EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPATHY and ANGER EXPRESSIONS OF THE DRIVERS

Abstract

When human behavior, which is mediated by many different variables, is taken into consideration in a special condition such as traffic, it requires to investigate not only the visible situations that concern the moment, but also the sub factors that cause the resulting behavior. When examining driver behavior, focusing only on cognitive processes can lead to a one-way evaluation of the behavior, which may lead us to ignore factors such as emotions, past experiences and personality. Therefore, driver behavior should be addressed by a comprehensive holistic approach in which emotions and cognitive factors are considered together. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of empathy in the relationship between the situations evoking anger in traffic and anger expressions of the drivers. In order to run the study, data were collected through Demographic information form, Driver Anger Scale (DAS), Driver Anger Expression Inventory (DAX) and Basic Empathy Scale (BES) among 975 participants who are over 18 years of age and active drivers in traffic. According to the results, it has been seen that as people's cognitive empathy levels increased, their adaptive/ constructive anger expressions were increased. Also, the forms of expression of anger, was found to be significantly different according to gender.