Driving
Personality Make-overs
Is it for Me?
Looking into the Mirror
What
is a driving personality make-over?
Driving personality make-over is the process where we
feel (affect), how we think (cognitive), and what we do or the act (sensory
motor). Miss
Adele Kimura looks at a part of driving personality make-over as the
feeling (affect) of what a person feels when threatened. Jayson
Nakasato then looks at the cognitive part where people who are in constant
self-awareness will make me a better social driver. Behavior modification
is also important to traffic psychology to deducing all the behaviors,
with the affect and the cognitive parts a person could change in order
to avoid and promote the sensory motor. This is what I think driving personality
make-over Cherilyn
Okazaki was the one which wrote about having these problems.
Psychological
concepts
There are many different things going
on while a person is driving. Such things affect how a person feels, thinks,
and reacts. In order to change a bad driving behavior a person must realize
that he or she is actually doing something wrong and wanting to change.
This is where driving personality make-overs comes into play, with the
many psychological theory at a persons disposal.
First a person must understand
what is going on where driving norms have a dominant role. The dominant
group tends to a strong effect when it comes to norms, all other people
usually conform to the dominant groups norms. This is seen in the left
lane of the freeway where the people who normally drive on the left lane
are drivers who tend to drive at a fast pace. A person that wants to drive
slow or the speed limit on the left lane is usually scorned and honked
at because they are doing against the left lane.
Knowing the norms of the road help
a person understand why in some places people drive a certain way. With
knowing the norms of the road a person can then use self-modification which
allows a person to look at what he or she is doing wrong and trying to
change what they are doing by keeping track of their behavior. More and
more a person will look at how he or she is driving and see when and where
they are driving badly and endangering others in the process, with this
knowledge a person has two choice into whether to change or not to change
and disgard the norms of the road. These people are forming self serving
biases, which their behavior is only good for themselves and if others
are in the way they "step" all over them.
Mini-self
modification experiment
The mini-self modification experiment that was implemented
was to improve on behavior behind the wheel during the drive through traffic.
This behavior of getting mad at the way other people drive, the situation
which occurs daily monday through friday, of people just cutting over without
knowing how much room there actually is. Slamming breaks on, I get mad
at the other person. With the experiment each time I get mad for someone
cutting me off, my passenger will notify me of my anger.
Observation
Everytime I drive in the morning I drive through some light
traffic to arrive at school, during this time I get cut off by another
person driving in the next lane. The person cutting me off cuts in without
signalling or when they start cutting they turn on the signal. In this
experiment I will have my passenger keep track and notify me of getting
mad. Reminding me that I should not get mad at the person, just keep driving
and let it go.
Each day that I drove I noticed that I did get very upset
each time someone cut me off forcing me to break. As a couple times passed
I wondered why I was getting mad, I noticed that this anger was against
the other person and the way they were driving. With this I found myself
thinking more and more that the person will drive like this and there is
nothing I can do so why do I upset myself, just let it pass. This thinking
starting to let things pass happened about 4 days of being told that I
was being mad.
Conclusion
My solution to the situation is that I found that acknowledging
that I get mad at other people for cutting me off and just letting it go
by saying to myself that I cannot control other people. By doing this I
found myself just ignoring people when they cut me off, by saying why should
my morning be ruined just watchout for these people and give them more
space.
I think that using self-modification of knowing that
I do something wrong or hazardous and changing the way I do things allows
me to improve on my driving everyday. This should be apart of everyones
life because driving is around us at all time of the day and everywhere
we look. On a personal note I think that by self-modifying I can see that
I need to work on some of the things associated with driving and this work
can be accomplished by noticing what is wrong and how it can be improved.
For
future generations
Suggestions to future generations is that everyone has
a flaw that they do and with this flaw if you take it seriously and want
to improve on your driving you may notice another flaw associated with
the first. For a suggestion a generation may want to take longer than two
weeks to look at their driving in certain situations, because like my case
I looked at my feeling while driving in traffic. Not everytime a person
goes on the road is there traffic so I would suggest a person try to look
at something that happens more often, or give themselves more time.
Epilogue
Preparing for the experiment I tried to think hard about
things which I do wrong as a driver. This tended to be very difficult knowing
that I must find something wrong with the thing that I do every single
day a person feels very incompetent. With this experiment preceeding after
I had to suck up my pride and admit that I do something wrong when I drive,
I went into the next step of having a way of telling myself when I do it.
I found that having a person next to me was the best way since it allowed
me to be the same in my driving until the situation came up where I got
mad. Having the tape of me would be quite difficult because I would just
justify my actions but by having this person next to me I could see and
feel what I was doing wrong and everytime it happened I would know what
to look for. This went through the step by step way I did this experiment.
From going with the affect of the feeling and then the cognitive of reminding
myself not to do anything, to sensorimotor of not acting and just driving
normally.
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