Bumper stickers linked to road rage?!

[thewayne]

Huh. The concept is that you're in a personal space when you're out driving, and that you can't help but see the bumper stickers of the car in front of you, and that constitutes an invasion of your personal space. Interesting concept.

I was in a bit of a hurry when I initially read the article and misinterpreted it.

Basically, they're saying that road rage is an expression of terretorialism and that the people with more personalized cars are more likely to get nasty. From the article, "People who had a larger number of personalized items on or in their car were 16% more likely to engage in road rage, the researchers report in the journal Applied Social Psychology."

When I worked for the police department, I walked into the building through the ramp down to the basement through the crime lab. There was a road rage incident in which two cars were shooting at each other, an uninvolved car was struck by multiple bullets and the driver was killed. That car sat in the basement for several days and I Walked past it for as long as it was there, bullet holes, blood, everything.

Sobers you up a bit on many subjects.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080613/full/news.2008.889.html

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/17/0148238

Comments

[silveradept]

I like it the way you've summarized it, but I think the article is saying that the people who stick the stickers on are more prone to the road rage, probably because they see other people's behavior as invasive or disrespectful to their personal space, forgetting that it's a public road, and everyone's trying to get from A to B themselves.

[vaudy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read it as the more you personalize your own car, the more likely you are to exhibit aggressive driving behavior (because it means you see your car as a personal space and act more territorial), not that seeing stickers on other cars triggered aggressive behavior.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

My bad. I skimmed it, in a bit of a hurry when I posted it, and misinterpreted it.

Mea culpa. I'll correct it.