Can personality and attribution predict the elements of road rage among college students?

• Main Authors: Gotanco, Patrick M., Lafuente, Timothy J.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/18114
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study explored the relationship of personality and attribution to road rage elements. One hundred fourteen participants, ages 17 to 25 completed a battery of questionnaires for rage particularly for the road rage elements (i.e. level of anger, length of anger, extent of aggressive driving while angry, aggressiveness of response), personality, and attribution respectively. The online survey was designed to predict their responses to the situations and measure the notable variables afterwards. Participants were asked to recall an incident when road rage-like events occurred on the day itself. This enabled the respondents to rate their behaviors and emotions during the event, and their personal attributions for why the event occurred. The findings suggested that in terms of attribution, causality compared to stability and controllability had a different association with rage. Causality is one of the main variables under attribution that is sifnificantly associated to rage in a positive manner. Stability and controllability are both moving in an opposite direction since it was negatively significant. As for personality, extraversion was the only significant variable under personality that is associated to rage in the context of aggressive driving while the individual is angry. Consequently, it is improbable that the relationships between personality and responses to rage circumstances are completely facilitated by the process of attribution.