The relation between personality traits and aggressive driving

Authors: Felicia Aurica, HAIDU, Elena LOSÎI, Claudia VLAICU

Aggressive driving is not only the result of simple lapses and errors while driving. The main goal of this study was to determine the ways in which personality traits was related to aggressive behaviour during driving; the research tools represented by DECAS inventory used to find out if there are correlations between personality traits and types of driving. In our analyses, we selected participants betwen 20 and 55 years of old and their driving experience; gender was not a significant factor and as such was not controlled for in the analyses. Regression analyses showed that the data fit well with our theoretical model. The relationship between openness and aggressive driving is mediated by the driver’s anger, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness had both a direct and indirect relations with aggressive driving.
Our research study accounts for a relatively high percentage of the aggressive driving variance, suggesting the usefulness of assessing global personality traits for the prediction of aggressive driving.