Do we really drive as we feel?

Learning to drive has been conceptualised as a series of stages which take the learner from mastery of the basic mechanics of driving, through anticipation of other road users’ behaviour, to the development of a driving style consistent with the skill achieved in the first two stages (Parker & Stradling, 2002). Deery (1999) suggests that hazard perception is one of the main skills to be acquired in the second stage and that this skill is poorly developed in the inexperienced (and usually young) driver.

While strategic deliberation has an obvious role to play in general decision making, and more specifically in hazard perception, Damasio (1994, 2004) has suggested that a complementary emotional learning system also influences behaviour independently from conscious strategic processes. For example, if a situation were to develop that could advance into something threatening or dangerous, a feeling of unpleasantness would be produced in the body (i.e. a gut feeling) and this bodily feeling will be marked against the developing scenario so that the organism will learn that should this scenario begin to be built up again, the body can respond earlier (Damasio, 1996). The process has been labelled the Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) (Damasio, 1994).

The current paper describes two laboratory experiments that were set up to explore whether the principals behind the Somatic Marker Hypothesis can be applied to the realm of driver behaviour. It examined the Skin Conductance Response (SCR) of experienced and inexperienced drivers to three types of still images. These still images were of ‘safe’, ‘hazardous’ and ‘developing hazard’ situations. Subjective judgements of how hazardous the situation appeared to be were also collected.

It is predicted that experienced and inexperienced drivers will not differ in their emotional response to safe and hazardous scenarios.