self-report measures

of aggression and rebelliousness, and to report the number of tattoos they possessed. Of this

sample, 25.7% possessed at least one tattoo, with no sex difference in the distribution of

tattoo status. We found that tattooed adults had significantly higher reactive rebelliousness,

anger, and verbal aggression than non-tattooed adults. However, effect sizes were small and

there were also no significant between-group differences in terms of proactive rebelliousness,

physical aggression, and hostility. These results suggest that, while stereotypes may contain a

kernel of truth, they likely present an outmoded picture of tattooed adults.

Keywords: Tattoos, Rebelliousness, Aggression, Body art


A common stereotype of people with tattoos is that they are more rebellious and

aggressive than their non-tattooed counterparts (Totten, Lipscomb, & Jones, 2009).

Historically, tattoos were associated with out-groups, such as bikers or prisoners, who were

stereotyped as aggressive. Indeed, some scholars likened tattoos to an “exoskeletal defence”

(Hawkins & Popplestone, 1964, p. 500), a symbol of physical strength and aggression.

Similarly, the visibility of tattoos in the punk movement of the 1980s is often interpreted as a

means of protesting conservative bourgeois values (Swami & Harris, 2012). Despite these

suggestions, empirical evidence that tattooed people really are more aggressive or rebellious

than non-tattooed people is scant.

In terms of aggression, surveys of adolescents in Serbia (N = 80; Krasic, Mitic,

Kostic, Ilic, & Rankovic, 2011) and Taiwan (N = 9,755; Yen et al., 2012) have reported that

those with tattoos have higher self-reported aggression or are more likely to have acted

violently toward others. Studies of patients at English special security hospital (McKerracher

& Watson, 1969) and Australian young offenders (Putnins, 2002) have reported that those

with tattoos had committed significantly more aggressive crimes or had higher self-reported

temper, fighting, and deliberate self-injury. Conversely, a survey of Croatian university

students (N = 100) reported no significant differences in self-reported aggression between

tattooed and non-tattooed respondents (Zrno, Frencl, Degmečić, & Požgain, 2015).

The evidence for an association between tattooing and rebelliousness is even more

scant. Verbenne (1965) reported that tattooed young offenders were more rebellious than

their non-tattooed counterparts. Certainly, rebellion and protest are often cited as motivations

for obtaining a tattoo and, historically, tattoos have served as a cultural code for

rebelliousness and opposition to convention (DeMello, 2000). On the other hand, Atkinson

(2004) argued that stereotypes of tattooing as rebellious are no longer tenable. Far from being

a symbol of resistance or rebellion, his interviews with Canadian tattoo enthusiasts led him to


conclude that contemporary tattooing reflects compliance to cultural imperatives to engage in

body work. Moreover, recent studies have suggested that rebellion is rated poorly as a reason

for obtaining a tattoo relative to aesthetic or uniqueness-enhancing motivations (e.g.,

Tiggemann & Golder, 2006; Tiggemann & Hopkins, 2011; Swami, 2011).

Aside from being scant, the available evidence on tattoos, aggression, and

rebelliousness is also dated. With up to a quarter of the population in post-industrial countries

sporting at least one tattoo (e.g., Heywood et al., 2012; Stieger, Pietschnig, Kastner, Voracek,

& Swami, 2010), tattoos are now mainstream and transcend earlier sociodemographic

boundaries. Emerging evidence suggests that there are few differences in the personality

profiles of tattooed and non-tattooed adults, and that any significant differences have

negligible effect sizes (Swami, 2012; Swami et al., 2012; Tate & Shelton, 2008). For

example, one recent study found that tattooed adults were more impulsive and more willing

to take certain risks than non-tattooed adults, but effect sizes were small to negligible (Swami

et al., 2016). Given such evidence, a closer examination of tattooing, aggression, and

rebelliousness is warranted.

In the present study, we compared differences between tattooed and non-tattooed

adults in terms of their self-reported aggression and rebelliousness. While we acknowledge

that self-reported data may not necessarily reflect real-world behaviour (e.g., self-reported

aggression may not translate into actual aggressive behaviour), they nevertheless provide a

useful means of approaching these issues. Based on the available evidence, we predicted that

tattooed individuals would report higher aggression and rebelliousness than non-tattooed

individuals. However, we also expected that any significant differences would be small.

Method

Participants


Participants were 181 women and 197 men from the general population in Greater

London, UK. As per our ethics approval, only respondents of adult age were invited to take

part in the study and we further restricted the study to British residents so as to ensure some

sampling homogeneity. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 58 years (M = 29.95, SD =

11.11). In terms of ethnicity, 73.0% reported as being of British White ancestry, 11.1% of

South Asian ancestry, 6.6% of African Caribbean ancestry, and the remainder of some other

ancestry. The majority of participants had completed minimum secondary schooling (69.3%),

13.0% were still in full-time tertiary education, 15.1% had a tertiary qualification, and 2.6%

had some other qualification.

Measures

Tattoos. We followed Stieger et al. (2010) in asking participants to indicate whether

or not they were tattooed. If a participant reported being tattooed, they were asked to indicate

the number of tattoos on the following locations: back, stomach, buttocks, chest, upper arm,

forearm, thigh, lower leg, and other. A total score was calculated as the sum of tattoos on all

body parts.

Aggression. We measured aggression using the Aggression Questionnaire by Buss

and Perry (1992). This is a 29-item instrument that measures four dispositional subtraits of

aggression, namely Physical Aggression (9 items; sample item: “Given enough provocation, I

may hit another person”), Verbal Aggression (5 items, sample item: “When people annoy me,

I may tell them what I think of them”), Anger (7 items, sample item: “I have trouble

controlling my temper”), and Hostility (8 items, saple item: “I sometimes feel that people are

laughing at me behind my back”). All items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = Extremely

uncharacteristic of me, 5 = Extremely characteristic of me). Subscale scores were calculated

as the mean of items associated with each factor, with higher scores reflecting greater


dispositional aggression. The Aggression Questionnaire has good psychometric properties

(Buss & Perry, 1992). In the present study, Cronbach’s α was ≥ .72 for all subscales.

Rebelliousness. To measure rebelliousness, we used the Rebelliousness

Questionnaire by McDermott (1988), an 18-item measure consisting of two subscales.

Proactive Rebelliousness refers to a tendency to engage in negativistic behaviours for fun and

excitement (i.e., active pursuit of rebellious activities for the sake of elevating excitement;

sample item: “If you are asked particularly not to do something, do you feel an urge to do

it?), whereas Reactive Rebelliousness refers to tendency to commit unpremeditated acts in

response to frustrating or disappointing events and situations (sample item: “If you get yelled

at by someone in authority, would you (a) get angry and argue back; (b) try hard to avoid an

argument; or (c) not sure?”). Both subscales consist of 7 forced-choice items, with 4

remaining items used as fillers. Subscale scores were computed as the sum of items

associated with each factor. Previous work has shown that the Rebelliousness Questionnaire

has good patterns of reliability and validity (McDermott, 1988). Here, Cronbach’s α was .70

for both subscales.

Demographics. Participants provided their demographic details consisting of sex,

age, ethnicity, and highest educational qualification.

Procedure

Ethics approval was obtained from the relevant university ethics committee. Three

research assistants directly approached potential participants in London on weekdays between

October 2014 and April 2015. In order to minimise selection bias, recruitment took place at

different times of the day and in a range of sites of congregate activities (i.e., Underground

stations, high streets, parks). Individuals who met inclusion criteria were invited to take part

in a study on body art. If a respondent agreed to participate, they first gave informed consent

and were then provided with an anonymous, paper-and-pencil questionnaire, which they were


asked to complete individually in a dedicated area set up for the purposes of questionnaire-

completion. The order of all the measures above was prerandomised for each participant.

Participation was voluntary and without remuneration. Upon return of completed

questionnaires, participants were provided with a debrief sheet containing further information

about the project.

Results

Tattoo Prevalence

Overall, 97 respondents of the total sample of 378 (i.e., 25.7%) possessed at least one

tattoo. Tattoo status did not vary as a function of respondent sex, χ2(1) = 1.15, p = .283.

Among participants who reported having a tattoo, the number of tattoos per individual ranged

from 1 to 12, with a mean of 2.54 (SD = 2.39, Mdn = 2.0). Among this group, there was no

significant difference in the mean number of tattoos possessed by women (M = 2.55, SD =

2.82) and men (M = 2.52, SD = 1.82), t(95) = 0.72, p = .956, d = 0.01.

Preliminary Between-Group Comparisons

We initially examined differences between participants with and without tattoos on

key demographics. An independent t-test showed no significant difference in mean age

between tattooed (M = 31.51, SD = 11.12) and non-tattooed individuals (M = 29.42, SD =

11.07), t(376) = 0.76, p = .110, d = 0.19. There were also no significant differences between

tattooed and non-tattooed participants in the distribution of educational qualifications, χ2(3) =

2.44, p = .468, and ethnic groups, χ2(3) = 4.64, p = .200.

Between-Group Comparisons

We computed a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), with the subscales of

Aggression and Rebelliousness Questionnaires entered as dependent variables, and tattoo

status (tattooed versus non-tattooed) and participant sex (women versus men) entered as

independent variables. The results showed that the omnibus MANOVA main effect of tattoo


status was significant, F(6, 369) = 2.94, p = .008, Wilk’s λ = .95, ηp2 = .05, as was that of

respondent sex, F(6, 369) = 3.93, p = .001, Wilk’s λ = .94, ηp2 = .06. However, the interaction

between tattoo status and respondent sex was not significant, F(6, 369) = 0.71, p = .402,

Wilk’s λ = .96, ηp2 < .01. Descriptive statistics, along with the results of the univariate

ANOVAs for both main effects are reported in Table 1. As can be seen, tattooed individuals

reported significantly higher verbal aggression, anger, and reactive rebelliousness compared

with non-tattooed participants, while all other comparisons did not reach significance. In

addition, women reported significantly higher verbal aggression, proactive rebelliousness,

and reactive rebelliousness than men. However, effect sizes for all significant differences

were small.

Bivariate Correlations

Among participants who reported having at least one tattoo (n = 97), we also

examined bivariate correlations between the total number of tattoos possessed and the

aggression and rebelliousness subscales. Total number of tattoos was only significantly

correlated with Anger (r = .20, p = .049). All other correlations with total number of tattoos

did not reach significance (rs = |.02|-|.15|, ps = .131-.834). When we computed a multiple

linear regression with the number of tattoos entered as the criterion variable and all subscales

as predictor variables, the regression was not significant, F(6, 96) = 1.45, p = .204, Adj. R2

= .03.

Discussion

Here, we found that tattooed adults had significantly higher reactive rebelliousness,

but not proactive rebelliousness, compared with non-tattooed adults. One explanation lends

itself: people who have higher reactive rebelliousness may respond to disappointing and

frustrating events by getting tattooed. That is, when these individuals experience a negative

emotional event, they may be more likely to react by pursuing an act that is perceived as


defiant or oppositional, namely getting tattooed. In this view, what is important is that the act

of tattooing is perceived as rebellious, or more generally that tattoos can be employed as a

communicative signifier of defiance or dissent. The focus here is on how individuals who

score highly on reactive rebelliousness negotiate established cultural ideas about body art

(Atkinson, 2003).

Data from other fields of study would appear to support this interpretation of our

findings. For example, in the UK, fans of “problem” music (e.g., heavy metal) are known to

have higher reactive rebelliousness scores than non-fans (North, Desborough, & Skarstein,

2005). More broadly, reactive rebelliousness has been shown to be associated with

involvement in risky behaviours, such as illicit drug use (Lafreniere, Menna, & Cramer,

2013). Taken together, these results suggest a possible role for reactive rebelliousness in the

decision to obtain tattoos. On the other hand, there were no significant differences between

tattooed and non-tattooed adults in proactive rebelliousness. It is possible that this form of

rebelliousness, which is hedonistic and goal-driven, is at odds with the pain and permanence

of tattoos.

We also found that tattooed adults had higher aggression scores on two of the four

dimensions of aggression that we measured, namely verbal aggression and anger. The most

parsimonious interpretation of this finding is that obtaining a tattoo is itself an enactment of

aggression; that is, some individuals may be more likely to obtain a tattoo because doing so is

itself an aggressive act. Alternatively, tattooing may offer some individuals a means of

expressing their anger or aggression in a socially acceptable manner (despite beings acts of

self-aggression). In this sense, our findings are consistent with previous work among

adolescents, which have shown that tattooed respondents have higher self-reported

aggression (Krasic et al., 2001) or are more likely to have behaved aggressively (Yen et al.,

2012) than non-tattooed respondents.


Despite our interpretations above, it is important to note that the effect sizes of

between-group differences were small. This is consistent with previous work showing that

the effect sizes of variation in differential traits between tattooed and non-tattooed adults

tends to be small or even negligible (Swami, 2012; Swami et al., 2012, 2016; Tate & Shelton,

2008). It has been suggested that the contemporary mainstreaming of tattooing is eroding

differences between tattooed and non-tattooed adults. Certainly, the present data would seem

to support such an interpretation: just over a quarter of our sample had at least one tattoo and

tattooed and non-tattooed respondents did not appear to vary in terms of basic demographics.

These findings are consistent with data from other post-industrial countries: in a national

probability sample from the United States, for example, Laumann and Derick (2006) reported

that 24.0% had at least one tattoo, whereas data from central Europe suggests no significant

differences in tattoo ownership as a function of respondent demographics (Stieger et al.,

2010). Taking these issues into account, we suggest that tattooed and non-tattooed adults may

in fact be more similar than different. While there may be statistically significant between-

group differences in aggression and rebelliousness, the extent to which these translate into

actual, real-world differences needs to be explored more carefully in future studies.

One limiting issue of the present study concerns the distinction between quantity and

quality of tattoos. It is possible, for example, that aggression and rebelliousness are

associated, not with the quantity of tattoos that a person collects, but rather with the content

of those tattoos. That is, higher aggression or rebelliousness may influence the type or style

of tattoo that a person obtains, which should be explored in future work. In addition, the

cross-sectional nature of our study means that our conclusions should be interpreted with

caution. It is possible, for example, that obtaining a tattoo affects intra-individual levels of

aggression or rebelliousness; that is, any between-group difference between tattooed and non-

tattooed adults may not precede, but may actually be the result, of obtaining a tattoo. In


addition, although we recruited a general population sample in the present study, we caution

that our recruitment strategy means that we cannot be certain that our findings are

generalisable to the wider UK population. For example, the age range of participants in our

study was relatively constricted and it is possible that our results may not generalise to older

adults. Likewise, our finding of significant sex differences (i.e., women reporting

significantly higher verbal aggression, proactive rebelliousness, and reactive rebelliousness

than men) runs counter to some earlier studies and should be taken into account when

considering the present results. Finally, because we invited participants to take part in a study

on body art, this may have affected the nature of responding for some participants.

In conclusion, our data point to significant, albeit small, differences in aggression and

rebelliousness between tattooed and non-tattooed adults. These findings may have

implications for understanding the reported associations between tattooing and risky

behaviours among adults (Swami et al., 2016). More broadly, our findings suggest that, while

stereotypes of tattooed individuals as aggressive and rebellious may contain a kernel of truth,

tattooed and non-tattooed adults may actually be fairly similar to one another. As tattoos

become increasingly mainstream, it seems likely that any previous between-group differences

will be further eroded.



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Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for Tattooed and Non-Tattooed Participants and the Results of Analyses of Variance Following the Omnibus Multivariate

Analysis.

Variable Tattoo status Respondent sex Main effect of tattoo

status

Main effect of

respondent sex

Tattooed (n =

97)

Non-tattooed

(n = 281)

Women (n =

181)

Men (n = 197) F p ηp2 F p ηp

2

M SD M SD M SD M SD

Physical Aggression 2.93 0.61 2.95 0.61 2.87 0.64 3.01 0.75 0.05 .832 < .01 0.31 .578 < .01

Verbal Aggression 3.06 0.81 2.80 0.79 2.97 0.84 2.77 0.77 6.99 .009 .02 9.93 .002 .03

Anger 3.09 0.68 2.91 0.69 2.95 0.73 2.96 0.66 4.46 .035 .01 0.05 .819 < .01

Hostility 2.74 0.62 2.73 0.62 2.80 0.56 2.67 0.66 0.01 .976 < .01 1.12 .290 < .01

Proactive Rebelliousness 15.54 4.27 14.73 3.46 15.49 3.88 14.43 3.45 2.90 .089 < .01 6.54 .011 .02

Reactive Rebelliousness 16.67 5.96 15.00 3.72 17.59 6.79 15.65 4.73 9.64 .002 .03 4.65 .032 .01

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Tattoos Aggression4