The author knows that the aggression behavior while driving is related to gender and age. Based on prior researches from Parry (1968) and Macmillan (1975) concluded that females are less likely to show aggressive driving than males. Also, those previous researches also stated that the older a person get, the less the person driving aggressively. By recognizing the relationship between the patterns of gender and age versus the level of aggression while driving, the Department of Transport indicated that male drivers are “one and a half times more likely” to cause harms to surround people than female drivers. (Transport Statistics Report [1995], as cited in Krahé, 2002). On the road is not the only place that male show their aggressiveness, male has always been tending to be more aggressive than female in every area. The reason for that is the different roles between male and female in daily life. While females are symbol of nurture and caring, males symbolize superior and protective which is the traditional male stereotype.
According to Mosher an Sirkin, this is called “macho personality” and it is divided to three components: (1) calloused sexual attitudes toward women, (2) the perception of violence as manly, and (3) the view of danger as exciting. These three components usually happen when there is a peer watching. This means that when a young male driving under the witness of their peers, they will tend to drive more dangerously. In addition, the type of car that they are driving is also a factor to their driving behavior. There are 4 hypotheses for the study: “Hypothesis 1: Men endorsing the macho personality image of masculinity report more aggressive driving behavior than men not endorsing the macho personality constellation. Hypothesis 2: Aggressive driving behavior decreases with age. Hypothesis 3: Aggressive driving behavior is shown more frequently by drivers of high performance cars. Hypothesis 4: For men endorsing a macho personality image, speed and sportiness of a car are more important determinants of choosing a car than are safety aspects, while nonmacho men show the opposite pattern.” (Krahé, 2002) By knowing and understanding these factors that effects a person’s behaviors while driving can help psychologists recognizing the psychology variables in order to lower the chances of accidents from happening.
The participant that participated in this study is 154 men and their age varies from 20-67 years old. The study collected the participant education background and divided them into 4 categories: men with 9 years of schooling (24 mens), men with 10 years of schooling (51 mens), men qualified to apply to university (46 mens) and men with a university degree (33 mens). The study is taken place in the waiting room of a car registration location. At this place, it is normal for the participants to give their information about whether they got a new car or they moved into a new place. By using this setting, it allows the researchers to have access to the age, the ethnicity, their annual mileage, and the type of car of the participant (currently own and would like to own). In addition to the questions about their backgrounds, the researchers take a survey about the car they would like to own. It contains 6 aspects: “(1) speed, (2) sportiness, (3) comfort, (4) safety, (5) make/model of car, and (6) space.” (Krahé, 2002). Mixing in the survey are questions that measure their macho personality (VDS-Violence and Danger Scale), their driving behaviors (ADS-Aggressive Driving Scale) (Krahé, 2002). The result is that the reliability of VDS and ADS are good. Most of the participant fall in the average macho behavior.
After many statistical analyses, aggressive driving is negatively correlated to the age and positively related to macho personality, and the power of the car. These correlations supporting the first 3 hypotheses. And for the last hypothesis, it is also supported by the data. The data showed that men who prefer owning sporty and high horsepower cars would more likely to have aggressive driving than those who prefer safety cars.
