Aggression and impulsivity are common in adolescence and can damage schoolwork, friendships, and behaviour in class. Physical education lessons, with their competition and performance pressure, often intensify those reactions. A new school trial suggests that brief mindfulness exercises built into PE can reduce how aggressive and impulsive teenagers say they feel.
Researchers at the Higher Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Ksar-Said at the University of Manouba in Tunisia, with colleagues at Nord University in Norway and Tunisian sports performance laboratories, randomly assigned 39 high school students in Tunis to one of two conditions. The findings appear in Frontiers in Psychology. Twenty students received a mindfulness-informed programme during PE, while 19 continued with the standard PE curriculum.
The programme ran for eight weeks, with two short sessions each week lasting five to 15 minutes inside regular PE lessons. Students completed the Aggression Questionnaire and the Barratt Impulsivity Scale before and after the course. The average age was about 16, just over half were boys, and all came from the same class at one secondary school in downtown Tunis.
Aggression here means a tendency towards physical or verbal hostility, anger, and hostile thinking, measured as a general habit rather than behaviour in a single PE lesson. Impulsivity is the habit of acting with little forethought, covering rushed decisions, spur-of-the-moment actions, and a lack of future planning.
Changes over time differed between the groups on several measures. In the mindfulness group, verbal aggression fell by 33.5% and physical aggression by 32.4%. Non-planned impulsivity fell by 13.1% and total impulsivity by 10.5%. The control group showed rises in verbal aggression and hostility, and no clear gains on impulsivity.
Group-by-time interactions were statistically significant for verbal aggression, physical aggression, hostility, non-planned impulsivity, and total impulsivity. Motor impulsivity fell by 11.6% within the mindfulness group, yet that difference compared with the control group was not statistically significant, so it cannot be read as a clear intervention effect.
The sessions mixed focused attention, conscious breathing, and body awareness with psychoeducation, including positive affirmations, self-encouragement, and performance imagery. Practices moved from breath and body awareness towards managing thoughts and emotions, then visualisation and independent practice. Attendance at all 16 planned sessions was complete.
School PE already asks teenagers to manage frustration under pressure, so embedding short regulation drills there is an appealing idea. Earlier work has linked mindfulness training with lower anger and impulsivity in adolescents. The study has clear limits. The sample was small and drawn from one class in one school, outcomes rested on self-report rather than observed behaviour, the package mixed several techniques so no single ingredient can be credited, the control group received no matched attention, and there was no long-term follow-up. Students from both arms shared a classroom, so some crossover of ideas cannot be ruled out.
Mindfulness-based school programmes already have supporting evidence for emotional regulation and reduced aggression. This trial adds a practical angle by showing that very short sessions inside PE may shift general self-reported aggression and impulsivity, though larger multisite studies with active controls and behavioural measures are needed before schools treat the approach as routine.
