Chai Jing, Qu Weina, Sun Xianghong, Zhang Kan, Ge Yan
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, CAS, Beijing, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2016 Jan 14;11(1):e0147083. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147083. eCollection 2016.
The behavioral and cognitive characteristics of dangerous drivers differ significantly from those of safe drivers. However, differences in emotional information processing have seldom been investigated. Previous studies have revealed that drivers with higher anger/anxiety trait scores are more likely to be involved in crashes and that individuals with higher anger traits exhibit stronger negativity biases when processing emotions compared with control groups. However, researchers have not explored the relationship between emotional information processing and driving behavior. In this study, we examined the emotional information processing differences between dangerous drivers and safe drivers. Thirty-eight non-professional drivers were divided into two groups according to the penalty points that they had accrued for traffic violations: 15 drivers with 6 or more points were included in the dangerous driver group, and 23 drivers with 3 or fewer points were included in the safe driver group. The emotional Stroop task was used to measure negativity biases, and both behavioral and electroencephalograph data were recorded. The behavioral results revealed stronger negativity biases in the dangerous drivers than in the safe drivers. The bias score was correlated with self-reported dangerous driving behavior. Drivers with strong negativity biases reported having been involved in mores crashes compared with the less-biased drivers. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the dangerous drivers exhibited reduced P3 components when responding to negative stimuli, suggesting decreased inhibitory control of information that is task-irrelevant but emotionally salient. The influence of negativity bias provides one possible explanation of the effects of individual differences on dangerous driving behavior and traffic crashes.
危险驾驶者的行为和认知特征与安全驾驶者有显著差异。然而，情绪信息处理方面的差异很少被研究。先前的研究表明，愤怒/焦虑特质得分较高的驾驶者更有可能卷入撞车事故，并且与对照组相比，愤怒特质较高的个体在处理情绪时表现出更强的消极偏见。然而，研究人员尚未探究情绪信息处理与驾驶行为之间的关系。在本研究中，我们考察了危险驾驶者和安全驾驶者在情绪信息处理方面的差异。38名非职业驾驶者根据他们因交通违规所累积的扣分被分为两组：15名扣分6分及以上的驾驶者被纳入危险驾驶者组，23名扣分3分及以下的驾驶者被纳入安全驾驶者组。采用情绪Stroop任务来测量消极偏见，并记录行为和脑电图数据。行为结果显示，危险驾驶者比安全驾驶者表现出更强的消极偏见。偏见得分与自我报告的危险驾驶行为相关。与消极偏见较弱的驾驶者相比，消极偏见较强的驾驶者报告卷入的撞车事故更多。事件相关电位（ERP）显示，危险驾驶者在对负面刺激做出反应时P3成分减少，这表明对与任务无关但在情绪上突出的信息的抑制控制减弱。消极偏见的影响为个体差异对危险驾驶行为和交通事故的影响提供了一种可能的解释。
