Citation

Del Valle CHC. Transp. Res. F Traffic Psychol. Behav. 2019; 65: 598-609.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.trf.2018.04.018

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim was to analyse the extent to which optimistic offender drivers differ from dispositional pessimists in their prefactual thoughts generated under different conditions of induced control. Three hundred and sixty-one drivers from the Spanish cities of Salamanca and Valencia took part on a voluntary basis. One hundred and sixty-five of them were offender drivers attending intervention, awareness and rehabilitation courses for recouping the points deducted from their licences. One hundred and ninety-six drivers were attending courses for advanced professional driving licences or similar. The participants followed a route in a driving simulator. At the training stage, we adjusted the task's difficulty to induce a high or low perception of control. Based on the outcome obtained in this stage, the participants had to report the resources they required for improving their outcomes. We used different factor ANOVAS to analyse our results. In low control driving conditions, optimistic offender drivers thought they might drive better if external factors favoured them, and they gave less importance to internal factors. In the same conditions, pessimistic offender drivers think that both external and internal factors would improve their driving. In high control driving conditions, pessimistic offender drivers record the biggest differences; they might drive better if internal factors favoured them, and they also reported external factors to a lesser extent. We may contend that optimistic offender drivers think they are more likely to achieve the outcomes they want than the outcomes they do not, regardless of the driving conditions, and they think they are more skilful than their peers.

Language: en

Keywords

Offender drivers; Optimism; Pessimism; Prefactual thinking; Road safety