Drivers with lots of decals likely to become highly aggressive, study says
By SHANKAR VEDANTAM
Washington Post
Published on: 06/17/08
Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual choruses of "are-we-there-yet?" — and the road rage of fellow drivers. Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but science has discovered a solution for the third. Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express rage — by honking, tailgating and other aggressive behavior, he said. It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love — "Visualize World Peace" — or angry and in your face — "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."
Szlemko and his colleagues, in a paper published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, found that people who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, but they don't act out their anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk and move on. "The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."
Social scientists such as Szlemko say people carry around three kinds of territorial spaces in their heads. One is personal territory — like a home or a bedroom. The second kind involves space that is temporarily yours — an office cubicle or a gym locker. The third kind is public territory: park benches, walking trails — and roads. "Territoriality is hard-wired into our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago," said Paul Bell, a co-author of the study at Colorado State. "Animals are territorial because it had survival value. If you could keep others away from your hunting groups, you had more game to spear ... it becomes part of the biology."
http://www.ajc.com/hp/content/news/stories/2008/06/16/road_rage_stickers.html
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