Social representations associated with men and women drivers among French adolescents and adults. Effects of perceiver's age, sex, and socioeconomic status

The aim of this study was to investigate the specific contents of the social representations (SR) associated with men and women drivers and to examine the effects of the social insertions of individuals (i.e., age, sex and socio-economic status) on the content and the structure of these SR. A preliminary study with 414 French participants identified thematic content associated with men and women drivers through the method of verbal associations. Based on these themes, 833 French participants, equally distributed on the basis of age group (from 12 to 50 years-old and over), sex and socio-economic status (SES), were asked to answer a questionnaire on men (N = 422) or women (N = 411) drivers. The results show that these SR are each organized around three factors: incompetence, prudence and lack of selfcontrol for women drivers; carelessness, skills and self-control for men drivers. In-group