The effects of personality traits on driving-related anger and aggressive behaviour in traffic among Serbian drivers

Aggressive driving is a worldwide phenomenon of an almost epidemic proportion. To understand this phenomenon, we have to determine which elements provoke drivers to feel anger and express aggression while driving. The main goal of this study was to determine the ways in which the five-factor personality traits model was related with aggressive behaviour during driving. We hypothesised that neuroticism correlates with aggressive driving indirectly through anger, whereas the other traits are directly connected with aggressive driving. In our analyses, we controlled for the age of the interviewed participants and their driving experience; gender was not a significant factor and as such was not controlled for in the analyses. Regression analyses showed that neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness predicted driving-related anger and aggression. The results revealed that the data fit well with our theoretical model. The relationship between neuroticism and aggressive driving is mediated by the driver’s anger, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness had both a direct and indirect relations with aggressive driving. Our model accounts for a relatively high percentage of the aggressive driving variance, suggesting the usefulness of assessing global personality traits for the prediction of aggressive driving.

Research highlights
► Neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness predicted driving-related anger and aggression.
► Neuroticism was correlated with expression of aggression while driving only through the driving anger.
► Neuroticism is a special kind of aggression termed “reactive aggression” that arises in provocative circumstances.
► This study used global personality traits as predictors, and it indicates that it would be beneficial for future research to include more levels of mediating variables.