Young Drivers‟ Attitudes

Attitudes function as heuristics that influence interpretations, explanations, reasoning and judgments of situations (Aronson, 2004), they are crucial for helping us to make sense of the world in which we live. In complex situations attitudes selectively interpret and perceive objects in order to aid comprehension. They are also important because they allow individuals‟ to express their feelings and personal evaluations towards target objects or events (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977).

Put simply, attitudes are likes and dislikes towards target objects or events. They are a collection of salient beliefs about the relationship between specific behaviours and outcomes and evaluations of these outcomes (Yagil, 2001). They are “complex” (Thurstone, 1928),

multi-faceted constructs that are created by combining an individual‟s opinions or beliefs regarding specific target objects with their evaluative judgments of them (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977; Crites, Fabrigar & Petty, 1994).

According to Allport (1935), attitudes are “mental and neural states of readiness”. They exert a “directive or dynamic influence upon individuals‘ responses to all objects and situations with which they are associated”. They are far more difficult to change than opinions (Aronson, 2004). This is because they are learnt, enduring feelings that are deeply rooted in the individual (McGuire, 1968).

Attitudes are composed of three independent, but also inter-related, components according to the Rosenberg & Hovland (1960) Tripartite Model (Figure 3.3; Arnold, Robertson & Cooper, 1991; Bernstein, Roy, Srull & Wickens, 1998; Crites et al., 1994; Eysenck, 1998; Marold, Kosaka & Larsen, 1994; Worchel & Shebilske, 1986). These components are: cognitive, affective and behavioural. The cognitive or belief component is concerned with how target objects are perceived by an individual, producing and storing statements that express their beliefs (for example, the cognitive component is where an individual evaluates how easy or difficult, adequate or efficient something is). The affective or evaluation component, places positive or negative meanings on these target objects or events (for example, this is an individuals‟ instinctual response about their likes and dislikes). Physiological responses also reflect these positive or negative evaluations. Finally, the behavioural or action component is concerned with observable behaviour towards target objects/events and beliefs about how others should act towards them (for example, this is an individuals‟ readiness or predisposition to behave in a certain way).

Figure 3.3 – The Components of the Tripartite Model of Attitudes (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960)

These components form attitudes, which according to Katz (1960) serve four functions namely knowledge, utilitarian (or instrumental), value-expressive and ego-defensive (Figure 3.4). They serve a knowledge function by helping people to try and understand the world in which they live. For example, they organise and construct information and provide frames of reference that guide information processing (Eysenck, 1998; Gross, 1992). Attitudes also serve a utilitarian or instrumental function by helping people to achieve goals, seek rewards and avoid punishment. For example, some individuals may publicly express attitudes which they do not believe in, to comply with other people and seek their approval (Eysenck, 1998; Gross, 1992).

Attitudes are also value-expressive because they are statements about who people are, and validate self-confidence. For example, a sense of personal integrity means that it is important for individuals‟ to maintain and demonstrate their core values and standards (Eysenck, 1998; Gross, 1992). Attitudes are also employed by people to protect themselves from admitting their own personal deficiencies and thus help them to deny their self-knowledge (Eysenck, 1998; Gross, 1992). Consequently, attitudes have an ego-defensive function.

Figure 3.4 – The Four Functions of Attitudes (Katz, 1960)

The „expectancy-value model‟ states that behaviour is a function of the expectancies held by individuals and the value they place on the goals they are working towards (Figure 3.5; Palmgreen 1984). It proposes that as new beliefs are being formed about objects and events, evaluative meanings also develop spontaneously without any conscious effort. These beliefs are also associated with attributes. The subjective value of these attributes along with the

strength of their associations help to determine overall attitudes. Ajzen (2001) states, however, that the cognitive processes involved in attitude formation may be misrepresented by assuming that belief and evaluation interact. The importance of assessing attribute evaluations independently of their link to attitude objects is therefore stressed by Ajzen (2001). This view is supported by Sjoeberg and Montgomery (1999) who proposed that beliefs and values might be independently related to attitudes (Double denial).

Figure 3.5 – The Expectancy Value Model (Palmgreen, 1984)

It has also been suggested in the „affective primacy hypothesis‟ that affective processes control evaluations, and that affect presides over cognition (Zajonc, 1980). This model proposes that the affective and cognitive systems are separate and are to some extent independent of each other even though both systems usually function together. The affective system, however, could start functioning without prior cognitive processing. For example, Winkielman, Zajonc and Schwarz (1997) found that affective priming was unaffected and independent of cognitive processes such as attributional judgements.

According to the multi-component view of attitudes, both cognition and affect contribute to attitude formation (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; van der Pligt, Zeelenberg, van Dijk, de Vries, & Richard, 1998). Verplanken, Hofstee and Janssen (1998) reported that affect and cognition differ in accessibility and that affect is far more easily accessible in memory than cognition. For example, when participants were given affective and cognitive judgments, Verplanken et al. (1998) found that they responded quicker to affective judgments. Experience with attitude objects influences the importance of affect and cognition (Simons & Carey, 1998). With increased experience, the importance of affect as a predictor of attitudes becomes greater.

Individuals are thought to differ in their tendency to base attitudes on cognition or affect (Haddock & Zanna, 2000, 1998). People whose attitudes can be predicted by their beliefs are

classified as “thinkers”, whereas those whose attitudes can be predicted from their feelings are known as “feelers” (Haddock & Zanna, 2000, 1998). It has been suggested, however, that some objects require attitudes to be formed by affect more than cognition whereas the opposite is true for other objects (Kempf, 1999).

Attitudes are related to personality and temperament, which are part of our genetic make-up. Studies have found that identical twins share more attitudes than fraternal twins even when they have been raised separately (Tesser, 1993). Therefore the evidence from such studies has led to the suggestion that attitudes could be genetic in origin. Worchel and Shebilske (1986) however disagree; they believe that there is plenty of evidence to show that humans are not born with attitudes, because people have attitudes for events and objects that they may never have encountered. Therefore, although some people view attitudes as being genetic, others believe that social influences and experience play a primary role in attitude formation.

Attitudes are based on cognitive, affective or behavioural experiences but some are based more on one experience than another (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 1999). This therefore suggests that attitudes are not created equally. For example, sometimes people base their attitudes purely on facts (cognitively based attitudes), and evaluate the positive and negatives of attitude objects so as to arrive at a decision about what attitudes to hold. On other occasions, attitudes may be based more on emotions and values (affectively based attitudes), so that individuals can express and validate their own basic value systems. Attitudes may also be based primarily on behaviour (behaviourally based attitudes), forming attitudes by observing how individuals behave towards attitude objects.

Worchel and Shebilske (1986) suggest that attitudes come from four main sources: parents, peers, personal experience and the media. Parents have a profound influence on their children and it has been found that many individual‟s beliefs reflect those of their parents. Parents influence their children by rewarding and punishing them for good or bad behaviour (a form of operant conditioning), but they also control what information reaches their children (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007; Worchel & Shebilske, 1986). Children often tend to believe that what their parents say is correct and accept this information without questioning it. This is why parents have a strong and lasting influence on their children. Attitudes formed during childhood and adolescence tend to persist throughout life as individuals will tend to only seek out new information that supports their original views and ignore conflicting information (Worchel & Shebilske, 1986). Peers are also influential when it comes to attitude formation. The threat of

being rejected by peers means that individuals will try to adopt attitudes and behave in ways that are consistent with their peers in order to gain group acceptance. Peers supply individuals with new information and ways of looking at things (Worchel & Shebilske, 1986).

Personal experience also affects how attitudes are formed. According to Olson and Zanna (1983), many of our strongly held attitudes, which are the most difficult to change result from having personal experience with attitude objects. For example, it is far easier to trust our own personal experiences and to over-generalise from them, than it is to get reliable information second or third-hand from other people that can be trusted.

The media are also very influential in forming and strengthening attitudes because frequently, they are the only source of information about events (Matzopoulos, Myers & Jobanputra, 2008; Shope, 2006). They are powerful mainly because of their ability to reach and influence a large number of people (Curran, 2002). Consequently, as with parental influence, people may believe that what the media says is the truth and accept the information and form attitudes without questioning it. Both advertising and entertainment media promote fast driving and performance driving rather than safe driving (Shope, 2006). For example, a large number of young people spend a considerable amount of time playing car racing games that encourage aggressive driving behaviour with the resultant effect that they practices these behaviours when they drive (Shope, 2006). Matzoupoulos et al. (2008) suggested that advertising policies should be introduced restraining harmful advertising encouraging behaviours such as speeding, environmental damage and macho driving behaviour. Shope (2006) suggested that enlisting help from the media to provide positive images of safe driving practices may be a successful method of preventing risky driving practices among young drivers but getting their cooperation would be a challenge.

Psychological researchers tend to categorise participant results according to age and gender in order to look at patterns in data sets. With regard to driver attitude research, such categorisation has consistently thrown up significant differences between participants. The main differences being, that males more than females report engaging in unsafe driving behaviours such as drink driving and speeding (Harré, Field & Kirkwood, 1996; Yagil, 1998). Also, young males are frequently selected as the most deviant driver subgroup because they perceive traffic laws to be of less importance compared to other laws and show lower levels of normative motivation to comply with them (Brown & Copeman, 1975; Yagil, 1998).

According to Lancaster and Ward (2002), it is drivers with inappropriate attitudes, rather than poor skills, who are more likely to crash. Consequently research has shown that people who have the wrong (less safe) attitudes towards driving violations such as speeding (e.g., finding speeding acceptable and/or are less considerate of other road users) are more likely to commit violating behaviour on the roads and/or have higher accident rates than drivers who are considered to have the right attitudes (Assum, 1997; Isler, Starkey, Charlton & Shepperd, 2008). West and Hall (1997) also found evidence to support this when they looked at drivers aged between 17 and 83 years showing that those who reported having more positive (high- risk) attitudes to driving violations, and higher levels of social deviance, drove faster and reported more accidents.

In 1975, Brown and Copeman looked at the attitudes of British motorists, aged between 18 and 55 years, towards 31 different forms of offensive driving behaviours. Their results showed that younger drivers and males viewed driving offences less seriously. Studies by Parker, Manstead, Stradling, Reason and Baxter (1992a) and Yagil (1998), found that these two driver sub-groups (younger drivers and males) expect less negative outcomes from committing traffic violations and perceive a gain in social approval from performing such actions. They also report having little control over their own driving behaviour (Parker et al., 1992a; Yagil, 1998). Women however, have been found to evaluate the content of traffic laws far more positively and seriously than males and express a stronger sense of obligation to comply with them (Yagil, 1998; Moyano-Diaz, 1997). Generally, compared to men, a larger percentage of women have the right attitude to road safety (Assum, 1997).

Research has shown that attitudes are related to risky driving behaviour. This pattern occurs in drivers of all ages, where undesirable attitudes predict involvement in risky behaviours on the roads. Among a randomly selected group of Norwegian drivers (with an average age of 45 years) their attitudes towards traffic safety issues predicted their involvement in risky behaviour (violation of traffic rules and speeding, reckless driving or fun-riding, not using seat belts, drinking and driving and attentiveness towards children in traffic) and accidents 12 months later (Iversen, 2004). Iversen‟s (2004) results showed that individuals who showed positive (high-risk) attitudes towards rule violations and speeding in the first survey, reported engaging in riskier driving behaviours and greater accident involvement in the second survey.