Report 1
My Understanding of Driving Psychology
By Mitchell West
Instructions for this report are at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/409a-g24-report1.htm
Question A: Driving Psychology Tables of Change
Table 1 is a break down of the positive and negative skills that are displayed in the psychology of driving. The three behavioral categories come from the three fold self. These Affective, Cognitive and Sensory Motor skills that are broken down are rated as either + or – in this table. So for each part of the three fold self a person can us their own self witness to put their feeling, thoughts and actions into a usable table. I think this first step in the taxonomy of driving psychology is a very big one and it helps the driver first start to funnel their thought process into a usable grid to keep track of their behavior. I like the fact that for each of the three fold self categories you can start to see a clear cut pattern of where you make the most personal errors. For example a person can be very skilled with a car and never speed or get into an accident, but when put through the first table of the positive and negatives of the three fold self he can be a very dangerous driver. I think people drive around all the time and because they have a perfect record on paper such as no tickets, low insurance, and no crashes they assume falsely that they are a safe and good driver. We see that this is not true, because they could be driving with a very hateful and cynical type of personality, which can cause many problems for others sharing the road with these type of drivers.
Table 2 serves as another step in classifying the taxonomy of driver behavior. This matrix is made up of a three by three grid that has at one end the three fold self: Affective, Cognitive, and the Sensory Motor. And at the other end three different classifications for driving. This cross sectional grid is more descriptive that the positive or negative choices in Table 1, but it kind of confused me with the different numbers. For example in each square there is a positive or a negative choice and for each behavioral classification chosen there is a different number assigned. For the positive behaviors the numbers run between 1 and 9 but for the negative behaviors the numbers run from 10 to 18. I found that these numbers were quite distracting and made it harder for me to grasp the hierarchy of the taxonomy.
Table 3 deals with two stages of the driving personality and how to remedy the things that need changing. The first stage of the table deals with each factor of the three fold self; A, C, and S and derives specific ways in each to avoid becoming an aggressive driver. It just makes sense to me that the Affective organ starts the positive behavior because before you can cognitively think of being in a positive mind set, you have to know the affective feeling and be in touch with it. If you have a hard time being happy, it is going to be very difficult to cognitively then put other driver’s actions into a positive out look. It also makes sense to me that if you can’t put a positive twist on your surrounding and environment you will definitely not use your sensory motor skills in a positive and helpful way. That is why the first part of Table 3 shows all the positive behaviors to follow so as to skip over these common pit falls of aggressive driving.
The second part of table 3 deals with becoming a supportive driver. This step is a trickle down of the first step and is a result of rational thought. The first step in table 3 was the hard part which was acknowledging the problem and now with the realization of this behavior a driver is able to become a supportive driver meaning that he is affectively able to feel more compassion and understanding for his fellow drivers. Cognitively they will have a more realistic and objective view on the things that are accruing to them while in traffic. And as far as sensory motor skills they will be more helpful and predictable in their actions. Allowing others to drive safer and with less stress.
Table 4 deals with three stages of self modification. These three are A,W,M, acknowledge, witness, and modify. The first step to changing your driving psychology is acknowledging your behavior. This means that you are admitting to yourself that your actions or thoughts are maladaptive and negative. This is a very big step because most people, me included tend to blame other people or try to justify negative behavior in an attempt to self preserve old beliefs. I often find myself thinking ill rational thoughts on a busy freeway. However once you have acknowledged that you have a negative attribute in one or more of the three fold self attributes of psychological driving you must then witness the behavior. This is much different that just acknowledging that you have a problem. Many people simply acknowledge that they have a problem, but then don’t focus any effort on resolving that issue. With the act of witnessing you must focus your emotions on this negative behavior and when it occurs each time, you must take an active role in recognizing the role it plays in the affective, cognitive, and the sensory motor part of your driving. Thinking about this behavior and making you feel responsible for it will lead to the third step. This step is modifying. By doing each of the previous steps you are re-forming your driving psychology and this is strengthened by modifying or constantly repeating this type of positive behavior in the future. Repeating the positive behavior of emotional intelligence will lesson the desire to go back to your old way of driving and encourage a much happier and safer personal driving psychology.
Question B: The Main Principles of Driving Psychology
The main principles of Driving Psychology is a relatively new concept to me but after learning a few mind numbing stats I can’t believe that more people, such as the Department of Transportation aren’t using these principles to save lives. I have had a rather difficult time trying to keep all of the forces that make up a good driver in order but I will explain a few that I think are the most important. For example one of the interesting things that I have learned about driving is that we have terrible social norms that promote negative driving habits. We learn at a young age from our parents how to drive, but more importantly we pick up on subtle social cues that teach us how to react or behave while we are in a car, and often because we are not taught the proper mental mind set in drivers courses we pass on angry or negative traits. We also
have a tremendous problem with negative social role models when it comes to movies. We value risk taking behavior, especially when it comes to driving fast or recklessly. This negative model is reinforced by everyone from our peers to our family. One example that I can think of is the movie Bullet. This is an older movie, with Steve McQueen. The movie has many car chase scenes where the hero narrowly escapes the bad guys by making some sort of risky escape in a fast car, but in real life a person was killed while they were filming one of these dangerous chase scenes in San Francisco. I actually got a chance to see where the movie was filmed years later and my Dad pointed out where the person actually got hit, the interesting thing was all he said was “now that was a cool chase scene”. This type of reinforced norm is one of the main problems a person especially a younger driver faces when they are determining what kind of driving choices to make
Another principle of driving psychology is the three fold self. This clever description of the driver as needing an affective, cognitive and sensory motor to function is a revolutionary idea. I believe that it is this concept that makes driving psychology so unique. Most driving schools and even laws only pertain to the sensory motor aspect of driving. For example the action of speeding is a sensory motor problem in the United States. That means we are only concerned with one part of the three fold self. By doing this we do not take into account either the affective or cognitive part of this behavior and therefore lessen our affectability in creating a better policy for reducing this type of driving behavior. The affective part of driving psychology pertains to the feeling and different emotions that a person experiences while in control of a car. There are many different thoughts and emotions being shared on roads all around the world and it is up to the driver of each vehicle to decipher and send many messages every day. Cognitively a driver needs to be in a good frame
of mind and make positive choices while he is driving to become a very good driver. These cognitive abilities include save choices, low risk driving, driving with the other driver’s safety in mind and to be more understanding of the other drivers needs on the road. Often times drivers feel isolated and anonymous on the road and this mixed with the feeling of confinement can lead to some of the worst types of aggressive driving. That’s why I believe that is a good idea to realize that everyone on the road is sharing the same space and that we all just want to arrive at our destination alive. Once you get the idea in your head that it is more of a group activity than an individual effort, it starts to help your personal out look on other drivers.
Question C: The Three Domains of Driving Behavior
The three domains of the driving behavior as I have discussed briefly above are a very revolutionary way of looking at driving behavior. These
Three are of course, The affective self, The cognitive self, and the Sensory Motor self. I will now begin to break each of these domains down and describe how they relate to the act of driving behavior; I will then follow this description up with a few illustrations of my own driving behavior.
Affective self: this very important domain of driving behavior is often the most over looked of the three. The affective self is concerned with the feelings and emotions that the driver is experiencing at the time of operating a motor vehicle. These emotional signals are traded constantly between different drivers, but because they are so personal and subjective they are very hard to study. To get to this level of emotional control we need to first take a personal driver and ask them to do some introspection on their personal feeling while driving. After they can begin to see the way their behavior or affective reasoning influences their driving they can then begin to improve their skills. I think that this level is the hardest to reach in every driver, because it is about personality and the norms that we have been exposed to growing up. I also think that this affective domain should be apart of our DMV program. I know it would be hard to implement but asking people to pass a personality test along with the driving test would be a great step.
Cognitive self: this is the decision making part of driving behavior. For instance you can not step on the breaks and swerve into the next lane if you don’t first cognitively think about releasing the accelerator with your right foot, then pressing the break to slowdown and then moving your arms to swerve. Each sensory motor act must first be thought of by the cognitive self. This also includes planning what time you leave your house and also knowing where you’re going and how to get there. Cognitively if you take care of these things before you get into your car you can cut down on many very dangerous acts that we all do everyday. Some of these reasons are why people are get into accidents every year. Just think if they had taken the time to plan their trip with plenty of time to spare they wouldn’t feel rushed or take dangerous risks to arrive on time. If they had proper direction and a plan on how to accomplish it a driver wouldn’t be trying to cut in and out of lanes looking fro the right on or off ramp. Ultimately, it is sad to say but many drivers die every year just because they don’t make good cognitive decisions.
Sensory Motor: This is a driving behavior that we are all familiar with. This is also what we attribute to most of the problems with dangerous and aggressive driving as a society. The sensory motor self is the observable action of our behavior. It is the break checks in the middle of the highway, the middle finger out the window, or the dangerous lane change that barely misses other vehicles. These acts as we know come from a trickle down effect from the other portions of the three fold self. By using each part of these three domains we can become a very negative driver or a positive driver that cares and understands other driver’s needs. The choice as Dr. James has told us is in our personality and willingness to change. The thing that I have taken most from the three fold self of driving behavior is that it is a personality choice. To change someone’s driving behavior in essence you must change or be willing to change your personality.
A personal example of three domains in driving behavior is that of my girlfriend. She is a very sweet person and in fact works with special children so I know she has a lot of patients. However when she gets into her new car she becomes very cynical. This affective shift in her mind set is very noticeable threw her sensory motor actions which typically are to swear at other driver and even in some cases to take vigilantly type justice. For example one time a woman honked at her while she was a little slow to go at a green light. I know the person shouldn’t have honked and that it gives the other driver the power to choose what to do, but this girl just wanted her to pay attention. My girlfriend was so negatively set in her affective mind set that she didn’t move until the light was almost yellow. This affective feeling influenced her cognitive judgment and resulted in her sensory motor act of not pressing the accelerator.
Question D: Review of Students Reports
Dustin Telles: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459f98/telles/report1telles.html
For my first student review I found the above website created by Dustin Telles. I found this website by using the google search engine, and was very pleased to see that it was one of the top hits. Dustin created a driving personality makeover for himself that included an observation faze where he witnessed his behavior. This observation resulted in his self witness of some of the things that he does such as not let people merge or swearing at them if they do manage to get in front of him. Dustin designed a plan to have a friend ride with him and verbalize not only when people wanted to get over, but some other possibilities that could be occurring. Dustin’s s driving behavior makeover was a good start to fixing his angry feeling about merging drivers. He concluded that the practice did have a fairly positive influence on his affective thoughts while driving, and I think that was the most important lesson learned.
Jocelyne Manibusan: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as99/manibusan/report3.html
For my second student review I chose to look at Jocelyne’s website on how to implement a driving personality makeover. Jocelyne’s major form of aggressive driving was driving to close to other cars. She admits that she has had many friends comment on her tailgate style of driving in the past, so she decided to run a base line of her driving behavior. She used her passenger to gage her behavior and found that she is guilty of several offenses in her 15 minute commute to school everyday. Jocelyne then decides to remedy her negative driving style by listening to her passengers, and using self witnessing techniques to reminder of her behavior. She said that she would verbally remind her self to stay at a certain distance from other cars, and by doing this she came to a conclusion. Her self witnessing conclusion was that the reason she tailgated was so that other people couldn’t cut in front of her. This is a very interesting self realization and leads to what Dr. James talks about as being a friendly driver and working with drivers as apposed to against them.
Question E: My Own Driving Makeover
After reading the two driving makeover plans above I began to realize some of the negative driving behaviors that I display everyday. The biggest problem I detected was with in my affective self. I have a tendency to really think or wish negative outcomes on fellow drivers. I have often been so upset on the drive home that I have held on to those negative feelings for hours after I get home. I think that this is not only a dangerous way to drive, but also a very negative thing to have impinging on my life.
The mini experiment that I ran to change my negative affective thought while driving was to come up with two different reasons why a car had done something to make me angry. I found that like a lot of people those cars that seemed to be cutting in front of me made me very angry. So to try and restructure my driving personality I tried to keep track of every feeling that I was feeling while a car was trying to edge in on me. After I focused my basic feelings, I began to reason with my self by saying that they are very nice people or often I pretended that they were one of my friends. This different frame of mind didn’t always win out, but I kept it up for a week.
The outcome of my driving makeover was actually very helpful. The first change that I noticed about reframing my affective self was that I was slower to anger. Once I noticed that I didn’t have those quick reflects like thoughts of hate or ill will I towards other drivers I was kind of amazed. I still do have some moments where I get mad or loose control of my temper every now and then, but if that happens I can actually cool down quicker and not let it bother me for so long. I think one the things that makes driving makeovers so difficult is the fact that you have to change part of your personality, and people are often not willing to do this until they absolutely have to. And by that time it is often to late.
Question F: What I Have Learned From Driving Psychology
The psychology of driving is a very new concept for not only me but other psychology students as well. We have taken many classes on the human psyche, but during those classes I never even thought of applying what I had learned to driving. Now that I have I seriously am affected by the behavioral phenomenon of the three fold self. This as I have gone into in great detail above, is the most interesting part of driving psychology for me. It has taught me that there is more to driving a car than just sensory motor skills. In fact I almost feel dumb that I
haven’t seen the correlation between the affective and cognitive effects before. It just makes so much sense as a psychology student that the way you encode your surrounding stimulus on the road will have a profound effect on what decisions you make. I also learned about social norms and their negative effects on driving behavior. This really hit home when I went home with my girlfriend who I have mentioned above. It wasn’t until I learned about social norms in driving behavior that I noticed that many of the negative behavior that my girlfriend had were mirrored by her mother. Using this example I can see the tremendous effects just one social norm has on a persons driving psyche.
My advice to future generations taking Driving Psychology is to approach it with a very open mind. The worst thing you can do is to come in here and say to yourself that you don’t have anything wrong with your driving. I thought that my driving was very good, partly because of arrogance and partly because I haven’t got a ticket in a very long time. However after really looking at my self and self witnessing some of my behavior I can see that there are many parts of myself that I need to change. As far as advice about doing report one it is very important to start early and double check your work. I had a very hard time figuring out how to bookmark the charts in the beginning, but by talking to fellow classmates I realized that I had to put each chart in my server on line. Another helpful hint for completing the report 1 is to read each question very closely and to make sure you don’t forget to answer all the questions that are asked. Other than that I wish all other future classes the best of luck.
How to teach Driving Psychology to college students is much easier if they are psych majors. I say this because much of the jargon that is used is difficult for other majors to understand. I also think that if we had handouts, such as the graphs in this assignment we could follow along with some of the difficult concepts better. I think that the web access for this class is very nice, because it allows the student to work at there own speed. I also like that the material is accessible from any where, so you don’t have to carry a big book all over.
My Homepage: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2006/west/west-home.htm
G24 Cass Homepage: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/classhome-g24.htm