New psychological research from Hyundai suggests that female drivers get even more furious than their male counterparts when they’re behind the wheel.
Behavioural psychologist Dr Patrick Fagan at Goldsmiths University studied 1,000 drivers of both genders, paying particular attention to how sound, sight, smell, touch and taste influenced their responses.
The study found that women were 12% angrier when driving, 14% more incensed at backseat drivers, and 13% more likely to react angrily when a road user failed to indicate.
Hyundai commissioned the research as part of their unique Driver Emotion Test, the first experiment of its kind to study driver’s emotions using a combination of eye tracking analysis, facial coding, skin and heart rate monitoring.
So what could be causing this boiling cauldron of irrationality? Well, it seems that apparently the reason women get road rage is a biological hangover from our early days as hunter-gatherers.
‘Psychologically, women score higher than men on emotional and verbal intelligence, and on the personality trait of neuroticism’ Dr Fagan explains.
‘Evolutionary theory suggests our early female ancestors had to develop an acute sense of danger for anything that threatened them and their young if their cave was undefended while men were out hunting. That ‘early warning system’ instinct is still relevant today, and women drivers tend to be more sensitive to negative stimuli, so get angry and frustrated quicker.’
However, if you’re one of the 50 percent of the population who is currently screaming at the screen in frustration as science tells you to ‘calm down, dear,’ don’t worry.
The good news is that, apart from anger, the most dominant feeling for both genders when driving was happiness. Freedom and independence were high on the list of feel-good factors, as well as driving in the countryside or near the sea. And the thing that lifts us most is music, with 8 out of 10 drivers saying that they liked to listen to tunes in the car. So blast out ‘Resentment’ by Beyoncé and take to the open road. Ahh, that’s better…