Trait Driving Anger and History of Aggressive Driving: The Moderating Role of Social Dominance Orientation

Social Dominance theory has proposed that society establishes a set of ideologies to minimize group conflict. These ideologies, however, tend to promote inequality (Pratto et al., 1994). Social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994) reflects attitudes toward a person’s in-group and out-group. Those that are high in SDO believe that their in-group should be dominant toward other out-group members. Previous unpublished research suggests that attitudes toward social dominance predict reported aggressive driving behaviors; in addition, it is suggested that the mechanism driving this relationship is trait driving anger (which are significantly associated with both SDO and aggressive driving scores). For the current study, approximately 75 participants will be surveyed through Amazon Mechanical TURK. Each participant will complete a variety of measures, including the Driving Anger Scale (Deffenbacher et al., 1994), a driving survey that measures past history of aggressive driving behavior (adapted from Deffenbacher et al., 2000), and a measure of social dominance orientation (Pratto et al., 1994). We hypothesize social dominance will moderate the relationship between trait driving anger and history of aggressive driving behavior, such that the relationship between anger and aggressive behavior will strengthen with higher levels of social dominance. Data collection is currently underway