Implicit attitudes towards risky driving: Development and validation of an affect misattribution procedure for speeding

The present study aimed to develop and validate an instrument for measuring implicit attitudes towards speeding, based on the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). The data collected from 140 drivers supported the reliability of the AMP (α = 0.80). Results provided some support for the construct validity of the AMP, through its convergence with explicit attitudes towards speeding (r = 0.22). Also, the AMP incrementally predicted driving violations (ΔR2 = 0.034) and traffic accidents (ΔR2 = 0.022), above and beyond demographic variables and explicit attitudes towards speeding, thus providing initial evidence for its criterion validity. The multiplicative interaction effect between implicit and explicit attitudes (in predicting the same criterion variables) was not supported. Overall, our results provide support for Speeding-AMP's validity and reliability, which can be successfully used in research concerning risky driving behavior.