Find out the personality of people from the sound of the car
Most of us have experienced the sudden, deafening sound of a car shifting, shattering our peace of mind into a million pieces as it speeds past.
If you live in a neighborhood where these annoying noises are familiar, it probably won't surprise you that research has linked the desire to own this type of car to higher levels of sadism and psychopathy.
Psychologist Julie Aitken Shermer of the University of Western Ontario in Canada analyzed more than 500 people to examine the relationship between “dark” personality traits and a preference for noisy cars with modified sound.
“Since these exhaust modifications are a nuisance to both people and animals, and are illegal in some jurisdictions, understanding why people want their car to sound like this would be difficult,” Shermer wrote about his pilot study in Psychology Today. Soaring, important and interesting.
Shermer surveyed 529 business students with an average age of 18, 52% of whom were male. The research asked three questions about participants' feelings about noisy cars, identification with their cars, and the potential to change car noise.
They also completed the Dark Tetrad personality survey, a scale that measures the personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. These qualities are called dark because of their “evil” qualities, which include selfishness and abuse of others.
Schumer's initial hypothesis was that people might like to be recognized by the loudness of their car and get a lot of attention, which is consistent with narcissistic behavior. He also predicted that people with sadistic or psychopathic traits, associated with criminal attitudes, would be more inclined to drive noisy cars with often illegal modifications. He also predicted that younger men would prefer loud cars because they thought they would score more points.
“It seems like a callous disregard for other people's feelings and reactions,” Shermer told CBC News.
Being male and having sadistic and psychopathic personality traits accounts for about 29% of the variance in the preference for noisy cars. The analysis showed that being young predicted a higher score on the vehicle scale in the group, but this correlation was not significant enough to draw significant conclusions. Correlations were found between higher scores on the machine scale and each of the dark tetrad traits, although not significantly for Machiavellianism and narcissism.
While the study offers some insights, there are caveats. The participants in the sample were relatively small and relatively young, and all enrolled in the same business degree at the same university, so Shermer's findings may not apply to broader populations.
The survey only looked at preferences for owning noisy cars and did not examine preferences for owning other loud vehicles, such as motorcycles or large trucks. Future research could examine other variables such as listening to loud music while driving.
