Payesh (Jun 2013)

Identifying personality and cognitive factors in high-risk drivers

  • Golnoosh Shahbaz,
  • Behrooz Dolatshahi,
  • Abbas Poorshahbaz,
  • Parvaneh Mohammadkhani

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 3
pp. 263 – 273

Abstract

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Objective (s): To identify personality traits and function of attention in high-risk drivers. The study aimed to compare personality traits and function of attention in two groups of high-risk drivers and normal ones.Methods: This was a case-control study. Using simple random sampling, 50 high-risk male drivers were selected whose cars or license have been confiscated by traffic police in Tehran, Iran. Also in control group, 50 male drivers were selected who had no violations in their records. Personality traits of the two groups were measured by the NEO PI-R test with 240 questions and function of attention was measured by the Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Data were analyzed by Chi-square test, analysis of covariance and discriminate analysis.Results: The finings illustrated that in personality factors there were a significant difference between high risk and normal drivers in neuroticism, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness. In neuroticism and extraversion, high-risk drivers had higher scores than normal drivers (P<0.01), whereas in openness and conscientiousness normal drivers had higher scores (P<0.01). However, in agreeableness there was no significant difference between the two groups. In function of attention there was a significant difference between high-risk an normal drivers. In commission error, omission error and reaction time indexes high-risk drivers had higher scores than normal drivers (P< 0.01), while in correct detection normal drivers had higher scores than high-risk drivers (P<0.01). In discriminate analysis the findings showed that 71.74 % of the variance was due to risky derving behavior.Conclusion: The finings demonstrated that there were significant differences between high risk and normal drivers in personality traits and attention. Therefore it is recommended to perform psychological assessments at the time of granting driving licenses and periodically thereafter and provide trainings for high-risk drivers.

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