Anger in the car -- An examination of the role of perspective-taking in the anger response while driving

"Road rage" is a potentially dangerous phenomenon that has broad ranging personal and societal impacts and continues to be the subject of media attention, public concern, and academic research (Fumento, 1998; Galovski, Malta & Blanchard, 2006). Due to the isolative nature of automobiles, normal verbal communication between individual drivers is not possible, thus impeding interpersonal negotiations that off the road tend to promote mutual understanding and successful outcomes when there is conflict. In the absence of these negotiations, drivers are left to interpret and react to the offensive actions of other drivers, a process that under certain conditions has been shown to correlate with increased frequencies of driving anger, a precursor to driving aggression and other dangerous outcomes of road rage. Findings that support a relationship between trait cognitive styles and driving anger may have implications for helping drivers to better manage their anger behind the wheel and thus reduce opportunities for aggression and violence on the roadways.;The present study examined the relationships between trait driving anger and two cognitive constructs, each correlated in the literature to levels of anger and aggression. It was hypothesized that a negative relationship between social perspective-taking as measured by the PT scale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis, 1980) and trait driving anger measured by the Driving Anger Scale (J. L. Deffenbacher et al., 1994) would be demonstrated. Indeed, it was shown that higher levels of social perspective-taking were correlated with lower levels of trait driving anger, and conversely, lower levels of perspective taking correlated with higher levels of trait driving anger.;The present study also hypothesized that participants whose attribution style was biased towards dispositional attributions would measure higher in trait driving anger, and those with a more situational attribution style would measure lower in trait driving anger. Driving vignettes were used to measure attributional bias. Evidence was found to support the correlations as hypothesized.;A discussion of limitations of the study and suggestions for future research as well as implications of these findings for clinical work are detailed. In particular the potential for these findings to shape driving anger prevention efforts is discussed.