Psychology 409a 10/26/05

My Sixth Outline of Assigned Readings

By Ashley Hooks

The Three Domains of Driving Behavior: The Threefold System

Reference: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/traffic/tpintro.html Traffic Psychology at the University of Hawaii; By: Dr. Leon James.

Instructions for this activity are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/409a-g23-oral.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

My Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2005/hooks/home.htm

The G23 Class Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/classhome-g23.htm

I. First Domain of Driving Behavior: The Will

A. The will can also be called affective behavior, which contains emotions, needs, feelings, and others in the same context. In other words, all the things that cause a person to do a certain thing is their will. It is hard to tell what a person’s needs and feelings are, especially when looking at other drivers because you can’t look into their head.

B. An example of this would be when a person does not want to get into an accident, so therefore they always look behind them when they are backing up. If they did not have will to be safe, then they would just back up without looking in a risk of getting into an accident or possibly hitting a pedestrian.

C. I can recognize this domain in my own behavior especially when driving. If I am ever running late in the morning, I might do things that are unsafe like tailgating, without thinking about my feelings of anxiousness that make me want to get to school as soon as possible. I am only feeling these emotions because I did not give myself enough time to get there, and I expected that there would be no delays.

II. Second Domain of Driving Behavior: Understanding

A. The process of understanding is called cognitive behavior. This is defined as a person’s thoughts, reasoning mechanisms, etc. while they are driving. Drivers may not pay much attention to their thoughts behind the wheel, but they are very important in understanding why some people do dangerous things on the road that they would normally not do in any other setting.

B. For example, if a driver runs through a yellow light really fast instead of stopping, they might think in their mind that they have never seen any cops in that area, so they won’t get caught. The thought this driver is having is a process of reasoning to make their action seem less dangerous to themselves. If the driver has a reasoning process that only includes themselves, not the others around them, this can be very dangerous.

C. I can definitely relate to this process of cognitive behavior because if I stop to think about it, I can pinpoint many times where I have tried to reason out of something dangerous. Like if I went into the carpool lane during rush hour and I am driving by myself, I don’t think that I will get caught because I don’t see any cops around usually at the time I am usually on the freeway. My reasoning sounds good to me, however I would not be able to explain that to a cop if I did get pulled over for using the carpool lane when I am alone.

III. Third Domain of Driving Behavior: Individual’s Overt Actions

A. This last domain of actions is also called sensorimotor or psychomotor behavior. This behavior is influenced by the previous two domains in that the affective and cognitive behaviors cause drivers to carry out certain good or bad actions. If a driver is thinking and feeling things that won’t cause them to act aggressively on the road, then they are being safe. If their thoughts and emotions cause them to be aggressive, then the driver obviously needs to change the previous two domains before it has any effect on their actions in the long run, which is the important thing and could potentially put others into danger.

B. In the previous behavior, I mentioned an example about a driver running through a yellow light fast because they never see any cops in that area. This works for this domain as well, because the thoughts the driver is having causes them to actually carry through the act of speeding up when they see the yellow light instead of stopping. The thought itself is not aggressive, but actually giving into the thought and going through the light is an action, and is dangerous to others.

C. I think that actions are the most important domain because they are the things that affect the other motorists. When my friends are driving, I sometimes wonder what they are thinking, because all I see are their actions. For example, one of my friends sped up one time to pass someone on the freeway and pulled in their lane inches in front of them. In turn, they almost hit the car in front of them by tailgating to gain speed and then cutting over just inches in front of the car in the next lane. This action does not make any sense to me and I would be interested to know why they thought it was worth it to almost hit two cars trying to get into the next lane.