How stress influences aggressive behavior: anxiety as a mediator and the joint moderating roles of music preferences and perceived teacher legitimacy.

Background: Stress is closely linked to aggression, but the mechanisms underlying this association and the roles of potential protective factors remain unclear. This study examined whether anxiety statistically mediates the association between stress and aggressive tendencies, and whether music preference and perceived teacher legitimacy shape this process. Methods: A sample of 488 university students completed online measures of stress, anxiety, aggression, preference for "Upbeat and Conventional" music, and perceived teacher legitimacy. Moderated mediation analyses were conducted using Hayes' PROCESS macro with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Results: Stress was positively associated with aggression both directly and indirectly through anxiety. Preference for "Upbeat and Conventional" music significantly moderated both the direct stress-aggression association and the anxiety-aggression association. Specifically, higher music preference was associated with a stronger direct stress-aggression link but a weaker anxiety-aggression link. Perceived teacher legitimacy was negatively associated with aggression, but its interaction with anxiety was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Anxiety statistically mediated the association between stress and aggression. Music preference showed a mixed moderating pattern, whereas perceived teacher legitimacy appeared to function primarily as a broader contextual protective factor. These findings underscore the relevance of both intra-individual and social-contextual factors in understanding aggressive tendencies.