8 ms·

Why do so many bad drivers have luxury cars? A new study blames disagreeable men

25 points by wisemang 7y ago

croissants 7y ago
The actual abstract [1] is much more informative: > In a representative sample of Finnish car owners (N = 1892) we connected the Five‐Factor Model personality dimensions to driving a high‐status car. Regardless of whether income was included in the logistic model, disagreeable men and conscientious people in general were particularly likely to drive high‐status cars. The results regarding agreeableness are consistent with prior work that has argued for the role of narcissism in status consumption. Regarding conscientiousness, the results can be interpreted from the perspective of self‐congruity theory, according to which consumers purchase brands that best reflect their actual or ideal personalities. An important implication is that the association between driving a high‐status car and unethical driving behaviour may not, as is commonly argued, be due to the corruptive effects of wealth. Rather, certain personality traits, such as low agreeableness, may be associated with both unethical driving behaviour and with driving a high‐status car. There is also this...interesting sentence in the paper's discussion section: > The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31797376 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31797376
- thrower123 7y ago
  Now I am curious if this generalizes outside of Finland, or is just another of those things that serves as a marker in Nordic countries, but perhaps not in southern European ones, the Americas, or elsewhere.
- beerandt 7y ago
  >> The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars.
kleer001 7y ago
I'd buy that. Disagreeable people tend to get what they want more often. The most disagreeable people tend to be men. Also luxury car drivers tend to be worse drivers just by driving those cars alone. https://clark.com/cars/study-expensive-cars-road-manners/ https://clark.com/cars/study-expensive-cars-road-manners/
- kazinator 7y ago
  Disagreeable people get what they want in the short term, but they hamper themselves in the long run. When you're disagreeable, people will tend give you what you want to get you out of their hair, but in parallel to that, their minds begin forming ideas about how to avoid or minimize future interactions with you. And that's going to have the effect of you not getting what you want from those people any more; you will have find new people to get what you want. People also talk: if you're disagreeable to someone, that will not remain a secret that is just between you and then. They will likely be sharing their experience with others, which will warn those others about interacting with you. So, if we take that into account, being disagreeable no longer seems like a clear-cut optimization of getting what you want as a long-term strategy. Thus, although the "squeaky wheel gets a greasing", we also have it that "you catch more flies with honey".
  - piptastic 7y ago
    I don't think this is necessarily true. I've seen plenty of disagreeable people making it much further than their "nicer" counterparts over a longer period of time. In business, politics, etc.
    - swat535 7y ago
      That's because they usually have money, connections and resources. A homeless disagreeable person isn't going anywhere in life. Disagreeable only works when you have leverage.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
rhacker 7y ago
> less empathy, they are more disagreeable, and they are more willing to fight In other words, it's a period of high job growth. I've noticed this in my dad and many men - when they have a job, they are like this. Women have it too, but there is less ego driving the entirety of their personality.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  maybe it's a time of high job stress, I know when I'm stressed or going through a miserable time (and I mean exceptionally stressing, exceptionally miserable) I have less empathy - especially for anyone making time even a tiny bit less easy than it could be because I am already going through a lot - I am less agreeable because I am miserable tired and pissed off about the stuff I'm going through, and I want to punch the first person who gets in my face.
strict9 7y ago
Finally, a study to explain something most people know-- drivers of BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road. This bad and unsafe behavior by these drivers is usually more pronounced toward a pedestrian or cyclist.
- anchpop 7y ago
  > BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers. I normally associate aggressive driving (and not signalling) with really big, high above the ground cars and trucks.
  - forgottenpass 7y ago
    >I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers. Really? Tesla drivers are like 2% tech enthusiasts and 90% the kind of people seeking the latest and greatest flashy car.
    - nickthegreek 7y ago
      In Ohio I find Tesla's to be some of the slowest drivers. I am constantly on their ass on the on ramps. It infuriates me cause I know they could accelerate faster than everyone else around them.
      - lostlogin 7y ago
        What sort of car do you drive?
        bluGill 7y ago
        The cheapest worn out beater I could find. I can get up to freeway speed, but I need my foot all the way to the floor for the entire on ramp. When sports cars (always sports cars) with great acceleration don't accelerate until the very end they make it so I'm the one trying to merge at 30 mph (50km/h). My car isn't my status symbol. My bank account is enough that I don't worry about downturns too much and I'll be able to retire to a nice life in the future (assuming civilization doesn't collapse)
totalZero 7y ago
As a society, we should stop whining about competitive people and learn how to either (a) deal with them or (b) beat them fair and square.
- danharaj 7y ago
  Do you feel called out or something?
- sidlls 7y ago
  One way to “deal with them” is harsh penalties for their bad behavior.
  - totalZero 7y ago
    You can't harshly penalize people for simply being disagreeable, and we already have traffic laws. Many academic papers have been written on correlations between old age and bad driving. Yet when The Star writes about those papers, it chooses to blame the "transportation gap." https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/24/transportation-gaps-keep-seniors-driving-too-long-study.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/24/transportation-g... The root article of this thread is just a bunch of virtue signaling nonsense that falls under the umbrella of a cultural attack on men.
- smt88 7y ago
  "Competitive people" is a bizarre description of the article's subjects: people who drive dangerously, break safety laws, and sometimes cause other people to die.
  - totalZero 7y ago
    The article's subject is a comparison between "bad drivers" and "disagreeable men." Don't be disingenuous.
paulgb 7y ago
I only read the Star piece, not the study, but I'm surprised there's no mention of the theory that men who can afford nice cars are less likely to find a ticket economically meaningful. (This doesn't explain the gender gap, I admit)
- ahoy 7y ago
  I imagine wage disparity b/t men and women is part of it: I'd bet more men drive luxury cars than women b/c more men than women are paid enough to afford them.
_bxg1 7y ago
One benefit of driving a piece of junk is that when one of these people is riding your bumper, you can tap your brakes without fear because they have much more to lose than you do.
- vsareto 7y ago
  Naturally if they have a dashcam (which they can afford to), they then have evidence you're brake checking them
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I do it out of prudence. The routes I take going to-and-from work often require sudden stops as you hit traffic bottlenecks. I'd rather force them to back up now while I have room to avoid an actual collision, than be rear-ended later when I have to brake.
  - anchpop 7y ago
    How could they prove you were break checking? It seems like it would be easy to lie and say you thought you saw something running across the road and hit the brakes just in case it was a kid or something. Plus tailgating is also illegal, which their dashcam footage would prove
    - vsareto 7y ago
      Which means both of you would get a ticket/citation/fine/etc instead of just one of you. Brake checking was a popular thing to do in my state before dashcams were so popular and affordable (assumes the person behind is at fault, but brake checking is also illegal). Someone with money is clearly able to afford dashcams, hence, don't brake check rich people thinking "they have more to lose than I do" because you just think it's only your car that's at stake.
  - stewartm 7y ago
    In the UK in general, you run into the back of someone, it is your fault in the eyes of the insurers. If you hit someone due to them brake checking, you were driving too close.
minikites 7y ago
Rich people are more likely to literally take candy from a baby: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-rich-more-likely-to-take-candy-from-babies/2011/08/25/gIQAXE0beR_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-r... Being rich is directly correlated with a loss of empathy, so this study is no surprise.
pid_0 7y ago
Why just men though? Anyone can be disagreeable and plenty of people who drive nice cars are not men. Can't tell you how many non-male tesla and BMW drivers cut me off without a signal.
seattle_spring 7y ago
Anecdote incoming: In South Seattle, it definitely isn't just "white men in fancy cars" that are doing the most dangerous of driving. My guess is that the higher the loan value is when compared to the driver's income, the worse the driver will be. Ex: $20k/yr guy driving $45k loan V8 Mustang would be a much worse driver than $100k/yr guy who owns his BMW outright. Side-note: I do not drive a luxury car, for those about to presume.
gnicholas 7y ago
...in Finland. It would be interesting to know how car-buying behaviors (and brand popularity) differ across countries and cultures. Might be the same all over the world, or it could be very different. But why wait to find out, when you can put up an overbroad headline and get lots of clicks now?
JackFr 7y ago
> The link between conscientious personality traits and interest in high-status cars was found among both men and women. In contrast, the connection between self-centred personality traits and high-status cars was only found among men, not women. Lönnqvist has no clear answer as to why this is the case. Here's an idea -- because it's all p-hacked nonsense. The abstract leaves out 1) how this population of 1892 was acquired. 2) what the definition of a high status car is -- is it equivalent to the cost or is it an arbitrary split on make/model? 3) the actual statistical tests and their results. While we see N at 1892, what were the sub-populations. Presumably N[high_status] is low relative to N, which would go along way to explaining the high 'conscientious' result -- that they are both meaningless statistical artifacts. > The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman This is bad work.
NoblePublius 7y ago
It’s not news that disagreeableness correlates with success and income.
aphistic 7y ago
I guess disagreeable is one way to say "entitled".

25 points by wisemang 7y ago

The actual abstract [1] is much more informative: > In a representative sample of Finnish car owners (N = 1892) we connected the Five‐Factor Model personality dimensions to driving a high‐status car. Regardless of whether income was included in the logistic model, disagreeable men and conscientious people in general were particularly likely to drive high‐status cars. The results regarding agreeableness are consistent with prior work that has argued for the role of narcissism in status consumption. Regarding conscientiousness, the results can be interpreted from the perspective of self‐congruity theory, according to which consumers purchase brands that best reflect their actual or ideal personalities. An important implication is that the association between driving a high‐status car and unethical driving behaviour may not, as is commonly argued, be due to the corruptive effects of wealth. Rather, certain personality traits, such as low agreeableness, may be associated with both unethical driving behaviour and with driving a high‐status car. There is also this...interesting sentence in the paper's discussion section: > The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31797376 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31797376

thrower123 7y ago
Now I am curious if this generalizes outside of Finland, or is just another of those things that serves as a marker in Nordic countries, but perhaps not in southern European ones, the Americas, or elsewhere.
beerandt 7y ago
>> The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars.

kleer001 7y ago

I'd buy that. Disagreeable people tend to get what they want more often. The most disagreeable people tend to be men. Also luxury car drivers tend to be worse drivers just by driving those cars alone. https://clark.com/cars/study-expensive-cars-road-manners/ https://clark.com/cars/study-expensive-cars-road-manners/

kazinator 7y ago
Disagreeable people get what they want in the short term, but they hamper themselves in the long run. When you're disagreeable, people will tend give you what you want to get you out of their hair, but in parallel to that, their minds begin forming ideas about how to avoid or minimize future interactions with you. And that's going to have the effect of you not getting what you want from those people any more; you will have find new people to get what you want. People also talk: if you're disagreeable to someone, that will not remain a secret that is just between you and then. They will likely be sharing their experience with others, which will warn those others about interacting with you. So, if we take that into account, being disagreeable no longer seems like a clear-cut optimization of getting what you want as a long-term strategy. Thus, although the "squeaky wheel gets a greasing", we also have it that "you catch more flies with honey".
- piptastic 7y ago
  I don't think this is necessarily true. I've seen plenty of disagreeable people making it much further than their "nicer" counterparts over a longer period of time. In business, politics, etc.
  - swat535 7y ago
    That's because they usually have money, connections and resources. A homeless disagreeable person isn't going anywhere in life. Disagreeable only works when you have leverage.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

rhacker 7y ago

> less empathy, they are more disagreeable, and they are more willing to fight In other words, it's a period of high job growth. I've noticed this in my dad and many men - when they have a job, they are like this. Women have it too, but there is less ego driving the entirety of their personality.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago
maybe it's a time of high job stress, I know when I'm stressed or going through a miserable time (and I mean exceptionally stressing, exceptionally miserable) I have less empathy - especially for anyone making time even a tiny bit less easy than it could be because I am already going through a lot - I am less agreeable because I am miserable tired and pissed off about the stuff I'm going through, and I want to punch the first person who gets in my face.

strict9 7y ago

Finally, a study to explain something most people know-- drivers of BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road. This bad and unsafe behavior by these drivers is usually more pronounced toward a pedestrian or cyclist.

anchpop 7y ago
> BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers. I normally associate aggressive driving (and not signalling) with really big, high above the ground cars and trucks.
- forgottenpass 7y ago
  >I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers. Really? Tesla drivers are like 2% tech enthusiasts and 90% the kind of people seeking the latest and greatest flashy car.
  - nickthegreek 7y ago
    In Ohio I find Tesla's to be some of the slowest drivers. I am constantly on their ass on the on ramps. It infuriates me cause I know they could accelerate faster than everyone else around them.
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      What sort of car do you drive?
      - bluGill 7y ago
        The cheapest worn out beater I could find. I can get up to freeway speed, but I need my foot all the way to the floor for the entire on ramp. When sports cars (always sports cars) with great acceleration don't accelerate until the very end they make it so I'm the one trying to merge at 30 mph (50km/h). My car isn't my status symbol. My bank account is enough that I don't worry about downturns too much and I'll be able to retire to a nice life in the future (assuming civilization doesn't collapse)

totalZero 7y ago

As a society, we should stop whining about competitive people and learn how to either (a) deal with them or (b) beat them fair and square.

danharaj 7y ago
Do you feel called out or something?
sidlls 7y ago
One way to “deal with them” is harsh penalties for their bad behavior.
- totalZero 7y ago
  You can't harshly penalize people for simply being disagreeable, and we already have traffic laws. Many academic papers have been written on correlations between old age and bad driving. Yet when The Star writes about those papers, it chooses to blame the "transportation gap." https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/24/transportation-gaps-keep-seniors-driving-too-long-study.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/24/transportation-g... The root article of this thread is just a bunch of virtue signaling nonsense that falls under the umbrella of a cultural attack on men.
smt88 7y ago
"Competitive people" is a bizarre description of the article's subjects: people who drive dangerously, break safety laws, and sometimes cause other people to die.
- totalZero 7y ago
  The article's subject is a comparison between "bad drivers" and "disagreeable men." Don't be disingenuous.

paulgb 7y ago

I only read the Star piece, not the study, but I'm surprised there's no mention of the theory that men who can afford nice cars are less likely to find a ticket economically meaningful. (This doesn't explain the gender gap, I admit)

ahoy 7y ago
I imagine wage disparity b/t men and women is part of it: I'd bet more men drive luxury cars than women b/c more men than women are paid enough to afford them.

_bxg1 7y ago

One benefit of driving a piece of junk is that when one of these people is riding your bumper, you can tap your brakes without fear because they have much more to lose than you do.

vsareto 7y ago
Naturally if they have a dashcam (which they can afford to), they then have evidence you're brake checking them
- _bxg1 7y ago
  I do it out of prudence. The routes I take going to-and-from work often require sudden stops as you hit traffic bottlenecks. I'd rather force them to back up now while I have room to avoid an actual collision, than be rear-ended later when I have to brake.
- anchpop 7y ago
  How could they prove you were break checking? It seems like it would be easy to lie and say you thought you saw something running across the road and hit the brakes just in case it was a kid or something. Plus tailgating is also illegal, which their dashcam footage would prove
  - vsareto 7y ago
    Which means both of you would get a ticket/citation/fine/etc instead of just one of you. Brake checking was a popular thing to do in my state before dashcams were so popular and affordable (assumes the person behind is at fault, but brake checking is also illegal). Someone with money is clearly able to afford dashcams, hence, don't brake check rich people thinking "they have more to lose than I do" because you just think it's only your car that's at stake.
- stewartm 7y ago
  In the UK in general, you run into the back of someone, it is your fault in the eyes of the insurers. If you hit someone due to them brake checking, you were driving too close.

minikites 7y ago

Rich people are more likely to literally take candy from a baby: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-rich-more-likely-to-take-candy-from-babies/2011/08/25/gIQAXE0beR_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-r... Being rich is directly correlated with a loss of empathy, so this study is no surprise.

pid_0 7y ago

Why just men though? Anyone can be disagreeable and plenty of people who drive nice cars are not men. Can't tell you how many non-male tesla and BMW drivers cut me off without a signal.

seattle_spring 7y ago

Anecdote incoming: In South Seattle, it definitely isn't just "white men in fancy cars" that are doing the most dangerous of driving. My guess is that the higher the loan value is when compared to the driver's income, the worse the driver will be. Ex: $20k/yr guy driving $45k loan V8 Mustang would be a much worse driver than $100k/yr guy who owns his BMW outright. Side-note: I do not drive a luxury car, for those about to presume.

gnicholas 7y ago

...in Finland. It would be interesting to know how car-buying behaviors (and brand popularity) differ across countries and cultures. Might be the same all over the world, or it could be very different. But why wait to find out, when you can put up an overbroad headline and get lots of clicks now?

JackFr 7y ago

> The link between conscientious personality traits and interest in high-status cars was found among both men and women. In contrast, the connection between self-centred personality traits and high-status cars was only found among men, not women. Lönnqvist has no clear answer as to why this is the case. Here's an idea -- because it's all p-hacked nonsense. The abstract leaves out 1) how this population of 1892 was acquired. 2) what the definition of a high status car is -- is it equivalent to the cost or is it an arbitrary split on make/model? 3) the actual statistical tests and their results. While we see N at 1892, what were the sub-populations. Presumably N[high_status] is low relative to N, which would go along way to explaining the high 'conscientious' result -- that they are both meaningless statistical artifacts. > The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman This is bad work.

NoblePublius 7y ago

It’s not news that disagreeableness correlates with success and income.

aphistic 7y ago

I guess disagreeable is one way to say "entitled".