Self-Witnessing Methods For Drivers
Training My Cousin To Witness Himself While Being A Passenger
Recommendations For Further Development Of This Method
Self-Witnessing Methods For Drivers
Jae used the self-witnessing method of driving in convoys. Jae also took notes of the emotions that were being felt as well as the critique of her sisters on her emotions displayed while driving. Her main conclusion was that she doesn?t like to drive in convoys. The reason for this is that when she finds herself at the beginning of convoys she feels stress by leading the pace. She then drops into the middle of the convoy, but this suffocates her. Lastly she finds herself at the back of the convoy and then in between convoys which is where she feels most comfortable.
Dan did a paper about self-witnessing while driving. His paper had a lot of psychological theories that could be used to explain what a person was going through especially when it came to thought processes. He described 6 different times that he went through a driving dilemma with his emotions. Throughout these 6 dilemmas, he noticed his affective behavior, cognitive behavior, and sensory motor behavior. This type of analysis is very helpful to understand what types of behaviors and emotions a person is feeling in the certain situation. This is the first step in correcting a negative reaction.
Driving down H1 freeway on November 3, 1999 I found myself in the middle of a traffic convoy. I am driving in the left lane so that I can pass the people on the right side. I suddenly feel like I am in a car race. I start to drive faster than the other cars and I started to weave in and out of traffic. I then find myself at the front of the convoy, then in the middle of two convoy?s trying to catch up to the other one down the road.
I saw my driving personality as very aggressive in this situation and one that I am afraid of. My cognitive thinking was to get to the front of the pack at once no matter what it takes. I would have put my passengers and myself in danger if it meant getting in front of the next car. I saw myself as containing an animalistic attitude that told me that I need to be the best and whatever it took, I would do it.
Driving on the H1 freeway during rush hour traffic at 7:45 in the morning a car cuts in front of me. In most cases this situation wouldn?t affect me, but this car cut me off without using a blinker and with little space between the other car and myself. On top of all that, This person didn?t even say thank you with a hand gesture.
In this situation I found myself feeling that the other driver should have asked permission first, and then if I chose to let the car into the lane, a sign of gratitude should follow. This type of attitude shows that I have a controlling personality while driving. This is something that I have to get rid of because with this type of attitude, I will get angry in a lot of situations where I should just let things go. I then asked myself after the incident if it would have made a difference if the person driving the car had gestured thanks for letting him or her into the lane. I probably wouldn?t have been so upset had the other driver tried to gesture something. This shows me that if I do something that will upset another driver, if I give a positive gesture, then the other driver might be a little more forgiving.
Driving in a parking lot November 26, 1999 I had a parking stall taken away from me at Pearl Ridge shopping center. This is the day after Thanksgiving and there was no parking anywhere at the shopping mall. I noticed that I got very upset and started to yell at the other driver. This action happened even though I knew that whatever I said would not change the fact that I wouldn?t get the parking.
The fact that I didn?t get the parking that I wanted was the wood the made the fire burn. While thinking about what had happened and the emotions that I was feeling, I noticed that this incident was just the right time to let out my frustrations. A lot of other things that happened that day made me very upset, This just happened to be the situation that I could show my anger.
Training My Cousin To Witness Himself While Being A Passenger
When I tried to train my cousin to do this self-witnessing exercise, the main problem I ran into was his lack of attention. I noticed that when I asked him for his evaluation of a situation, he wasn?t paying attention to what was going on. This surprised me especially when he is 15 years old. What I then did was try to coach him to pay attention to the road and observe what other cars were doing. A situation that he observed was a person cutting us off on the freeway. After the incident, I asked him what he was feeling and the type of reaction he had. He told me that he was very upset and that if he were driving, he would have followed the person and cause trouble. I then asked him why he would do that, and he responded that the other driver would learn and not do it again.
Some other things that happened were his lack of responsibility. I asked him to help me with this exercise and it took him almost a week to meet with me after I had been stood up by him 4 times. I started to think about finding someone else to help me, and then I thought that this would be exactly what the perfect subject should be like. I w2anted some not like myself so that my biases would not interfere.
I believe that the results that I found are great for the people who are advocates for teaching kids emotional intelligence. A lot of the reactions by my cousin were things that a older person would not have. These reactions were open violent behavior by wanting to have a physical confrontation, and lack of responsibility. These reactions were things that I had expected. I was young once and these types of emotions and actions were very present in my life.
Recommendations For Further Development Of This Method
If I were to do this type of thing again, I would have two kids to work with at different ages to compare the results of their self-witnessing capabilities. This would give a good range of when a child is mature enough to drive and to also show what type of emotional intelligence each has. Another thing that I would do is to videotape the child?s reactions to certain controlled situations. This will give an accurate observation of physical evidence that the child displays. The cognitive evidence will have to be measured by a questionnaire that will measure the validity of the child?s answer.
This method could be used in schools either at the high school level during driver education classes or at the middle school level. These two levels will be ideal because both have the basic understanding of both driving and their emotions. Future generations could do this by setting up a experiment at a local school or community center for those that would want to help and learn.
I learned a lot about how a person changes from childhood into adulthood. Although children seem to have a harder time controlling their emotions, adults have an equally hard time controlling their emotions. I also noticed that there is a lot more analization within cognition in adults rather than children. Adults have more insight to their emotions and the difference between good and bad.