Social status and aggression: A Field Study Analyzed by Survival Analysis

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted in Germany to explore whether driver characteristics and the social status of cars are related to an aggressive response. Drivers waiting at a traffic light (N = 57) were blocked by an experimental car. The amount of time that elapsed until the drivers responded by honking their horns or beaming their headlights was recorded, and bivariate and multivariate methods of survival analysis were used to analyze the data. The status of the blocked cars was positively correlated to tendency toward an aggressive response.