Report
#1
My
Understanding of Driving Psychology
By:
Kasey Vanderhoof
Instructions are found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/409a-g25-report1.htm
G25 Lecture Notes on Driving Psychology are found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/409a-g25-lecture-notes.htm
Aloha, my name
is Kasey Vanderhoof and I am a student at the
The first thing
you need to do to change your driving style is to avoid being an aggressive
driver and this happens in stage one. To
do this you must become aware of your threefold self, which includes the
effective self (which is the feelings that you have), the cognitive self (which
includes your thoughts), and the sensorimotor self (which is the actions that
you partake in). To become a completely
competent and emotionally intelligent driver you must force yourself to
discontinue use of your old habits and train yourself to become a completely
different person on the road. You must
become a reformed driver. In the
following paragraphs I will explain the threefold self in more detail as it
pertains to becoming a non-aggressive driver.
The first thing
you must do is to change yourself at the affective level and in order to do
this you must overcome the resistance you have to change. After you have made up your mind to change
you must constantly remind yourself to not become angry or upset and you must
not allow yourself to retaliate against a driver who has upset you, this is if
you even allowed them to do so.
You must also
start to willingly allow your passengers to critique your driving style without
letting yourself get angry or annoyed and if you listen closely you might just
realize that they probably have some good advise on how you could improve your
driving, especially considering that a passenger is a person on the outside, so
to say, looking in on your driving habits.
Listening to what your passengers have to say not only classifies you as
a less aggressive driver but may also help you to become a less aggressive
driver when it comes to other aspects of your driving behavior.
Next, you must
train yourself to not belittle other drivers even when they do stupid
things. You need to realize that the
other driver is a person just like you are and has feelings just like you
do. How would you feel if someone said
the things to you that you are feeling towards that other driver? You must remember that like yourself, the
driver is just human and all humans make mistakes. You must learn not to ridicule and to not
become angry with the other drivers humanly mistake and errors. When you do have those feelings you must
learn to overcome them and eventually you must learn to not have those feelings
anymore.
The last thing
you must change at the affective level is to replace negative feelings with
positive ones. By doing so you will not
only feel less negatively towards others but the positive feelings that you
possess will also make your inner self, your mind and body, feel better. When you become angry with another driver you
become more stressed out and frustrated, your blood pressure rises and you become
more acceptable to having a heart attack.
Granted this may not happen when you’re 20 but if you are an aggressive
driver at 20, more than likely you will be an aggressive driver at 60. On the other hand, if you change your anger
into more positive feelings like compassion or love you may become more relaxed
and may even be able to drive better.
Contrary to popular belief, these feelings of aggression can be changed
with time and patience.
The second
thing you must do is to change yourself at the cognitive level. The first thing to do is to have reasonable
thoughts when it comes to traffic events and incidents. You must learn to become a rational driver
and realize that not every incident is the other person’s fault. You must realize that it might be your fault
as well for you are not always the innocent bystander. When you are able to change your attribution
errors, such as it is never my fault, and are able to take responsibility for
the mistakes that you make, the road may become less of a hostile
environment. This is because you will
not always be blaming others for the mishaps that occur on the road.
Next you must
change your self-serving biased thoughts, especially in how you view
incidents. People tend to think of
themselves as the innocent person when it comes to driving incidents and
accidents, especially those people who are aggressive drivers. Aggressive drivers tend to see themselves as
the perfect driver and they believe that they do not need to change or improve
their driving habits and behaviors – these thoughts are what are considered
self serving biased thoughts. In order
to become a non-aggressive driver you need to change these thoughts, which will
then allow you to change your behaviors.
You must come to realize that a traffic incident may be your fault just
as easily as it may have been someone else’s fault.
The last thing
that you must do at the cognitive level is to change the types of things that
you say to yourself. The self-regulating
sentences that you say to yourself must become more socially acceptable. Your thoughts must be ones that can control
your feelings and actions in the most appropriate ways. You must learn to sooth yourself by saying
things such as, “he didn’t mean to cut me off so there is no reason for me to
become angry and to chase him down.” By
saying these types of things to yourself, you are trying to control your
irrational thoughts, which in turn will probably help you control your
actions. This will help you to become a
less aggressive driver.
Now, there is
one last thing you need to change to avoid being an aggressive driver and this
happens at the sensorimotor stage, which means that you now need to start
acting in a less aggressive way. The
first thing you can do is to start making pleasant gestures. For example, in Hawaii if someone allows us
to go in-front of them because we need to switch lanes, we often respond with a
wave or a smile to say thank you or if we accidentally cut someone off we wave
to indicate that we are sorry (a wave might be a not so smart idea because they
might think you are trying to be a wise guy).
So remember, some kind of signaling to say thank you or to indicate that
you are sorry is a good idea and may alleviate some stress in other drivers as
will as yourself.
The next thing
you need to do at this level is to act in less hostile ways concerning your
driving behaviors. To do this you must
make a conscious effort to not tailgate other drivers and when being tailgated
don’t slam on your breaks or don’t slow down to an extremely low speed
limit. Also, you don’t want to cut
people off (i.e. switching lanes right in-front of someone so that person has
to slow down to allow for a comfortable amount of room between you and
themselves). Don’t speed up so that can
get ahead of the crowd or ahead of a specific person. When you are coming onto the free way,
remember that there are other people already driving on it and take that into
consideration. The road doesn’t belong
to you, it doesn’t belong to any specific person, and instead it is something
that we all share.
Next, you need
to take into considerations your passengers thoughts and feelings and learn to
not disregard them. Often, aggressive
drivers think that their passengers concerns are silly and actually react in
hostile and unfriendly ways forgetting that their passengers are people who
have feelings just as they do. Most
drivers disregard their passengers concerns because they become defensive and
attempt to defend their driving style not realizing that their actions and
reactions probably hurt their passengers worse than their passengers concerns
hurt you. In my eyes a passenger is a
person who is looking at the situation (your driving habits) as an outsider and
could actually give you some awesome advice as to how to improve your driving
behaviors if you just open you ears and your mind, shut your mouth, and just
listen.
The last thing
that you need to do at the sensorimotor level and for stage one is to always
seem like you are in a good mood even when you are not, especially while
driving. If you drive while you are
angry, your anger is likely to be seen through your driving behaviors. You are also more likely to be easily
agitated by other driver’s minor mistakes, which will then lead to a possible road
rage episode. If you are able to act
like you are in a good mood, you might actually be able to convince yourself
that you are in a good mood, and then you might even realize that you are in a
good mood. Being in a good mood while
you are driving is a positive thing because it makes you less irritable and
less likely to act in aggressive and hostile ways.
Now that you
know hot to not be an aggressive driver and are actively avoiding being one,
you must become a supportive driver; this is stage two of the two stages of a
driving personality make over plan.
During this stage you must still keep in mind the threefold self:
yourself at the affective level, at the cognitive level, and at the
sensorimotor level, you must now change your feelings, thoughts, and actions in
such a way as to become a supportive driver.
A supportive driver can empathize with other drivers and with the
situation at hand. For instance, if you
got into an accident, say someone rear-ended you, you would not immediately get
mad and ask them what is wrong you with.
Instead, you would make sure that they are okay and try to solve the
problem in the most civil way.
Once again we
will start at the affective level and will see what kinds of things we can do
to become a supportive driver. This
means that you must maintain a supportive attitude towards other drivers. The first thing you must do is to start
feeling responsible for the mistakes and errors you make. Then you must find things that you can do to
make your mistakes better. Let’s
remember a previous example. Say you are
in
Since in this
stage you are just working on your feelings in different situations, you may
not actually partake in this example mentioned above, not yet at least, but you
may want to start feeling regret when you make a mistake while driving. If the person you cut off honked at you, you
may also want to try to understand why they honked at you – you made a mistake,
not to mention that a honk might mean that this person is an aggressive driver.
Once you are
able to take responsibility for the way you feel while driving and start
changing these feelings (you can tell that you are at this step when you began
to regret feeling the way you do) you may not start to feel good about the way
you are now behaving and more generally about yourself. You will feel better because you are treating
others better, you are being more polite and kind, and are acting in a more
civil manner. This is something that you
should feel great about. You are
becoming a better person on the road which will probably make you a better driver
and a better person overall.
If you remember
is stage one at the sensorimotor level, I said that you need to learn to not
act aggressively toward passengers when they confront you with their concerns
about your driving. Well, now you need
to feel appreciation towards your passengers when they voice their
concerns. If you are able to understand
where your passenger is coming from and appreciate the advice they are offering
you then you are on you way to becoming a better driver. You must remember that when a person is
riding in a car that you’re operating, their lives are in your hands and if you
are an aggressive driver you are more likely to injure them as well as
yourself. Their advice is not given to
try to criticize, it is offered because they are worried about their welfare as
well as yours. So remember to appreciate
what they have to say.
The last thing
that you must begin to feel at the affective level is forgiveness. You must understand that other drivers are
people just as you are and they make mistakes just like you do. When you are able to accomplish this, you are
then ready to forgive other drivers as well as others in your life for their
mistakes and weaknesses. Not all people
are good at everything you are good at and if they were then everyone would be
good at everything. This is because
everyone would have the same strengths as the person sitting next to him or
her, so to say. Since everyone cannot be
good at everything we must appreciate people for their strength and forgive
them for their weaknesses.
Now we are at
the second part of stage two – the cognitive level. At the cognitive level you must begin to
analyze driving situations in a more objective manner and to do this you must
look at any situation as if you were not apart of it). You can start doing this by acknowledging and
knowing the driving errors and mistakes that you make. By being able to recognize these mistakes
that you are making, you will be able to fix them, just as with anything
else. Once you are able to recognize
your bad habits you can start planning on how to improve those habits and
shortly after that you can begin practicing the modifications that you have
made to your bad habits. By rehearsing
these modifications, they will start to occur naturally without you having to
practice them and you’ll be on your way to success.
Not only do you
need to analyze and change your driving habits in an objective manner but you
also need to analyze other driver’s behaviors objectively. While doing so you must also remain unbiased
in your thoughts. When you are able to
objectively do this in an unbiased manner you may come to realize that not all
drivers intentionally do dangerous acts (most people don’t want to hurt
themselves). Sometimes these acts are
merely mistakes. When another driver
does something that angers you, remember that we live in a culturally diverse
world and not all people are raised with the same types of values (and morals)
that you might have been taught. So,
when someone acts in a way that you disapprove of, don’t be in such a hurry to
judge or criticize them, instead think of reasons as to why they may have acted
in that particular way.
Finally, the
last thing that you need to do in stage two has to do with the sensorimotor
level. In the other two levels you have
began to feel and think in a more supportive and cooperative way. Now it is time to start behaving in a more
supportive and cooperative manner. The
first thing that you can do to become a driver with this type of attitude, a
supportive and cooperative attitude, is to start anticipating the needs of
others. You also want to become a
helpful driver. For example, you may see
another driver looking over their shoulder and from this action you may
anticipate their need to switch lanes and you can help them by allowing them to
move over in front of you. This is the
first step that you can take in order to become a supportive and cooperative
driver.
Next you must
start saying nice things; you must start to verbalize nice sentiments towards
yourself and others, including your passengers.
For instance, say a passenger gives you some advice or voices their
concerns. Instead of getting angry at
them or trying to defend yourself and your driving behaviors, you might say
something like, “Thank you for your advice and when I get into that situation
again I will remember what you said,” or “Your concerns about my driving habits
are very important to me and I will keep them in mind.” Before you were just trying to feel
appreciation towards others and now you are acting in an appreciative way by
expressing yourself in a nice manner.
When you are able to stay calm and think and act in nice ways, people
will not only like you more but more than likely you will also feel better
about yourself.
Finally, you
must start to relax and begin to enjoy the ride. Now that you are able to control your
aggressive impulses and can act in a supportive manner, you can truly begin to
enjoy driving. Assuming that you have
continuously practiced the steps mentioned above (in this paper), your new and
improved driving style should now happen naturally – you no longer have to
practice what you have been learning.
Since your driving behaviors have changed, you no longer get angry at
other drivers mistakes or have aggressive impulses. Now you can truly relax while driving because
you are no longer stressed out by it.
Now that stress while driving and due to driving in not an issue, you
can truly enjoy the drive and if you are a passenger, you can enjoy the ride.
I know many of
you are probably thinking about whether or not all of this is actually
possible. At first I didn’t think it was
but as I wrote this first section of my paper, I noticed myself becoming more
and more aware of my driving behaviors, not to mention, I also paid more attention
to my surroundings. I know that it does
not seem like it is completely possible to not act is what we call an
aggressive manner, i.e. cutting people off, but lets say that you do cut
someone off, just make sure that you do not do so intentionally and start to
become more aware of your surroundings and you may even want to attempt to
apologize for your mistakes by waving or some other kind of polite
gesture.
After writing
this I taught it to a couple of my friends and now I would like to explain to
you their reactions. Their reactions were
all the same. They said, “I don’t need
to change, I drive just fine.” They
thought that the ideas explained were kind of ridiculous although they did see
the logic in my explanation but they didn’t see the reality in it. They didn’t think that this driving style
could be achieved until I explained to them that the world will not change
tomorrow but that these things need to start happening today while we drive in
the car with our children because our children remember the attitudes we
display and more than likely will display them themselves when they begin to
drive. My friends understood this and
said, “Well, maybe within the next few generations these new types of driving
behaviors will be possible.”
I believe that
this new driving style is possible and can be achieved with a little bit of
determination. If we make a conscious
effort to behave more appropriately while driving, especially when there are
children in the car, future generations are likely to drive in a more behaved
and civil manner. I hope all of you
reading this take it seriously, maybe even teach it to a fellow friend or
family member in hopes to make a change for the better of human kind. I also hope we give changing our ways some
serious thought and make an effort to do so, if not for you then for others and
for the generations to come.
In this section
I will explain the main principles of driving psychology, or at least what I
believe the main principles to be. This
principles include the obtainment of emotional intelligence, the three step
driver self improvement plan, the effects road rage has on children, supportive
driving, and lifelong driver education, which I got from the book entitled Road
Rage and Aggressive Driving, Steering Clear of Highway Warfare written by
Dr. Leon James and Diane Nahl. In the
following paragraphs I will expand on these topics individually but first I
would like to give you a definition of driving psychology. Driving psychology refers to the knowledge
one acquires about how to use behavioral principles to modify one's behavior in
traffic situations including driving as well as other forms of transportation
such as riding a bicycle. A common goal in driving psychology is to modify
one's old driving habits.
The first
principle I will talk about is the obtainment of emotional intelligence for
drivers. Being emotionally intelligent
means understanding the different emotions that you have and why you have them. It means being able to tolerate frustration
or provocation without becoming hostile or aggressive and being able to use
positive and cooperative thinking to counteract negative and combative
thinking. Emotional intelligence
includes the ability to look at a situation in a calm manner and to consider
alternative explanations as to why something happened, the ability to control
your negative moods and attitudes towards others and the situation at hand, the
ability to empathize with other drivers, the ability to stick with your plan
(for example getting from point A to point B safely) despite the distracting
frustrations that you may encounter, the ability to control and neutralize your
aggressive impulses, and the ability to think positively.
There are three
levels of emotional intelligence. In
level one you are an oppositional driver, meaning you have negative feelings
about almost every situation you encounter.
You have an irrational sequence of thoughts and hostile actions that are
selfish, reckless, and impulsive. You
constantly express some sort of criticism towards other drivers and often feel
insulted by other drivers and are insecure because of this. At this level of emotional intelligence you
are more than likely going to partake in road rage because every little thing
that someone else does is taken personally and you are out to get revenge.
The second
level of emotional intelligence has to do with defensive driving. At this level your thoughts are more logical
but still dangerous as your actions show.
You now become suspicious, wary, and competitive but are more capable of
restraining yourself. When you become a
defensive driver you become more aware of your surroundings and are almost
capable of avoiding any dangerous incident that may occur, say an accident. Although being an aggressive driver seems to
be a good thing, it has its drawbacks.
Being an aggressive drivers means that you are more aware of your
surroundings which also means you are more likely to notice the little mistakes
that other drivers makes. Noticing these
mistakes is likely to upset you because you are constantly seeing these
mistakes and do not know how to properly control the urges you may have to
retaliate due to a lack of emotional intelligence.
Finally, people
who have obtained emotional intelligence at the third level, which is the
highest level, are now considered supportive drivers. If you are able to
maintain a high level of emotional intelligence while driving, you are more
likely to act in a prosocial way, meaning you will be more helpful and friendly
to others. Also, you will more than
likely give another person the benefit of the doubt (meaning you will not
automatically blame them for some mistake that they made), and you will be more
optimistic about other drivers and the situation at hand. At this level you the least likely to engage
in aggressive driving and it is extremely unlikely you will have a road rage
episode. This is the level of emotional
intelligence that we should all strive for.
The next
principle of driving psychology I will be discussing is the three-step driver
self-improvement plan. As the title of
this principle suggests there are three things you must work on to become an
emotionally intelligent driver. These
three things are acknowledge, witness, and modify. First you must acknowledge that you need to
obtain a better understanding of what road rage is. Then you must become a witness to your own
and to others habits that could be changed.
Finally, you must modify your bad habits. Now I will break each of these categories
down and explain to you one by one.
Being able to
acknowledge your bad habits is the most difficult step that you must accomplish
in this three-step process but it is also the most vital. If you are unable to acknowledge these habits
then you will not be able to change them because as with anything else the
first step you need to take in order to change is to acknowledge that you have
a problem, such as aggressive driving or road rage. There are thousands of things that you can
change in order to become a better driver but the simplest thing to do is to
take the things that you want to change and do so one by one. These things could include habits of feeling
a certain way when something happens, habits of thinking a certain way about a
certain event or person, and habits of operating your vehicle.
Next, you must
become your own witness to the things you need to improve on. This means that you must make your own
self-observations and you must begin to monitor yourself. Something can be observed by people other
then yourself and these things include your driving speed, your following
distance, whether or not you have been drinking, running red lights, crossing a
double line, failure to yield, making insulting or threatening gestures,
yelling, and more. Things that only
ourselves can witness includes things such as the amount of pressure we apply
to the break, how hard we grip the steering wheel, our physical state of being
(whether we are sick or not), and more.
A person who is
beginning to self-witness will often describe a particular driving event in
such a way as to gain self-knowledge.
This will help you determine what upsets you and will allow you to
eventually find methods to help you modify these habits. When being your own witness you might want to
try to decipher what your mood or emotional state is, what aspects of the
environment or situations you tend to focus on, how you react to specific
situations, what kinds of things you fantasize about, what kinds of things your
think or say to yourself, and what you actually intend on doing in specific
situations. There are many negative and
positive events that you could witness but what events occur all depends on the
individual.
Finally, the
last thing that you must do to complete the three-step driver self improvement program
is to modify your old habits and you can only do this after you have
acknowledged these habits and have witnessed yourself doing these things. These step can be quite overwhelming because
there might be so many things to change so what you have to do is break the
process down into small parts and work on one target behavior at a time. In order to be successful in changing these
habits, which you have been actively participating in your whole life, you must
systematically map your emotions, thoughts, and deeds behind the wheel, which
if you remember sounds a lot like mapping out your three fold self.
During the
modifying stage there are three different aspects of yourself that you can
modify, which include your emotions, thoughts, and actions as mentioned
above. The emotional aspects of your
driving habits that you can change include not letting yourself enjoy thoughts
of revenge and torture and avoiding retaliation when another driver insults
you. The thoughts that you can change
are reinforcing the idea that your passengers have their rights and to stop
thinking that some drivers are idiots and whatever other names you use. Some actions you could change are leaving the
house earlier so that you don’t have to rush, increasing the following distance
that you allow, and signally sooner before changing lanes. These are just a few examples of the three
categories. I could keep going on but
then you would have pages consisting of lists so I will let you build off of my
small list.
The next
principle of driving psychology that I will be discussing is the effects that
road rage has on children and how these children are likely to grow up being
aggressive drivers. When people are
driving they do not try to hide their aggressiveness because they are often
proud of it and because of this it is quite common for children to hear adults,
including their parents, yell, swear, and belittle other drivers. Children often learn their habits by modeling
those that they look up to, which means they will often do and say what their
parents, other adults, and older children do and say. Also, when a driver, who has children in the
car, becomes hostile, the children might get caught up in the hostility that
the driver is participating in and may begin to enjoy this hostility, which
appears to be like a game to the children.
In order to
keep children from becoming aggressive drivers we must begin with controlling
our own thoughts and actions, especially when there are children in the car and
then when children behave in appropriate ways while in the car we must remember
to give them verbal rewards. These
rewards include telling them that they are being very good passengers and even
thanking them for it. Being a good
passenger includes them keeping their seatbelts on, not jumping around and
yelling in the car, reminding others to wear their seatbelts or to sit quietly,
etc. and you should remember to also verbally reward them for these things as
well. Children often behave in the same ways in the future when they are rewarded. This is why rewarding a child is a good idea;
it reinforces their good behaviors.
The next
principle of driving psychology that I will talk about is supportive driving,
which you probably remember hearing about in the two stages of a driving personality
make over plan discussed above.
Supportive driving is a style of driving that allows you to accept all
other drivers and the cultural diversity on the road. People driving on the roads come from a wide
arrange of places which means that their driving styles may differ from your
driving styles. Being a supportive
driver means understanding and adjusting to this great diversity of highway
users and steering clear from thoughts about this diverse group of people that
may lead to road rage.
Supportive
driving involves a positive and supportive attitude towards other drivers,
understanding that others need to drive just as much as you do, understanding
that others have just as much right to be on the road as you do, not taking
things so personally, and practicing lifelong driver self-improvement (which
may be easier to do if you join a Quality Driving Circle or QDC). When in a QDC you will be taking the same
exact steps mention above in the three step driver self improvement plan but
instead of doing it alone you will have others there that can help you improve
and that you can help improve. QDC’s are
a group of being who are supporting you and helping you to achieve your goals
as a driver. Being able to be a
supportive person in this group could really help you become a supportive
person out of the group.
Finally, the
last principle of driving psychology is life long driver’s education. Life long driver’s education is a program
that starts at early childhood, possibly even preschool. You are probably wondering what you could
teach to preschoolers that would make them less aggressive drivers when they
become of legal age. Well, the first
thing to do would be to have adults act in a more appropriate manner when there
are children in the car because their behaviors do rub off on children. Then you could make a game out of being a
polite driver. For a few hours every
week you could have children drive in those toy cars that they have nowadays
along a fake road that is made on the playground. While driving these preschoolers would have
to practice all the good aspects of driving, which they will be rewarded
for. When they behave badly they are
punished.
Right now all
we have is driver’s education for teenagers, which is a good thing. The only thing wrong with drivers’ education
today is that it promotes the driving behaviors that everyone possesses by not
teaching people emotional intelligence.
If we add an emotional intelligence part to driver’s education, along
with the practice children will get in preschool, we might find out that
non-aggressive driving behaviors are actually possible. All drivers’ education teaches teenagers
today is the basic knowledge needed to pass the written test and the road
test. Drivers’ education needs to go beyond
this and begin to teach all aspects of driving.
Finally, as an
adult that has gone through all of this training you must keep on the right
track by practicing all of the things taught to you until it becomes a natural
part of your life. Now you see why I say
that aggressive driving and road rage will not end tomorrow but that it needs
to start to be prevented today. To
become a non-aggressive driver we must start at a very young age and this means
teaching our children through modeling and school activities that the right way
to drive is non-aggressively.
I believe that
driving psychology relates to two different types of psychology including
social psychology and experimental psychology with the main reason being that
in most psychology classes you tend to learn a lot about yourself which I am
also having the pleasure of doing in my driving psychology class. I believe that driving psychology relates a
lot with social psychology because driving psychology really is a social thing,
contrary to popular belief. For example,
in social psychology you learn how we become social beings and in driving
psychology you learn how you need to be a social being in order to be a
supportive driver. I feel that
experimental psychology relates to driving psychology because in order to
become a supportive driver you kind of need to do an experiment on yourself and
you learn the procedures of carrying out an experiment in experimental
psychology, hence the name.
I believe that
driving behaviors are not mentioned in any other psychology courses because
driving is not really thought of as a psychological thing to many people. I did not even think of driving in this way
until I took this driving psychology course.
I feel that driving is something that is taken for granted and because,
as driving psychology books state, driving is such a natural thing it does not
seem like it would really be something to discuss. You do not realize what a big part of your
life driving is until you actually sit down and think about it and I believe
this to be the reason why driving behaviors are not mentioned in other
psychology courses.
Three Domains of Driving
Behavior
In this section
I am going to find the five occurrences of the phrase “three domains” from the
website www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/409a-g25-lecture-notes.htm.
After finding each separate occurrence I will summarize what is being said
about the three domains in that instance.
Then I will explain how the three domains relate to other aspects of
psychology. I will also explain how the
three domains help me to understand my own behavior in everyday life.
The first
occurrence of the phrase “three domains” appears in the first paragraph of this
article (the lecture notes). It is
explaining what the three domains of behavior are. These three domains include the affective
self, the cognitive self, and the sensorimotor self, as mentioned above in more
detail. It also explains that the three
domains is what defines someone’s’ driving behavior and that the objective of a
driving psychology course (this one in particular) is to become aware of the
three domains and to eventually become capable of modifying these domains.
The second
occurrence of the phrase “three domains” appears at the end of the fourth
paragraph. In this instance it is saying
how children acquire the driving styles of adults, including their parents, and
characters in the media. These media
influences include cartoons, movies, television, magazines, commercials, and I
believe the news, which has its positive and negative effects on children. It talks about how children have been exposed
to years of aggressive driving behaviors by the time they are old enough to
drive. It is said that they are exposed
to these aggressive driving behaviors in all three domains. They are exposed to hostile feelings (the
driver’s affective self), biased thoughts (the driver’s cognitive self), and
aggressive actions (the driver’s sensorimotor self).
The third
occurrence of the phrase “three domains” appears in the heading for table
one. Here it is stating that there are
both skills and errors that may occur within the three domains. The skills are the positive things that you
can do within your threefold self (also known as the three domains) and the
errors are the mistakes that anyone is capable of making within the three
domains. It gives examples of both
skills and errors that may occur in each of the three domains.
The fourth
occurrence of the phrase “three domains” appears under the heading of the Basic
Principles of Driving Psychology.
The three domains are apart of the basic principles of driving
psychology. It also explains that
driving norms appear in all three domains.
The fifth and
last occurrence of the phrase “three domains” appears in the seventh principle
of driving psychology. It states that
driving is a habit that occurs in the three domains, meaning that each of the
three domains has habits of their own, whether they are good or bad habits
depend on you. Also, since driving is a
habit in three domains of behavior it is possible to modify your habits through
self-monitoring. It also says that
specific habits in each domain must be addressed in order to improve your
driving behaviors.
I believe that
these three domains relate to other aspects of psychology because thoughts and
feeling precede all actions that anyone partakes in. When learning about different aspects of
psychology, such as social psychology, personality psychology, human sexuality,
as well as others, you learn about different things people do and often are
taught how to understand these actions through learning the different thought
processes that people have. You are
often taught that people think certain ways due to the way they feel, such as
depressed or happy, and that they often act in such ways to express their
feelings (e.g. they may mope around if they are depressed or act in an
energetic manner if they are happy).
Learning about
the three domains has really helped me to better understand my own behaviors in
everyday life. Now, I am aware that my
actions are a product of my feelings and thoughts and if I am able to control
my feelings and thoughts then eventually I might be able to control the way I
act. I now understand that my behaviors
are actually in my control (I knew this to some degree before but now I know
that all of my behaviors can be controlled if I set my mind to it). I now understand that the bad habits that I
exhibit while driving may be changed if I make the decision to change my
feeling and my thought patterns and if you want me to be honest, I have
actually noticed a change for the better in my driving behaviors and habits
since taking this driving psychology class.
Student Generational
Reports on Driving Psychology
For this section I will be choosing five reports from five past
generations, one report from each generation.
For reviews two through four, the students needed to answer specific
questions proposed by Professor Dr. Leon James.
Although I will briefly explain each question, please visit the students
report by clicking on their link in order to view the questions in their
entirety and in order to view their detailed reports for these reviews are just
summaries. One by one I will summarize
what the reports represent and I will do so in this order:
1.
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2004/arakaki/report1.htm , By Jenny Arakaki
2. www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2005/lee/409a-g22-report2.htm , By Robert Lee
3. www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af2004/higa/409a-g21-report2.htm , By Jennifer Higa
4.
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2006/stevens/stevens-409a-g24-report2.htm, By Derrick
Stevens
5. www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2005/trujillo/trujillo-409a-g23-report2.htm , By Jessica Trujillo
The first review I will do is on a report done by Jenny Arakaki from
generation 20 and can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2004/arakaki/report1.htm. In her paper this person has a section
entitle preface, an introduction section, a section that defines terms you find
in driving psychology, an autobiography section, a conclusion, and a place
where she gives advice to future generations.
Now I will give you a brief summary of what Jenny Arakaki had to say and
if you would like to read her article in full, then please click on the link
given above.
In the preface section she describes what driving psychology is as well
as the fact that we live in a place where everyone is always rushing and that
we should all take the time to relax and enjoy the ride. She also explains the concept of the
accordion effect, which I found to be quite interesting so I would like to
explain it here. The accordion effect is
when one driver steps on their breaks causing others to do the same and this causes
the gaps between cars to become smaller but when traffic begins to move the gaps
begin to increase because of the delay in each car to start moving.
In the introduction section she just explains what she understands
driving psychology to be and how she believes she will benefit from this
class. In the definition section she
explains quite a few definitions that are apart of driving psychology. She explains the three-fold self, the
self-witnessing methodology, road rage, the aggressive driving legislation, the
driver’s emotional intelligence, the driver’s emotional spin cycle, newsgroups
for drivers, lifelong driver’s education, scofflaw, and what a left lane bandit
is. In the autobiography section she
explains some of her bad driving habits, how the media plays a role in the
lives of young drivers, she explains where she believes to have picked up these
driving behaviors, and finally claims how ironic it is that her driving
behaviors are so different from that of her parents.
Finally, in the conclusion she describes how the class has made her aware
of her driving habits and how she is trying to change these habits. There is one more section in her paper but I
kind of explained it in the beginning but I shall say it one more time. She has a section entitled future generations
where she tells people that we must improve our driving styles and in order to
do this we must learn from our mistakes and try to change them.
The second review I will do is a report done by Robert Lee from generation 22 and can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2005/lee/409a-g22-report2.htm. This person’s paper is broken into sections according to questions that Dr. Leon James wanted his class to answer. This person is answering questions 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7. I will explain what these questions are in a minute. Each question also has multiple parts to it.
For the first question, Robert Lee talked about a table that can be found
in his report. He describes what the
three-fold self is and what they mean to him and he sees these things as what
motivates us as we are driving. He then
gives an example of the three domains and how it pertains to a certain type of
individual such as a highly competitive person.
Next he makes a driving personality makeover plan for himself based on
the three-fold self. He talks about how
he often feels frustrated and angry while driving and that he tends to drive
fast and recklessly. Finally, he tries
to figure out how he can improve his driving and he realizes he can through
accepting others flaws and apologizing for his own. He also made the realizations that his
attitude on the road really does “stink”.
For question three, he had to discuss two websites, which you can also
look at through viewing his report. For
the first two parts of the question he had to describe how the websites were
different according to their appearance.
He explained the drdriving homepage as homely and the drivers.com homepage
as more professional looking. After
talking about appearances, he lists some of the main differences between the
two pages, such as the articles included, the newsletters, the style of the
page, who the audience is likely to be for each website, he talks about the
public relations or the policy, the advertising, the size of the website, and
the ranking of each website. Also, he
talks about what kind of websites each of the websites he talked about are
linked to.
For question four, he had to do something like I am doing here but he had
to choose six reports on driving psychology from generation 20. He then summarized each persons report, made
his own conclusions about them and his reactions to their ideas, their methods,
and their explanations, he explained what these people gained from doing their
reports, and then added his own comments.
He explained why he chose the reports he did and then goes on to explain
each one individually. Each report he
chose to do was different in some way.
The first two were about defining things in driving psychology, the next
two were about self-experiments, and the last two were about driver lifelong
education.
For question five, he had to explain another chart that can be found by
looking through Robert Lee’s report.
First, he puts chart into his report and replaces the already give
examples with his own pertaining to the positive skills in the affective,
cognitive, and sensorimotor self, and then gives his own examples pertaining to
the errors people make concerning their affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor
self as well. Next, he discusses why
driving is such a big problem which he believes is due to the enormous amount
of people driving and explains that there isn’t a good solution to this problem
because not many people see the problem.
Finally, he explains the solutions that Dr. Leon James gives for the
problem at hand and he mainly discusses the self-modification techniques.
For question seven, Robert Lee had to complete many of the exercise that
Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl gives in his book entitled Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering
Clear of Highway Warfare. After
completing the exercises, which you can view by looking at his report, he tells
us about his reactions to doing the exercises, how they have helped him, and
how the exercises helped him to better understand the concepts of driving
psychology after doing the exercises with a friend. He found the exercises to be education and
fun and they helped to be more aware of himself as a driver. When he did these exercises with someone
else, it taught him to be more patient with others. He states that we have to learn to help
others during stressful situations.
Next, Robert Lee does part of his report on the current generation or on
people from his class. He does reports
on three peoples oral presentations, which were done in class. The first one he discusses is on being a
supportive driver. The second one he
discusses is about changing the behaviors of drivers. The third presentation he discusses is about
recognizing, observing, and recording road rage and aggressive driver and it is
kind of similar to the concepts of acknowledge, witness, and modify three-step
program that I have discussed above. After
discussing the presentations that he chose to write about, he expressed whether
or not he agreed with their ideas.
Robert Lee states that he did agree with all of the ideas and he also
explains why.
Finally, Robert Lee gives his own personal advice to future
generations. He explains what you need
to do in order to succeed in this class.
He lets you know what to expect to learn and that you will probably
learn a lot more than you initially expect to.
His biggest piece of advice is to NOT procrastinate.
The third review I will do is a report done by Jennifer Higa from generation 21 and can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af2004/higa/409a-g21-report2.htm. This person’s paper is broken into sections according to questions that Dr. Leon James wanted his class to answer and is very similar to the review I just did on the report above. This person is also answering questions 1, 3, 5, 7, and 8, which I will also explain as I go through my review. In this report, each question also has multiple parts to it.
For question one, Jennifer Higa discusses the three behavioral domains,
including the affective, cognitive, and senorimotor self. After explaining each of the domains, she
explains the behavioral zones of driving.
Then she gives an example of these things from her own driving
behaviors. She claims that her driving
style includes both positive and negative aspects of all the domains and then
gives some personal examples to illustrate this point. Next, she makes her own driving personality
makeover plan that includes two stages, the first being to avoid being an
aggressive driver and the second stage is to become a supportive driver. To become a non-aggressive driver, Higa
states that she needs to stop thinking that she is a perfect driver and that
she has noticed herself becoming more of a supportive driver since she has
taken this class.
For question three, Higa discusses two websites, which you can read more
about by going to her report by clicking on the link that I have provided for
you above. In her discussion she
includes the main differences between the two websites, such as the differences
in articles, newsletters, letters, style, probable audience, public relations
or policy, advertising, the size of the website, and the ranking of each
website. Higa states that these two
websites are actually more similar to one another than they are different and
goes on to explain these similarities.
She says that the biggest difference between the two websites is the
size of the main page although she says that each site is equal in information
and content but drdriving is better in its overall message.
For question five, Higa discusses a chart entitled Emotionally Intelligent Driver Personality Skills. First, Higa copies the chart, deletes the
examples that are already given, and then replaces them with examples that she
makes up. These examples explain driver
competence skills, aggressive (negative) driving, and supportive (positive)
driving. She believes that driving is
such a big problem because most people don’t realize how dangerous and powerful
a car can be and she thinks that there hasn’t been an effective solution to
aggressive driving and road rage because not to many people think it’s an actual
problem. She feels that although some
people might adopt the techniques suggested to prevent road rage, many will
not.
For question seven, Higa does some of the exercises that are presented
throughout the Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare book. After completing these exercises she gives
her reactions to them which were quite positive. She says that these exercises helped her to
realize what kind of driver she really was.
She then did the exercises with a friend and explained how this helped
her to better understand the principles of driving psychology. She states that by doing these exercises she
learned that driving psychology is all about realizing you have a problem and
doing something about it to turn yourself into a supportive driver
.For question eight, Higa searched the internet and the
Finally, Higa gives some advice to future generations. She believes that the key to succeeding in
this course would be to keep an open mind at all times. She also says that everyone must admit and
accept the fact that we all have problems when it comes to driving. She also states, along with most other
students, that you should not procrastinate.
The fourth review I will do is a report done by Derrick Stevens from
generation 24 and can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2006/stevens/stevens-409a-g24-report2.htm. This person’s paper is broken into sections
according to questions that Dr. Leon James wanted his class to answer. This person is also answering questions 1, 3,
5, 4, and 2. I will explain these
questions are I write my review. These
explains might not be too explicit since this is just a summary of his report
so if you want a detailed description of what he did, please go to his report
by clicking on the link given above.
For question one, Derrick Stevens gave a brief review of the two text
books that are used in the Driving Psychology course. The first book is entitled Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering
Clear of Highway Warfare written by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl. According to Stevens this book gives you a
unique perspective on the psychological aspects of driving. He states that the book is divided into three
sections, each one having there own subtitle.
The first section explains how drivers are emotionally driven and how
these emotions can lead to negative thoughts and feelings. The second section of the book talks about
emotional intelligence and how we can avoid aggressive driving, according to
Stevens. The third section describes
programs that have been proposed in order to reduce the rate of accidents that
occur today.
The second book is entitled Driving
Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer and is edited by J.
Peter Rothe. According to Stevens this
book is about finding new solutions to the problem of aggressive driving and
road rage, which is leading cause of many deaths on the road. We must find new solutions because the ones
we are using now are not working. This
book deals with the maintenance of the individual driver, the institutional
sub-systems, and the technical sub-systems or the technological advancements
that are being used to decrease traffic incidents and accidents.
Derrick Stevens also summarized chapter 8 on Supportive Driving in the
Road Rage book and chapter 14 on Driving Skill written by Lawrence Lonero in
the Driving Lessons book as a part of question one. He explains what supportive driving means to
the authors and also gives us some examples that the authors use to explain
ways to be a supportive driver, such as how you should treat drivers
differently depending on their circumstances, such as the visitor driver versus
the local driver situation. He then goes
on to explain what driving skills are and the three contextualized areas of
skill, according to how the author explains them. He then explains, in his own
words, how these ideas can help solve the problems that society has concerning
driving.
Finally, for question one, he explains how he believes that driving is a
moral issue but that most people don’t believe this and don’t see anything
wrong with their driving. He postulated
the idea of launching a mass media campaign to make the public aware that this
is a moral issue. He also states that
the Quality Driving Circles (QDC’s) is one program that he really likes and he
states that it is one of his favorites.
He then goes on to explain what a QDC is. Next, he taught the some of his family member
about driving personality makeover and got their reactions. According to Stevens, his family was very
open to the idea of this type of makeover and that he was pleasantly surprised
by their reactions.
For question three, Stevens had to do something similar to what I am
doing here and had to summarize three students’ reports from the newsgroups,
which you can find by looking at his report.
Stevens explained what the students did.
He also explains what the newsgroups cover and tells us why most people
join these newsgroups. He then discuss’
his reactions to their ideas, methods, and explanations, and discuss’ what the
students gained from doing these reports.
He states that newsgroups are very similar to the online world that most
people are familiar with. Finally, he
searches for some driving newsgroups on his own and states that what he found
was informative and interesting to him.
He says that the best part about his is that you can make your own
forums where people can respond with their personal opinions.
For question five, Stevens does some of the exercises that are found in
the book Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare written by Dr. Leon James and
Dr. Diane Nahl. To find out the
specifics of the exercises that he did please visit his report by clicking on
the link that is provided for you above.
After doing the exercise alone, he then does them with a friend and
expresses how his friend has helped him to better understand the principles of
driving psychology. By doing this he was
able to witness first hand the cognitive and affective responses of his younger
brother and it gave him a look into a young drivers mind.
For question four, Stevens writes about a table entitled Emotionally Intelligent Driver Personality
Skills, which can be found by looking at his report. For this section he copied the chart into his
report and described what he thought the table represented. He also gives his own version of the table
where he replaces what is originally placed in the table with his own
scenarios.
For question two, Stevens compares three different websites, two with
were provide for him and one which he had to find himself. He explains the main differences between the
three websites, including the differences in their style and content and the
amount of advertisement offered for each website. He also gives the statistics and ratings for
the three websites, which show us which website is most popular.
Next, he summarizes four previous reports, two which come from generation
22 and two that come from generation 23.
Each report is the second report that the students did for the
semester. He describes each report one
by one, although I thought it could have been more complete and for this reason
I don’t much to say about this part of his report.
Finally, Stevens gives some advice to future generations. His biggest piece of advice, which is also
given by many other people, is to not procrastinate. He also says that it is a good idea to apply
this class to your life because it makes the class more exciting and
relevant. He thinks that time management
is very important in this class.
The fifth review I will do is a report done by Jessica Trujillo from generation 23 and can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2005/trujillo/trujillo-409a-g23-report2.htm. This person’s paper is broken into sections according to questions that Dr. Leon James wanted his class to answer. This person is answering questions 2, 4, 5, 7, and 10. I will briefly explain these questions as I go through my review but like I said before, if you are interested in knowing exactly what this person did please look at their report by clicking on the link given above.
For question two, Jessica Trujillo gave a brief review of the two books
used in class. The first book she
discussed is entitled Road Rage and
Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare written by Dr. Leon
James and Dr. Diane Nahl. According to
The second book is entitled Driving
Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer edited by Peter
Rothe. According to
Next, she chose a chapter from each text and gave a brief summary about
it. Trujillo chose to discuss chapter
one in the Road Rage book which is entitled Driving
in the Age of Rage and chapter nineteen in the Driving Lessons book which
is entitled Is Using a Cell Phone like
Driving Drunk? The chapter from the
Road Rage book discusses whether or not road rage is real or if it is just
media hype, according to
For question four,
For question five, Trujillo discusses a table about driver competence
skills and replaces the give examples with her own examples in order to explain
what a aggressive (negative) driver, who is not emotionally intelligent, would
do compared to a supportive (positive) driver who is emotionally
intelligent. She believes that there are
many reasons why driving is a big problem, such as the lack of good drivers
education, the fact that people don’t want to admit they are not the only
drivers on the road, and that people don’t take driving psychology
seriously. Finally, she discusses some
of Professor Dr. Leon James solutions to unsafe and aggressive driving.
For question seven,
For question ten,
Next,
Finally,
Now I will make my own conclusion on the usefulness of this type of
learning. I found this type of learning
to be an alright style. I do believe
that there are better ways to learn this material than this way although by
doing it this way, the material gets implanted into your mind because you read
the same thing over and over again. I do
admit that I did learn a lot through this style of learning but it was quite
repetitive and boring the further along you got.
You may be wondering why I wrote a
semi-descriptive summary of the five reports that I chose to review. Well, to stop your wondering, I did it this
way because, first of all, it helped me to remember the material better, and
secondly, I thought that by giving some details it might make people reading my
paper interested in reading these other papers.
I then hoped that this might help encourage people to learn about
driving psychology, which in turn will make more people become supportive
drivers. I hope I have accomplished my
goal and have made you more curious about driving psychology.
My Driving Personality
Makeover Field Experiment
For my driving personality make over plan I decided to use the three-step
driver self-improvement plan to improve the negative feelings that I possess
towards other road users. This
three-step process includes acknowledging my negative feelings, witnessing when
they occur, and then modifying or changing the negative feelings that I have
towards other drivers. Keep in mind that
this is just a small experiment that I did on myself. I kept it small because of the small amount
of time I had to do this experiment. In
order to become a reformed driver you may need years of practice and
unfortunately I did not have years to conduct this experiment but I do plan on
continuing it after I finish this class because I believe it will make me
happier as I have already noticed through changing just a few feelings.
After deciding what kind of plan to use I then took about three days to
acknowledge and witness by feelings (I did the first two steps together because
it was a little bit easier for me to do it this way – when I acknowledge that I
was feeling negatively I decided to ask myself why I was feeling this way, what
had the other driver done to “me”). At
this point, I mentally noted what I felt and why and later wrote it down on a
piece of paper. Since it is difficult to
remember a lot of things I decided to concentrate on acknowledging and
witnessing two feelings a day.
After a couple of days I had a decent size list of feelings to modify and
since it takes a lot of work to modify these feelings, and by a lot of work I
mean a lot of time because you constantly need to remind yourself not to do
what you are used to doing, I decided to work on two feelings a week, which
took two weeks to do since I had a list of six feelings that I wanted to
modify. Although it was a lot of work, I
really enjoyed doing it and I recommend doing an experiment on yourself and I
will explain why in a little while.
I thought that the experiment went really well and I was able to change
most of the feelings that I set out to change, the others I am still
battling. I learned a lot about myself
and that by changing the way I feel towards other drivers into a more positive
way, I actually feel better about myself.
I learned that if you can see the positive side of any situation you
become happier in general. I guess this
is because you are not always so mad at every little thing that happens that,
in turn, you can actually enjoy the ride.
I was really shocked at the feelings I had towards other drivers because
I am usually a really nice person, or so I like to believe, but when I got on
the road I noticed that quite a few things made me frustrated.
I began to feel frustrated when I was nice and let someone change lanes
in front of me and they didn’t even acknowledge that I made space for
them. I became real frustrated when
someone would tailgate me. I felt
frustrated when someone cut me off, either because they didn’t see me or
because they needed to get into a lane and didn’t care what they did to obtain
what they needed, especially when they didn’t bother to use a turn signal. I would become angry if someone flipped me
off because I did something that they did not approve of, whether it was going
to slow, making one of many possible mistakes that a person can make while
driving, etc. These are just a few
examples of things that I worked on so that you can get an idea of what I did.
After acknowledging and witnessing these behaviors, it was time to modify
them and once again I will explain what I did using the examples I mentioned
above. For the most part, I could modify
all these feelings by reminding myself of just a couple of things. First, I would tell myself, “Why should I let
someone else’s behavior decide how I am going to allow myself to feel?” You must always remember that others don’t
make you feel a certain way but that you allow yourself to feel that way. Then I would remind myself that I want to
enjoy my ride, it is something that I have to do everyday and I would rather enjoy
doing it than being pissed off all the time and in order to do that I need to
be courteous to other drivers and feel positively towards them no matter what
happens.
By constantly reminding myself of the two things above I was able to
accomplish my goal. I was able to change
the few feelings that I set out to change and I felt good about it. I plan on continuing this experiment because
I believe that it will make me a better person and I actually enjoyed doing
it. I think by continuing this
experiment, although I wouldn’t call it an experiment anymore, I think that I
can make myself be a better person on and off the road. In order to make this possible, I will need
to continue acknowledging, witnessing, and modifying my feelings as well as my
thoughts and actions, but what I have noticed is that through changing your
feelings you kind of tend to change your thoughts and feelings as well, or at
least that is what happened with me.
Hopefully, you now understand why I said that I would recommend doing
this experiment, but if not I will explain again just because I really hope you
do it. First off, I learned so much
about myself. I learned how good it
feels to just relax while driving. Why
do you want to be all stressed out and irritated while doing something that you
have to do practically everyday of your life?
Also, you will find that you have not had a chance realize how beautiful
the scenery is around you, at least it is in
Advice to Future
Generations
So far, I have learned or shall I say come to realize and notice many
things about myself by studying driving psychology and I believe that to be the
best part about taking this course.
Before this class I never realized how I was driving or what kind of
attitude that I had while driving. I
used to think of myself as a really good driver, to be quite honest, until I
took this class and then I realized that I had a lot of room for improvement. I realized that I was an aggressive driver and
that I sometimes even participated in a road rage episode, although when I say
this I don’t mean a deadly type of road rage but a minor one, the kind where
you try to retaliate against others (although this could be dangerous and is
still considered road rage).