The Influence of Weapon and Alcohol cues on Road-Rage in a Driving Simulator

Vehicular crashes are a growing problem in the United States, with an increase of over 10,000 crashes from 2013 to 2014 (Kasich & Born, 2015). One factor implicated in vehicle crashes is aggressive driving. Previous studies of aggressive driving have largely relied on selfreports and after-the-fact analyses. The present study attempts to obtain a more reliable measure of aggressive driving in real time, and to determine whether this behavior is affected by stimuli in the environment. In other studies of aggressive behavior (Subra et al., 2010), features such as the presence of alcohol bottles and weapons have increased aggression. In addition, aggressive behavior seems to be more characteristic of individuals with strong narcissistic personality traits. The present study examined the impact of alcohol cues, weapon cues, and individual differences in narcissism on driving behavior in a driving simulator. Forty university students first completed an online questionnaire that consisted of several narcissism and aggression scales. Participants then drove a pre-designed scenario with instructions to reach the end of the scenario as quickly as possible. Participants were exposed to billboards in the scenario containing advertisements featuring either alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, and with either a handgun or a tennis racket on the passenger seat. Driving behavior was measured by examining speed, smoothness of steering, and following distance during driving. Results indicated that the presence of the gun increased driving speed and tailgating behavior, but surprisingly, the presence of non-alcoholic billboards actually produced higher speed and more tailgating behavior. Smoothness of steering was not significantly affected by weapon or alcohol cues. RUNNING HEAD: WEAPON AND ALCOHOL CUES ON ROAD-RAGE 3 Introduction According to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, there were 282,368 total automobile crashes in 2014 in Ohio, a number that was up from the 269,079 crashes reported in 2013 (Kasich & Born, 2014; Kasich & Born, 2015). Given that alcohol was involved in only 4% of these accidents, and 65% occurred during daylight hours, factors other than alcohol or darkness clearly play a role in vehicle crashes. One such factor is aggressive driving, popularly referred to as “road rage. ” Characteristics of aggressive driving include extensive speed, tailgating, unsafe lane changes, horn honking, etc. When a situation escalates, these behaviors can expand to include verbal outbursts, confrontations, and more extreme and dangerous outcomes. These examples of aggressive driving often make people feel unsafe in their own vehicle and on the road. That alone would make research into aggressive driving a valid activity, but there is even more evidence to suggest its importance. According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration survey, an overwhelming majority (98%) deemed doing something about unsafe driving as “important. ” (Nhtsa.gov, n.d.) In order to better understand and mitigate unsafe driving, a holistic view of driving, and specifically aggressive driving, needs to be gathered. To generate solutions to aggressive driving it is important to understand some of the factors that underlie aggressive behavior more generally. These factors are both internal and external. Examining the internal side first can shed some light on why some behaviors may occur in the driving scenario. At one point, a very popular belief was that aggression could be predicted by the internal factor of low self-esteem (Schreer, 2002). The idea behind this line of thinking is that being in a state of low self-esteem is seen as very aversive to the individual and because of that strong negativity the individual will behave violently to relieve it. These aggressive behaviors help to convince the person that the perception of their self-esteem is incorrect. RUNNING HEAD: WEAPON AND ALCOHOL CUES ON ROAD-RAGE 4 More recent evidence suggests that this early theory was not correct. A current view is that “threatened egotism” may be the cause of aggression (Schreer, 2002). According to research by Schreer (2002) “inflated self-esteem (i.e., narcissism) was a better predictor of aggressive driving behavior than low self-esteem. ” (p. 338). With respect to aggressive driving, Schreer’s view is that the car being driven and the road are seen as “owned” by someone with a very high opinion of themselves and the behavior of the drivers that challenges this opinion may be seen as attacking that ownership (Schreer, 2002). This argument has provided solid basis for researchers when examining aggressive driving. Britt and Garrity (2006) examined road rage through the lens of personality and attributional processing. They first asked participants to recall and think about an experience of three specific scenarios that elicited road rage in them when driving: being tailgated, being cut off, and a person driving slowly in front of them, and then afterwards administered a driving questionnaire and personality battery. They determined that the dimensions of physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility scored by the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire “were related to reports of aggressive behavior during all three situations, and were related to reports of anger in two of the situations” (Britt & Garrity, p. 142.) A specific type of personality trait called Narcissism has been frequently linked to aggression. Research by Martinez et al. (2008) examined the relationship between narcissism and aggression with various feedback conditions. Individuals were told they would receive objective feedback about their writing skills compared to another participant, and then compete in a game where they could choose to shock their opponent (and at what levels) following either a win, loss or draw. Participants with high scores on a narcissism scale, when told they would receive feedback about their own writing at the conclusion of the experiment instead of immediately, RUNNING HEAD: WEAPON AND ALCOHOL CUES ON ROAD-RAGE 5 shocked the other “participant” significantly more (with the lowest level being 55% of their pain tolerance) despite not being shocked themselves (Martinez et al., 2008). Further work by Reid et al. (2008) in an analogous experiment examined some of the underlying components of narcissism and how they may be related to aggression. Similar to Martinez et al., (2008) they examined aggression based on shocks administered to the opponent. They found two subfactors of narcissism with the greatest associations to aggression: entitlement and exploitativeness, both of which had a moderate effect size (Reid et al., 2008). Just being predisposed to aggression does not always mean someone will exhibit aggressive behavior. Such behavior is often thought to be prompted by something external. Research on external factors influencing aggression has examined certain kinds of stimuli that might be seen when driving. Bushman and Cooper (1990) conducted a meta-analysis on alcohol and aggression with previous experimentally manipulated research. They found evidence that the effect sizes of alcohol were similar to other variables with aggression (Bushman & Cooper, 1990). Other research has often focused on weapons and their link to aggression. Carlson, Marcus-Newhall, and Miller (1990) also conducted a meta analysis of research and found that aggressive cues (such as weapons can be perceived as) increased aggression significantly when participants were in a negative mood and slightly less so in a neutral mood (Carlson, MarcusNewhall, and Miller, 1990). Billboards advertising items similar to those employed in the alcohol and weapon studies described above are often encountered while driving. Many drivers even see weapons like guns in other vehicles. In fact, research by Turner et al. (1975) found that participants honked at a truck with a rifle in a gun-rack significantly more than a truck without a gun in the gun rack, as long as the rifle was perceived as aggressive in nature. Further research by Hemenway, Vrionitis, RUNNING HEAD: WEAPON AND ALCOHOL CUES ON ROAD-RAGE 6 and Miller (2006) noted that people who drove with a gun in the car reported using significantly more obscene gestures. These surprising findings may be better explained through research done by Subra, Muller, Begue, Bushman, and Delmas (2010) where alcohol and aggressive cues presented subliminally both similarly automatically increase aggression (Subra, Muller, Begue, Bushman, & Delmas, 2010). Participants who were exposed to only to words related to alcohol or aggression were more aggressive to their experimenter by rating them significantly lower on a survey evaluating their performance, even though they were told the rating could affect whether the experimenter kept their job in the future. In essence the research states that just seeing an aggressive word (e.g., assault) or a word related to alcohol (e.g., beer) increases aggression even if the person is not really thinking about it. This is a worrying thought given the number of alcohol billboards and even weapons typically seen along any roadway. The present study examined road rage and aggressive driving through a synthesis and extension of previous work on internal personality traits and external factors such as weapon/alcohol cues in a more realistic environment than has been used before – a driving simulator. Most previous studies of aggressive driving have had the limitations of only being able to examine behavior after the fact, in situations when the participant may report something different from what actually happened. In the present research all participants drove in the same scenario, just with either the presence or absence of weapon and alcohol cues. The present study was a 2(presence of weapon vs absence of weapon) x2(presence of alcohol cues vs no alcohol cues) between-subjects design where participants were randomly