Determinants of Emotional Experiences in Traffic Situations ... - OPUS

80 Emotional States of Drivers and Their Impact on Driving Behaviour!
measure six subscales: “hostile gestures”, “illegal driving”, “police presence”, “slow driving”,
“discourtesy” and “traffic obstructions”. Trait anxiety was measured with a translated version of the
STAI (State Trait Anxiety Inventory; Spielberger, Jacobs, Russel & Crane, 1983), which consists of
20 Items measuring stable anxiety tendencies (e.g. ‘I lack self-confidence’, ‘I am content’).
Furthermore two items, specific to driving motivation (‘I really like to drive; ‘Driving is important to
me’) (Gregersen & Bjrurulf, 1996), age, gender, mileage (kilometres per year and total), years of
driving and experienced accidents (active and passive) were assessed as possible control variables for
the relationship between emotion and driving behaviour.
Driving behaviour was recorded in two phases after each of the four critical situations. Firstly,
for 500 metres after the event, the mean speed (km/h), acceleration (m/s 2 ) as well as the lateral
acceleration were analysed. During the next 2000m in the neutral zone, the set of driving parameters
was completed by the assessment of speeding behaviour in % of the track as a potential traffic
violation.
3.2.6 Procedure
At the beginning, all participants completed a questionnaire providing personal characteristics and
driving history. As an introduction to the graphical presentation of the virtual StiSim environment and
to get used to the handling of the steering and speed controls, three training scenarios were prefixed to
the actual driving task. Within this familiarization run, the subjects had to drive in a huge parking lot,
as well as a rural highway and an urban street. After the training, the participants were asked about
their subjective feeling concerning their driving behaviour and if they felt ready to start the test. They
were randomly assigned to one of the four scenario arrangements (goal blocking or goal promoting)
and started the experimental drive. In order to up the stakes and to create a motivational climate the
instruction demanded from the participants to imagine that they were late on their way to work and
had to hurry. Immediately after the drive the participants were asked about their emotions experienced.
In the end, questionnaires on driving related anger (DAS) and trait anxiety (STAI) were filled out.
3.3 Results
3.3.1 Occurrence of Reported Drivers’ Emotions
During the 30 minutes of the experimental drive the participants reported, on average, 8.4 emotions
(SD = 2.7). The focus of the analysis was laid on the anger and anxiety area of the Geneva Emotion
Wheel and due to the semantic similarity and frequent occurrence during the experiment the emotions
of contempt and fright were additionally analysed. The intensity of those four emotions was on a low
level out of to the potential range of 1 to 5. Only anger levels (M =1.67) were above 1.5, other
emotions were far less intense (Table 1). Although surprise and feeling helpless were comparatively
intense and frequent (Surprise: M =1.07; Freq. = 1.45; Feeling helpless: M =.43; Freq. = .72), they