Car Color and Road Rage

Researcher

Kaitlyn Moorhead

moorhkai000@stu.sumnersd.org

The Gap

The gap within this research is that a car’s color, specifically being silver, red, and blue, as well as whether a car is a truck, sedan, or SUV, has not yet been applied to the degree to which road rage is felt toward other drivers. The psychology behind colors and how they impact human emotion and development has been researched, but has not yet been applied to the concept of driving and the way we act toward certain cars out of anger, or how those cars influence our anger. Road rage has also been commonly researched, but has very narrowly been applied to a car’s color, with the only instances being red or silver, and still those studies have not furthered the possibility of what their findings could mean within the driving population. With my research, I intend on identifying these gaps and making further initiatives to better the efficiency of the driving society, with the first step being to combine all of these missing pieces of separate studies into one study that ultimately identifies all of these gaps, and paves the way for future experimentation that can benefit the driving society.

Problem Statement

The impact of a car’s color on the psychological experience of road rage within 20-35 year olds in King County.

Research Question

There is a growing problem with road rage and aggressiveness on the road. Despite very clear rules that are to be followed on the road, as well as required driver’s tests to get a driver’s license, a multitude of car accidents continue to occur, as there are 5.25 million accidents per year in the United States alone. This problem has negatively impacted virtually every driver, because of the negative atmosphere that surrounds the driving population, filled with impatience and annoyance, as well as the large possibility of getting into an accident with the fact that thousands of people are killed in accidents, causing grief and suffering to those close to them, as well as a general sense of worry and anxiety that centers around the road. A possible cause of the road rage that leads to these frequent accidents can be the type of car a person drives, the three most common models being Truck, Sedan, or SUV, as well as the kind of color of those cars, comparing a neutral color, like silver, to two complementary bright colors: bright red, and bright blue. Perhaps a study that investigates the associations of car type and color to the kind of person who drives that car and how safe of a driver people view them as, and how those stereotypes and associations impact road rage, by a survey that asks specific questions regarding a group of 20-35 year old drivers’ viewpoint on how safe they feel towards and other feelings around the three types of car (truck, sedan, and SUV), comparing the silver version of these three cars to two complementary colors, red and blue, could find general biases that feed the uptight atmosphere on the road could find a remedy this situation, being how to work around and cope with these biases.

Definitions

Road Rage

“Aggressive or confrontational behavior while driving, typically triggered by an actual or imagined transgression by another driver. Often associated with traffic congestion, road rage varies in severity and can involve hostile verbal expression, hazardous driving, and interpersonal violence.” (American Psychological Association).

Anger

“An emotion characterized by tension and hostility arising from frustration, real or imagined injury by another, or perceived injustice... [also] a significant activator of aggression, which is behavior intended to harm someone or something” (American Psychological Association).

Safety

The act of being protected from or searching for protection from danger, risks, or hazards.

Significance

The main form of transportation, especially in the United States, is driving on the road. Even though a vast majority of the population drives, car accidents are extremely common, and make driving quite dangerous. One of the major causes of car accidents is most often road rage, which can be defined as “aggressive or confrontational behavior while driving, typically triggered by an actual or imagined transgression by another driver. Often associated with traffic congestion, road rage varies in severity and can involve hostile verbal expression, hazardous driving, and interpersonal violence” according to the American Psychological Association. Due to the anger around certain cars or drivers, mostly out of impatience or annoyance, that anger causes people to perform these stated acts of aggression, which can range from hand signals to purposely driving in aggressive and dangerous manners in order to “get revenge” on the other driver. When people do this, it creates an atmosphere of frustration on the road, and leaves little allowance for patience or understanding while driving, causing our minds to go straight to anger and aggression when something, even minor, occurs on the road. With this being such a common experience, and one that continuously and strongly negatively impacts daily drivers, it is only feasible to investigate a new and potential contributing factor to the growing problem in order to ultimately understand a way around these emotions that surround the driving experience, in order to ultimately find a possible solution to this growing problem, and to make roads safer and less accident-prone.

Hypothesis & Initial Assumptions

Hypothesis

There will be a strong positive correlation between car color and type to road experiences that result in road rage, and the red truck will have the strongest positive correlation.

Biases

Slight bias towards trucks, as it is very common in the media and in my personal life to have unpleasant experiences with trucks on the road or to feel unsafe when driving around them.

Method of Inquiry

Correlational Research

I will be using surveys of human subjects that measure the degree of safety as well as anger that participants feel towards presented photos of trucks, sedans, and SUVs in the colors red, blue, and silver when given a road-related scenario, to which the participants will answer and document their feelings with a scale numbered 1-10, where a 1 represents complete safety and no emotional response, and a 10 represents extreme feelings of unsafety, danger, and/or anger. The numbers in between would additionally be labeled with a specific feeling as well in order to prevent misinterpretation of the numbers’ meaning. 1 is complete safety, and even happiness (they enjoy the appearance of the car), 2 would be safe and no anger, 3 would be unbothered, 4 would be very slight feelings of dislike/unsafety, 5 would be moderate safety and moderate anger (average), where they see themselves getting annoyed or impatient with this car as they would with any other car, 6 would be discomfort in both areas (safety and anger), 7 would be quite unsafe or angry, 8 would be severe anger and discomfort , 9 would be very severe unsafety and anger, and 10 would be extremely severe unsafety and fury. The entire survey would consist of these multiple-choice questions that follow a scenario and pictures of the 9 types of cars (SUV, truck, and sedan in blue, red, and silver), and there will be a picture of the 1-10 scale with labels. After the administration period, for all 30 questions, the number of responses for each rating that each car variation received was tallied up, and after that, the average ratings for each color and type of car based on the number of responses were found by adding up these scores and dividing by three, as there were three types of cars and three colors of cars. Then, after these numbers were found, the averages were placed on a line graph, to which this graph consisted of a key that represented each variation of car represented in the graph, an x-axis labeled Rating that ranged from 1-10 based off of the likert scale ratings, and a y-axis labeled Total number of responses that ranged from 0-60. Based on the direction and intensity of the line, and the correlation coefficient of each data set, a positive, negative, or zero correlation was determined.

Qualitative and Quantitative

The data will be based off of numbers and the answer choices will be 1-10, meaning that the collection and representation of data will be quantitative, but the questions that I will be asking participants on the survey will be very textual and situational, and the participants’ answer will be up to their own interpretation

Results

After a three-week survey administration period, a total of six responses were received. Based on the method of data crunching presented in the method, the truck was the only car model to have a very small positive relationship, as it had a correlation coefficient of 0.0767, while the sedan had an r value of -0.06072, and the SUV had an r value of -0.07177. Silver cars possessed a correlation coefficient (r) value of -0.06127, which signified a very small negative relationship. Red cars faced slightly higher levels of extreme road rage feelings from participants, but the actual r value of red cars was -0.001702, which also signified a very small negative correlation. Blue cars received no significant data compared to the other two colors, and possessed an r value of -0.02892.

Conclusion

With the number of responses received during data collection, the results of this study did not defend the initial hypothesis, ultimately refuting said hypothesis. If this study were able to obtain at least the minimum number of responses needed in order to make the results generalizable for the survey population, I believe that could make a significant difference in the correlation between car color and road rage, as with more responses comes more valuable opinions of daily drivers. With the minuscule amount of responses also comes the fact that the data is not significant enough in order to make a strong suggestion, nor is it generalizable for the population surveyed.

Implications

Though the findings of this study are insignificant, future replication of this could provide information to car manufacturers and advertising companies that could ultimately allow the production of cars that elicit less negative reactions from surrounding drivers and more positive reactions, which could be used as a marketing point that not only makes the road a more safe and less anxiety-ridden environment for everyday drivers, but also increases profit margins for car companies.

Next Steps

Since the results of this study were insignificant, if this research were to be replicated in the future, an experimental design would most heavily be recommended due to its ability to find the true cause-and-effect relationship between car color and road rage. Future, more extensive, and wide-scale research could elicit findings that could coincide with the field of car manufacturing and advertising.

Key Sources

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Apa dictionary of psychology. American Psychological Association. Retrieved November 18, 2021, from https://dictionary.apa.org/
American Psychological Association. (2002, May 5). In living color: We remember scenes better when they're in color than in black and white [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releas es/2002/05/in-color
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Elliot, A. J., Fairchild, M. D., & Franklin, A. (2015). Handbook of Color Psychology (2015th ed.). Cambridge University Press
Li, S., Zhang, T., Sawyer, B. D., Zhang, W., & Hancock, P. A. (2019). Angry drivers take risky decisions: Evidence from neurophysiological assessment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(10) 1701. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph161017 01
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