Automobile Driving And Aggressive Behavior

Automobile driving and aggressive behavior have had an extensive association. Themes of dominance and territoriality have long been part of automobile driving, which has aLso involved flagrant assaultive actions. Recent episodes of roadway violence in metropolitan areas have raised community concem about aggressive behavior in driving, although common beliefs about why such violence occurs can be seen as pseudoexplanations. Various themes in the psychology of aggression are presented as they pertain to automobile driving. Convergent factors in contemporary urban life that influence roadway aggression are discussed, and it is asserted that such behavior is more prevalem than commonly recognized. Automobile Driving and Aggressive Behavior Episodic occurrences of roadway assaults that have erupted in recent years raise questions about anger and aggression and their relationship to driving. Our everyday discussions about driving experiences incorporate considerable lore about aggression on the road, yet this subject has been been neglected academically. In common parlance, aggressive behavior on roadways is understood in simplistic terms, such as defective personalities, "copy-cat" behavior, or traffic stress. Although such ideas have some plausibility, they are overly simplified accounts for incidents that vary considerably in their form and causes. Contemporary manifestations of roadway assaults relate to several long-standing themes in the psychology of aggression literature which this chapter will explicate with regard to automobile driving. Territoriality, frustration, and environmental cues for aggression are factors that heighten the probability of aggressive behavior, as broadly based research has shown, and they are very much a part of driving. Although assaultive behavior and other forms of aggression on the road have many causes and dissimilarities, a broad range of aggressive behaviors on roadways can be understood in terms of factors or conditions that disinhibit aggressive behavior. That is, aggressive behavior is very much restrained by inhibitory controls within the individual and society. However, personal and social control mechanisms are weakened by various factors that operate in the context of driving. Physiological and emotional arousal, the anonymity of highways, the opportunity to escape, and the promulgation of scripts of "road warrior" behavior by cinematic and mass media sources can override the personal and societal forces that otherwise inhibit and regulate aggressive behavior. The weakening of controls of aggression is indeed a matter pertaining to urban violence generally, and automobile driving is just one arena. Violence on roadways does involve particular "activating" and "releasing" mechanisms, and the growing problem of traffic congestion in urban areas may add to the violence risk. Before addressing those contextual matters, there are symbolic aspects of the car itself that are linked with aggression. In a variety of ways, the very image of the car has been cast with aggressive features, and this symbolization of the car is congruent with some aggression-engendering conditions of the roadway. ELEMENTS OF AGGRESSION IN THE AUTOMOBILE’S SYMBOLIZATION Far from being a contemporary phenomenon, aggressiveness has been fused with driving at least since chariots careened around the Circus Maximus in ancient Rome, generating clouds of dust and choruses of roars among the spectators (Hibbert, 1985). The association of aggression with automobile driving, however, has indeed been a recurrent element in the symbolization of the car. Car names, advertising themes, design features, and engineered capacities have often cast an image of the car in aggressive terms. It is not incidental that cars have been called Chargers, Cougars, Jaguars, Stingrays, Thunderbirds, Cutlasses, Tornados, Firebirds, Challengers, etc. Such names fit themes of power and excitement packaged by Madison Avenue, so as to induce significant segments of the buying public to get behind the wheel of the latest ego-enhancing product. Aggressiveness blends with automobile excitement and with the sense of self-efficacy. Dominance is the core concept of the high performance automotive machine. The car is frequently an instrument of competiveness in various forms of ritualized dueling, from hot rod drag racing to frenetic scampers through freeway traffic by hurried drivers jockeying for lane position. The car or truck can be a means of asserting dominance, and sometimes they are transformed from vehicles to weapons in the hands of enraged drivers. The hood ornament, now