Aggression and Hunting Attitudes

Hunting has a long history, and contentious recent past. We examined the relationship between aggression and hunting attitudes, investigating the moderating role of sex. Two studies are presented—a psychometric evaluation of a unidimensional instrument for assessing hunting attitudes, which was then administered to a sample of general population participants to assess the relationship between aggression and hunting attitudes. Finally, university students completed measures of hunting attitudes and instrumental/expressive aggression. Men were more instrumentally aggressive than women and were more supportive toward hunting. The relationship between instrumental (but not expressive) aggression and hunting attitudes was moderated by sex—men’s hunting endorsement increased with instrumental aggression, while women’s endorsement of hunting decreased with increasing instrumental aggression. Expressive aggression was not predictive of hunting attitudes.