Report 1:Studying the Online Generational Curriculum in Traffic
Psychology
Everyone Needs a Driving Personality
Makeover
Table of
Contents
After reading some of the generational students' reports, I was able to find out a
general concept about traffic psychology and its relation to driving
personality makeover. In traffic
psychology, one uses the knowledge of
behavorial principles to modify or change his/her conduct in traffic
situations. The traffic situation includes any form of locomotion such
as driving, bicycling, or walking. According to
Curtis Nakao (G2),
the goal is to help students develop a self-awareness of their negative
affective behaviors, which is the emotion or thought experience when
driving, and to have an insight to their driving personality, so they can
modify their attitudes or behaviors while driving. With this new knowledge or sense of self-awareness, perhaps we
can pay more attention to our reactions and try to control them, in doing
so, we all may become traffic psychologists. According to
Anthony Chung
(G3a), thinking like a traffic psychologist will help you to become one.
Driving personality makeover is an attempt to improve your negative attitudes or behaviors
when driving. There are two stages
of a driving personality
makeover. The first stage is to become a reformed driver and the
second stage is to become a facilitative driver. You need to come up
with a plan to overcome your negative emotions (such as anger,
frustration, impatience, etc), which leads to physical manifestation (such as rapid heart beat,
muscle tension, and shaking, etc.), which leads to outburst of verbal insults like swearing and/or
rude and hostile non-verbal behaviors such as tailgating (Conrad Moreno, G3),
speeding, swerving in another lane, playing
policeman (Conrad Moreno,G3), or
giving a middle finger.
Driving personality makeover plan is made by you and for you. You need to be aware
of your negative behaviors on the road before attempting to modify your negative behaviors.
Once you have a self-awareness of your character flaws, you then can design a strategy to
overcome or to control your negative emotions or behaviors.
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According to
Sherman
Lee (G3), negative behaviors hurt not only yourself but also the people you love. I think of
positive attitudes as Vitamin C to your health. They fight off pessimistic attitudes that ruin your
day or the way you look at life. Modifying your negative attitudes or behaviors is a way to
beautify the world you live in because you are more courteous and patient to everyone and soon
will create a domino effect that allows everyone to live in harmony. I agree with Robin Miller
(G3) when she said that you can't change other people's negative behaviors but you can
change your own.
I think everyone needs a driving personality makeover sometimes during his or her life
span. The earlier you start, the better person you will become and will experience less regret.
We
sometimes are not aware that we are hurting others. I often wish I could go back in time to
correct the mistakes I made. Everyone needs a start somewhere. You may think that you are
understanding or open-minded, but when you do this personality makeover you may discover
certain character flaws that you never thought are a part of
you.
Before reading about this personality makeover, I , like Robin Miller
(G3) , thought that a good driver is someone who obeys the laws and
drive defensively. So what constitutes a good driver? Because there
isn't a standard definition of a good driver, everyone seems to develop
his or her own personal definition. According to
Joleen Lai (G1), a good
driver is someone who always put his or her passengers well being into
consideration and abides by the laws and regulations. Shane
Akagi (G1)
defined a good driver as a person who takes responsibility for his/her
and others'safety. However, Kendall
Matsuyoshi (G1)feels that this
concept is too subjective,therefore, he does not have a definition of a
good driver. I think
being a good driver is also being a good person. You need to respect and
care for everyone's right and safety on the road.
Unfortunately, there are many reckless and uncaring people in
this world, so no matter how good of a driver you are, accidents do
happen. Sometimes it happens to someone you know or love. Everywhere
I look I see or hear about accidents hurting many lives because of
reckless or irresponsible people who think they can do whatever they
want. Dalybeth
Kadala (G3a) shared a tragic story about her uncle's
death by an intoxicated driver. Driving personality makeover improves
people. Thus, if more people do this makeover, the better society we
will have.
I would do this driving personality makeover, because I want to
know what part of me
needs improvement. Driving reflects and reveals our hidden inner-self that sometimes goes
unchecked. No one is perfect, but a good person will try to do something to change his/her
character flaws. I agree with
Laura Izutzu (G1) when she said
that you shouldn't wait for something bad to happen instead you can fix
your dangerous behavior to reduce the chance of having accidents.
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There are several ways to make the attempt. First, you need to be aware of what part of
your driving personality that needs to be corrected. Is it speeding,
swearing, tailgating, convoying, drinking, rushing or
impatience, etc.? Once you've narrowed down the reason why you did it, then
you can make
attempts to modify your behavior. Self-awareness can be difficult because pride or
bias may blind you from seeing the truth. Amy Lam
(G3) listed several ways to observe negative attitudes or behaviors. According to her,
recording your feelings on a tape recorder allows you to freely express your feelings at that
particular moment without anyone seeing the horrible side of you. It is just as effective as
having
a friend sitting on the passenger side taking notes of your behaviors. You also can write in your
journals once you arrived at your destination like Sharla Supret
(G2) did. Caroline
Balatico (G1) thinks a method of talking to
herself when the incident occurs and writing down when she reached
her destination is pretty accurate. Whatever methods you decide to
use is up to
you as long as it reflects your true self.
So you already know that the first step in this
attempt is observation of your behaviors
and attitudes while driving. Then you should have analysis of your behaviors and narrow down
the main variable. Next, you devise a plan to control the negative behaviors. According to Sherman Lee
(G3), there are three ways to control the negative behaviors. First is the classical
conditioning, which is associating negative behavior with painful experience like pinching
yourself. Second method is instrumental conditioning, which is not reinforcing your negative
behaviors. Third is cognitive behavioral, which is changing how we think about the negative
behaviors by cognitive restructuring. For example, Bryan
Yucoco
(G2) tried to put himself in other people's shoes and also imagined
an accident to deter him from tailgating.
Sheldon Tawata
(G2) gets rid of bad thoughts by listening to good music. For more
information on the procedures in carrying out the makeover plan,
you can check Christy
Forsyth (G3a)'s report.
There
are some
concepts in other areas of psychology that play crucial roles in driving
personality makeover attempts. Some examples of the affective concept in social psychology
are
altruism and morality vs. egotism and deficient, defensive driving and equality vs. aggressiveness
and opportunism, respect for regulations and self-control vs. disrespect for authority and deficient
self-control. There is also cognitive conflict in the way we think. And there is also the
sensorimotor involved in learning and conditioning theory. You can
find more related concepts with Ronel
Agarpao (G3a)'s report.
I feel that I have received a lot of information that I need to make my driving personality
makeover plan successful. I think every method is good if it is applicable to you. However, I
feel that there are some main ingredients that everyone needs to make it successful. Afterall, it
is
difficult to break a habit. Thus, you must have the desire to change, a commitment to stick to
your plan, and must care enough to change. Denise Tanaka (G2) finds it difficult to change because she didn't care. Caring for someone who makes you angry is difficult, but if you think about other people that you could be
hurting including yourself, then it should be easy to care.
I would expect some people to show resistance to a driving personality makeover attempt
because it is a difficult and frustrating task. It is easy to justify yourself
when someone cuts you off or drives to slow when you are rushing. We like to think that we are
right or "good drivers" and that the other person is at fault.
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I really had a difficult time using the online generational curriculum in traffic psychology.
I was a 100% computer dummy. I didn't know how to pull out information or access a certain
command. I was frustrated and lost. It wasn't a boring experience that's for sure. I think it is
challenging. I feel like I need to rush since I didn't have much time on the computer before
rushing to work. I feel like I didn't have time to make mistakes.
In order to make the curriculum easier to use, I think the future
generations need to get a uhunix account and learn some common
procedures on computer before entering the class, especially for
the Summer term. It saves time and everyone will start off on the
same level. It took about a week before I received my uhunix
account and my CSS account. It was horrible feeling waiting while
others are ahead.
One of the advantages of using online generational curriculum is that it is easier to
obtain information and get sources when you get the hang of it.
You can also learn more about computers so you are more prepared for this technological age.
You can read personal experiences of people that went through some problems that you probably
are going through, and you can email comments to them. On the
other hand, it can be a disadvantage when you don't have time like me and know nothing about
computers.
Grant Muranaka (G3a) mentioned some disadvantages which I
also encountered, especially the computer compatibility problem.
However, I think it
is a good source for learning about traffic psychology because it
is informative and personal. It is easy to link on to information.
Although it seems scary at first, I think it is better than the
traditional psychology courses that use textbooks and lectures.
I
think it is a good idea to have the generational curriculum. I was very surprised that it exists.
This approach to teaching is unique in that it interconnects every student's
work. I would like to see how far the generational curriculum goes.
I would define this approach to teaching as self-learned and self-modification because
everything you do is by yourself. You read, gather information, observe, and modified behaviors
all by yourself. It started in 1980 when Dr. James'
students
created self-witnessing lab reports on their driving behavior. They recorded their thoughts and
feelings on tape recoders while driving. These reports became very useful for students studying
other aspects of psychology such as personality and social psychology. Because of the amount
of
abuse and accident on the road, traffic psychology became popular and needed in hope of
reducing the abusive and hostile driving
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Based on what I have seen, I feel that this approach can work with high school
students. If there is computer programs made for school age children, then why shouldn't the
high
school students do it? If I can learn, then anybody can too. I
also think it is beneficial to high school students to learn about
traffic psychology since there are many reckless and drunk driving
accidents after high school graduation. If they learn to modify
their driving persona early, then this reduces their chances of
getting into an accident.
My prediction is that the generational curriculum will be
more widely used in a few years. With this technological expansion,
there will be less textbooks and
more CD-ROM's. Everything will be learned through the computer. Look
at the address or
commercial on TV and businesses, everyone is hooked up through the internet. My advice to
Dr.
James is that he should expect more people to do this approach.
Dr. James' Home Page
Email
Me
Back to the
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Dr. James'
Home Page
General Concepts
History
General Concepts
What is Driving
Personality Makeover?
What is a Good Driver?
Makeover Attempts
Related Areas of
Psychology
My
Opinion
My
Prediction